What I find really unusual is this happened in Bozeman. I spent a couple weeks there an a ski/backpack trip and the culture was extremely liberal.

My take on the situation though after reading the article is just a case of understandable incompetence. They just didn't realize what a big deal it was. They were looking for a limited number of bad flags and didn't really think it through. Someone with very little social networking experience, read some nightmare accounts in some FUD article and made a really dumb decision.

Which the City of Bozeman has since backed off on.