Cops Step Up Efforts Against Occupy Wall Street, Intimidate CP Reporter, Others For Videotaping
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This screenshot from a video by Campus Progress reporter Emily Crockett shows New York City police officers intimidating a person for videotaping on a public sidewalk.
Already working to deal with certain security issues, the Occupy Wall Street camp is now grappling with another problem—police crackdowns.
Late last week, activists saw a whirlwind of police activity against the protests in New York City, including a handful of arrests and several instances of police interfering with video recordings.
On Thursday afternoon, undercover police officers confiscated a gas generator owned by the Occupy Wall Street movement from one of the park’s nearby street vendors. Activists had worked out a deal with the sympathetic vendor; the Occupy camp would supply gas, and the vendor got to use the generator so long as he let occupiers run power cords to essential areas of the site, like the medical and media stations.
Plainclothes officers seized the generator, which protesters claim was an illegal seizure of personal property; the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which has worked to represent the rights of some occupiers, has asked police to return other generators seized the previous week, saying the officers gave no legal justification for the confiscation. The vendor was issued two tickets for “failure to provide a permit for the storage of gasoline and failure to have a permit to change out propane tanks.”
Legal issues aside, the officers involved in the confiscation clearly had issues with being filmed, as captured in the unedited video I took below. Highlights include an officer giving a likely-false badge number and threatening one videographer with arrest if he touches a door, a pair of officers aggressively chasing me and others down the block for filming and chanting, and another officer grabbing the wrist of a videographer while he tries to back away.
A dispatcher from the NYPD told Campus Progress that no officer by the name of Foley is on record with badge number “50,” which appears to be the badge number and name one seemingly annoyed police officer gives to reporters.
Also on Thursday afternoon, a commotion erupted on Liberty Street when police arrested two men next to the camp who were both wearing Anonymous-style masks, now linked to some degree with the movement. The arrests were reportedly due to a rarely-enforced loitering law from the 1950s against groups of two or more people wearing masks designed to curtail racist activity.
Earlier in the day, police were present in the park investigating reports of sexual assault and drug dealing.
And that morning, officers arrested seventeen protestors for refusing to move from the entrance of Goldman Sachs’ headquarters following a rally.
The protesters sat on the ground and linked arms despite repeated arrest warnings; they were then led off in handcuffs one by one, some with more force than others. Notable arrestees include journalist Chris Hedges and activist "Reverend Billy" Talen.
Christine Crowther, a volunteer with the movement’s info and media groups, told Campus Progress before the march that she intended to get arrested if the opportunity arose; it did, and she did.
Activist Randy Credico told Campus Progress that he heard police warn protestors that they would be charged with misdemeanor resisting arrest if they stayed; misdemeanor charges generally carry more severe punishments than other charges levied recently against occupiers, like disorderly conduct.
The Goldman Sachs march came in the wake of a mock trial of the financial firm at Zuccotti Park led by Hedges and Cornell West. But across town at the same time, a real trial was taking place: a massive arraignment of more than 70 previously arrested protesters.
Louis Warner-Kansler, 17, was one of those accused. He and most of the protesters were caught in a large arrest trap on Sept. 24 at 12th Street and 5th Avenue, where the widely distributed video of the penned-in women getting pepper sprayed took place.
Warner-Kansler, like the majority of his fellow accused, refused the prosecution's offer of an Adjudicated Contemplation of Dismissal—which would result in a dismissal so long as he’s not arrested in the next six months—in favor of a trial date.
“I feel they are trying to criminalize our dissent and keep us from going back,” he said.
Most defenders and their pro bono attorneys from the National Lawyers' Guild said they believed that forcing the police to come forward with evidence would cause most of the cases to fall apart, and wanted to take a stand against what they saw as illegitimate arrests.
The arraignment was a taste of things to come for the arrested protestors, many of whom were held for more than 24 hours.
The day full of encounters with police left the camp on high alert. That night, at the General Assembly, members of the direct action working group led a brief training in non-violent resistance in the event of an eviction—a possibility that organizers say, after talking with sources in the community and government, could come any day.
Emily Crockett is a staff writer with Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @emilycrockett.
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