More Occupy court cases dismissed. Youtube footage clears many protesters names, proving many arrests were fraudulent. Additionally, as these cases start coming to trial, a pattern has begun to emerge, in which the arresting officers fail to appear in court.
far from feeling jovial, many protesters see the rulings as “evidence that the NYPD never made the arrests with any intention of securing convictions.”
But these arrests did still preserve their intended consequences. The physical fear and intimidation of being beaten bloody by the NYPD, combined with the arduous, potentially life-ruining consequences of a legal battle, not to mention the on-going harassment of loyal Occupiers, are more than enough to scare individuals away from the OWS community.
…
It’s been more than eight months since the NYPD started arresting Occupy Wall Street activists, and yet the first cases have only now reached the court system for trial.
That glacial process is one of many reasons would-be activists are scared off from OWS-like demonstrations. Many don’t have months to set aside strictly to fight legal battles due to obligations like jobs, school and/or caring for their children.
Yet, for those who have chosen, or been forced into, a situation where they did have to face down the NYPD in court, OWS has been accumulating many victories.
According to the Huffingtonpost:
With the May Day arrests of at least 116 people at Occupy protests around the country, there have now been a minimum of 7,106 Occupy arrests in 114 cities across the United States since the Occupy movement began in New York on September 17, 2011.
“The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so it’s not surprising that so many people are being arrested for speaking up, but it is still quite disturbing” according to Marianne Huber, spokesperson for St. Pete for Peace.
OccupyArrests.com, a project of St. Pete for Peace, has been tracking these arrests and lists each chronologically, including number arrested, location, a brief description and links to source documentation.
The total number of arrests is conservatively derived, including only those instances in which at least two credible and consistent sources are found. Many additional arrests are often reported.
For more information, please visit http://occupyarrests.com.
Occupy Wall Street protesters get arrested a lot, and for many different charges. Sometimes those charges are just plain silly. Most recently, a video’s been circulating of a guy in Lansing, Michigan getting taken into custody for violating an obscure law against wearing a mask. Oddly, it’s not even the first time that same charge has been used to take occupiers into custody. The site Occupy Arrests, which documents Occupy-related arrests nationwide, lists 5,980 as of Jan. 23.* Gideon Oliver, who represents Occupy with the National Lawyers Guild in New York, said via telephone that about 2,000 had been arrested just in New York City alone. Most of these arrests in New York and elsewhere, are on charges of disorderly conduct, trespassing, and failure to disperse. You know, the things you’d expect people to get nabbed for during a protest. But there are some pretty weird and obscure charges out there as well, showing the lengths to which some cities will go when frustrated by persistent protesters.
Lynching: Yes, you read that right. Lynching. If wearing a mask is the silliest charge, lynching is the most outrageous. An Occupy protester in Los Angeles got hit with lynching charges earlier this month, as did a group in Oakland on Dec. 30. But not for trying to hang anyone, as the term implies. According to MSNBC, “Under the California penal code, lynching is ‘taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer,’ where ‘riot’ is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace.” In this case, 30-year-old Sergio Ballesteros got charged with lynching for trying to stop police from arresting a drummer during a protest in Los Angeles, and the Oakland charges stem from the Oct. 25 raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment. It seems laughable, but it’s a felony that could bring a four year sentence for those convicted. So yeah, lynching’s pretty serious.
Felony Conspiracy: The charge of conspiracy itself is perhaps not all that obscure, but it came as a shock to occupiers in San Diego that they were being hit with felony criminal conspiracy charges for interrupting the mayor’s State of the City speech. Heckling officials during speeches is an extremely common thing for activists, including occupiers who “mic check” just about everybody who gets behind a podium. Police told Voice of San Diego that they added the conspiracy charges to the misdemeanors for disturbing a public assembly because the protesters had planned their actions in advance (Update: We hear the charges have since been dropped). There’s some recent precedent for this in California, actually. Back in September, a group of 10 Muslim students were found guilty of conspiracy for heckling the Israeli ambassador. The takeaway here: If you’re going to shout down somebody’s speech in California, you’d better do it spontaneously.
