Some 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, participants in a march related to the ongoing #Occupy Wall Street protest. Their mistake? Trusting the police.
The crowd did not break through police lines to get on the roadway--as opposed to the pedestrian walkway--of the bridge. Rather, they followed police personnel up the road. They probably assumed, naively, that the police had decided for whatever reason, to permit the large march to cross the bridge via that route. Instead, the police led them into a trap, kettling them front and back and then arresting hundreds.
This is my sequence of photographs documenting the fact that the police led the marchers onto the bridge. I have included the whole sequence even though one is out of focus and one has some information obscured by a protester's sign.
The large crowd had become bottlenecked at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Before I began walking up the pedestrian walkway with friends, I saw no evidence of the NYPD attempting to manage the crowd or keep us out of the road. This is in contrast to their behavior on the march from the park along Broadway and Vesey Street where they politely but insistently kept demonstrators on the sidewalk (with which demonstrators politely complied).
Plainclothes and uniformed police begin walking up the roadway, followed by the demonstrators.
Two officers walked backwards, behind the other police, videotaping the marchers following them.
Following the NYPD police officials, a line of the protest begins moving up the Brooklyn-bound road portion of the Brooklyn Bridge.
With the police leading the march on the road,protesters who were safely on the pedestrian walkway climb over the fence to join the marchers following the police.
The New York Times posted videos this afternoon from the NYPD purportedly showing the police giving protesters fair warning that they would be arrested if they used the roadway. As numerous commenters point out, the top video was taken when protesters are already a far ways onto the bridge after having followed the police and were hemmed in front and back. (Plus, even in the police video you can barely understand what the officer with the megaphone is saying.) The second video does appear to show the officer giving a barely audible warning at the beginning of the road. But again--as numerous commenters pointed out--it is completely ridiculous to imagine that anyone behind the first row of protesters could have heard what was being said amid the noise and chanting.
The unnamed Times staffer writes, "The release of the videos seemed to back the police’s contention that it was the marchers’ choice that led to the police arresting about 800 people." They do no such thing. Rather, they support the contention that the police made negligible effort to keep protesters off the bridge. (The reporter is apparently so gullible that the NYPD could probably sell him or her the bridge in question.)
The police who led the marchers passed by those of us on the pedestrian walkway, knowing full well that they were being followed by the crowd. They made no effort--zero, zed, null set--to make people aware that they were subject to arrest if they climbed down to join that line of march. Again, the police had full control of the march from the beginning. If they had wanted to keep protesters off the road, they could have done that.
Cross-posted to Reading Between the Lines.