Police arrest 400 Occupy Wall Street protestors on Brooklyn Bridge. Update!

Courtesy of New York Times:

In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested about 400 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon. 

The police did not immediately release precise arrest figures, but said it was the choice of those marchers that led to the swift enforcement. 

"Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” said the head police spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.” 

But many protesters said that they thought the police had tricked and trapped them, allowing them onto the bridge and even escorting them across, only to surround them in orange netting after hundreds of them had entered. 

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us on to the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who was in the march but was not arrested. 

Things came to a head shortly after 4 p.m., as the 1,500 or so marchers reached the foot of the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the bridge, just east of City Hall. In their march north from an encampment at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, they had stayed on the sidewalks – forming a long column of humanity penned in by officers on scooters. 

Where the entrance to the bridge narrowed their path, some marchers, including organizers, stuck to the generally agreed-upon route and headed up onto the wooden walkway that runs between and about 15 feet above the bridge’s traffic lanes. 

But about 20 others headed for the Brooklyn-bound roadway, said Christopher T. Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who accompanied the march. Some of them chanted “take the bridge.” They were met by a handful of high-level police supervisors, who blocked the way and announced repeatedly through bullhorns that the marchers were blocking the roadway and that if they continued to do so, they would be subject to arrest. 

There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them – seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way. The Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito, and a horde or other white-shirted commanders, was among them. 

After allowing the protestors to walk about a third of the way to Brooklyn, the police then cut the marchers off and surrounded them with orange nets on both sides, trapping hundreds of people, said Mr. Dunn.

What the hell!  Did the police actually trick them into breaking the law in order to arrest the protestors? After all they certainly could not have expected their bullhorns to be heard clearly by 1,500 protestors!

I am not going to pass judgement yet as the facts are still coming in, but I will say that from everything that I have seen and heard, these Occupy Wall Street protestors have tried to follow the rules and keep their protest civil, and appear to have gone out of their way to avoid breaking any laws.

I cannot say the same for the police however.

Update: Video of the police arresting the protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge. Including a young girl.