Occupy Wall Street protest: NYPD accused of heavy-handed tactics

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/02/occupy-wall-street-nypd-tactics
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Force criticised by protesters, who claim they were deliberately led on to road before being penned in and arrested

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 October 2011 17.34 BST

Activists, as well as commentators following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city's police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion. Almost 1,000 people have been arrested in two weeks – substantially more than the number of financiers who led the world into the 2008 economic meltdown.

As Salman Rushdie put it in a tweet: "The world's economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed."

Accounts vary as to how about 500 protesters ended up on one lane of the road across the bridge, where they were all penned in with orange netting and arrested. Some accused the police of leading them on to the road as a sort of trap.

Video clips posted on YouTube, showing a small body of officers marching on to the road ahead of the mass of demonstrators, appeared to support this view.