Oakland to assess damage after Occupy protests

Occupy Oak­land pro­tes­tors burn an Amer­i­can flag found inside Oak­land City Hall dur­ing an Occupy Oak­land protest on the steps of City Hall, Sat­ur­day in Oak­land, Calif. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Beck Diefenbach)

TERRY COLLINS

Asso­ci­ated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. — For weeks the protests had waned, with only a smat­ter­ing of peo­ple tak­ing to Oakland’s streets for occa­sional marches that bore lit­tle resem­blance to the headline-grabbing Occupy demon­stra­tions of last fall.

Then came Sat­ur­day, which started peace­fully enough — a mid­day rally at City Hall and a march. But hours later, the scene near down­town Oak­land had dra­mat­i­cally dete­ri­o­rated: clashes punc­tu­ated by rock and bot­tle throw­ing by pro­test­ers and vol­leys of tear gas from police, and a City Hall break-in that left glass cases smashed, graf­fiti spray-painted on walls and an Amer­i­can flag burned.

More than 400 peo­ple were arrested on charges rang­ing from fail­ure to dis­perse to van­dal­ism, police spokesman Sgt. Jeff Thoma­son said. At least three offi­cers and one pro­tester were injured.

On Sun­day, Oak­land offi­cials vowed to be ready if Occupy pro­test­ers try to mount another large-scale demon­stra­tion. Pro­test­ers, mean­while, decried Saturday’s police tac­tics as ille­gal and threat­ened to sue.

Mayor Jean Quan per­son­ally inspected dam­age caused by dozens of peo­ple who broke into City Hall. She said she wants a court order to keep Occupy pro­test­ers who have been arrested sev­eral times out of Oak­land, which has been hit repeat­edly by demon­stra­tions that have cost the finan­cially trou­bled city about $5 million.

Quan called on the loosely orga­nized move­ment to “stop using Oak­land as its playground.”

“Peo­ple in the com­mu­nity and peo­ple in the Occupy move­ment have to stop mak­ing excuses for this behav­ior,” she said.

Saturday’s protests — the most tur­bu­lent since Oak­land police force­fully dis­man­tled an Occupy encamp­ment in Novem­ber — came just days after the group announced a new round of actions. The group said it planned to use a vacant build­ing as a social cen­ter and polit­i­cal hub and threat­ened to try to shut down the Port of Oak­land for a third time, occupy the air­port and take over City Hall.

After the mass arrests, the Occupy Oak­land Media Com­mit­tee crit­i­cized the police’s con­duct, say­ing that most of the arrests were made ille­gally because police failed to allow pro­test­ers to dis­perse. It threat­ened legal action.

“Con­trary to their own pol­icy, the OPD gave no option of leav­ing or instruc­tion on how to depart. These arrests are com­pletely ille­gal, and this will prob­a­bly result in another class action law­suit against the OPD,” a release from the group said.

Deputy Police Chief Jeff Israel told reporters late Sat­ur­day that pro­test­ers gath­ered unlaw­fully and police gave them mul­ti­ple ver­bal warn­ings to disband.

“These peo­ple gath­ered with the intent of unlaw­fully enter­ing into a build­ing that does not belong to them and assault­ing the police,” Israel said. “It was not a peace­ful group.”

Ear­lier this month, a court-appointed mon­i­tor sub­mit­ted a report to a fed­eral judge that included “seri­ous con­cerns” about the department’s han­dling of the Occupy protests. Police offi­cials say they were in “close con­tact” with the fed­eral mon­i­tor dur­ing the protests.

The national Occupy Wall Street move­ment, which denounces cor­po­rate excess and eco­nomic inequal­ity, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dor­mant lately. Oak­land, New York and Los Ange­les were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demon­stra­tions ebbed after those cities used force to move out hun­dreds of demon­stra­tors who had set up tent cities.

Social activism and civic unrest have long marked Oak­land, a rough-edged city of nearly 400,000 across the bay from San Fran­cisco. Beset by poverty, crime and a decades-long tense rela­tion­ship between the police and the com­mu­nity, its streets have seen clashes between offi­cers and pro­test­ers, includ­ing anti-draft protests in the 1960s that spilled into town from neigh­bor­ing Berkeley.

Before the Occupy move­ment spawned vio­lence, mass arrests and two shut­downs of the Port of Oak­land, the city was dis­rupted by a series of often-violent demon­stra­tions over a white Bay Area Rapid Tran­sit officer’s fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed black man named Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009.

Occupy pro­test­ers have invoked Grant’s mem­ory, refer­ring to the down­town plaza named after Frank Owaga, the city’s first Asian-American coun­cilmem­ber, by renam­ing the for­mer space they occu­pied with tents as Oscar Grant Plaza.

Police main­tained a guard at City Hall overnight, and dozens of offi­cers were on the scene Sunday.

“They were never able to occupy a build­ing out­side of City Hall,” Interim Police Chief Howard Jor­dan said Sun­day. “We sus­pect they will try to go to the con­ven­tion cen­ter again. They will not get in.”

City offi­cials said they will call for mutual aid from other police juris­dic­tions if needed.

Quan, who faces two recall attempts, has been crit­i­cized for past police tear-gassing, though she said she was not aware of the plans. On Sat­ur­day, she thought the police response was mea­sured, adding that she has lost patience with the costly and dis­rup­tive protests.

She also said she hopes pros­e­cu­tors will seek a stay-away order against pro­test­ers who have been arrested mul­ti­ple times.

“It appears that most of them con­stantly come from out­side of Oak­land,” Quan said. “I think a lot of the young peo­ple who come to these demon­stra­tions think they’re being rev­o­lu­tion­ary when they’re really hurt­ing the peo­ple they claim that they are representing.”

Saturday’s events began when a group assem­bled out­side City Hall and marched through the streets, dis­rupt­ing traf­fic as they threat­ened to take over a vacant con­ven­tion center.

The pro­test­ers then walked to the con­ven­tion cen­ter, where some started tear­ing down perime­ter fenc­ing and “destroy­ing con­struc­tion equip­ment” shortly before 3 p.m., police said. The num­ber of demon­stra­tors swelled as the day wore on, with after­noon esti­mates rang­ing up to 2,000 peo­ple, although city lead­ers say that fig­ure was much closer to sev­eral hundred.

A major­ity of the arrests came after police took scores of pro­test­ers into cus­tody as they marched through down­town, with some enter­ing a YMCA build­ing, Thoma­son said.

Michael Davis, 32, who is orig­i­nally from Ohio and was in the Occupy move­ment in Cincin­nati, said Sun­day that Sat­ur­day was a hec­tic day that started off calm but esca­lated when police began using “flash bangs, tear gas, smoke grenades and bean bags.”

“What could’ve been han­dled dif­fer­ently is the way the Oak­land police came at us,” Davis said. “We were peaceful.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.