Bloomberg, NYPD ignoring court order permitting protesters back into Zuccotti park
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/dicX9M_dyOk/bloomberg-nypd-ignoring-court-order.html
UPDATE: 12:22 PM - Via Karen McVeigh, a reporter with the Guardian:
#OWS lawyer says a high court judge signed emergency order
at 6.30am within an hour they had served all lawyers involved but police
refused
UPDATE: 12:20PM - Police putting away barricades at Zuccotti Park, because of court order?
UPDATE: NYPD arrests NPR reporter, with press badge visible.
Julie Walker, a freelance radio reporter for National Public
Radio, said she was arrested while trying to report on the protests
overnight, while wearing her NYPD-issued press identification. Walker
said she spent three to four hours in custody before she was released
around 7 a.m. She was given a desk appearance ticket.
"When I was let out I just went straight back to work," Walker said.
This seems a coordinated strategy to usurp media coverage of the raid last night. As we note below, Mayor Bloomberg gave a quote worthy of Mao or Stalin (or Orwell), about restricting freedom of the press in order to protect the press.
UPDATE: NYPD threw NY Post reporter in a choke hold:
At a news conference after the park was cleared Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media
was kept away “to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect
members of the press.”
Some members of the media said they were shoved by the police. As the
police approached the park they did not distinguish between protesters
and members of the press, said Lindsey Christ, a reporter for NY1, a
local cable news channel. “Those 20 minutes were some of the scariest of
my life,” she said.
Ms. Christ said that police officers took a New York Post reporter standing near her and “threw him in a choke-hold.”
Watch the confrontation between NYPD and OWS protesters live, right now, on UStream. Here's a second stream if that one conks out.
A bit of a mess in NYC. Protesters won a temporary restraining order last night, permitting them back into the park, but so far the NYPD and the city have been refusing to obey it. Reports on Twitter, at the scene, confirm that people are being arrested for going back into the park, which the TRO permits them to do. So the police, and the city, are ignoring a lawful order of a court. Here's a snapshot of the court order. And here's a picture of police cordoning off the park, and another.