Occupy San Antonio has marched to the beat of its own drum thus far, complying with city and police requests unlike some of their counterparts elsewhere. But Monday that cordiality ended with the arrest of at least five members.
Charged with interference with the duties of a public servant, the five, along with other occupiers, were near an open-air adobe structure close to the Tower of the Americas in HemisFair Park.
San Antonio Park Police officers informed the group about 8 a.m. that Downtown Operations workers were going to clean the area due to its “unsanitary condition,” a San Antonio Police Department report stated.
The occupiers, who were handed notices of violation of the city’s no-camping ordinance a week ago, were given 15 minutes to remove their belongings and then got a 10-minute grace period before Park Police officers surrounded the building with yellow caution tape, Commander Steven Baum said.
While most of the dozen protesters there moved their things and stepped away, Robin Canter, 42, a medic for Occupy S.A. since it started Oct. 6; and Kristopher Wettstein, 26, who had just joined the night before from out of town; refused.
They were arrested about 8:30 a.m. and also cited for camping, said Baum, who until Monday had commended the group for being well-behaved.
Lambert Campbell, 27, who joined a couple of weeks ago from Los Angeles, jumped inside the tape and was arrested on the same charge as well as disorderly conduct with language.
“He was outside and for some reason… came in and began to yell obscenities and ‘I’m ready to go to jail,’” Baum said.
Shortly before 11 a.m., occupiers Caleb Powell, 19, and Robert Wilson, 21, crossed the tape in front of half a dozen Park Police officers guarding the building.
“I’m inside the tape, I’m outside the tape,” Wilson said, jumping back and forth. The San Antonio College student and GameStop cashier was one of at least three occupiers ticketed Sunday for camping. He and Powell were arrested.
About noon, more occupiers surrounded the prohibited area and taunted police. Sharon Young, who has protested since nearly the beginning, was driven away in tears, arrested on a charge of interfering with duties of a public servant.
Police Chief William McManus said that as the police car pulled away, Carlos Villalobos, 35, a visitor from Occupy Houston, “threw himself in front of the police car as it was pulling up, but it did not make contact” with him.
Villalobos said the car clipped his leg and that police ignored his request to call EMS and file a police report, so a friend took him to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital for what he said was a concussion.
Hospital officials said he was in stable condition Monday afternoon.
Occupiers used the incident and complaints that restrooms no longer stayed open 24 hours a day to claim there was police wrongdoing.
But McManus said the restrooms had been left open “as a courtesy,” and damage to them, including a fire, resulted in closing them overnight, which was the practice before the occupiers arrived.
By nightfall, police had taken at least two other women into custody, and the enraged occupiers marched to City Hall and then around downtown.
“I sure hope a judge gives us an injunction to be here for six months — we will laugh every time the police try to come tell us something,” said John Meadows, 47. “It will just make the thorn at their side bigger.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Police-arrest-several-Occupy-S-A-protesters-2412218.php
