Cities coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street with the Federal Government.

Published on November 15th, 2011

Tagged: Ecomonic justice, fbi, Jean Quan, mayor bloomberg, obama administration, Occupy Wall Street

This is just nuts. Have Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies been helping to coordinate the actions against Occupy Wall Street over the past week?

According to an anonymous Justice Department source, the Feds helped the mayors of Occupy cities plan their raids for maximum effect and minimum fallout. These included:

Seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules.
Demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear.
FBI advised that any moves to evict protesters be done at a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

As we’ve reported over the past week, ugly police raids have taken out Occupations in New York City, Oakland, Portland, Denver, and other cities. And they do seem to have a similar tactical aspect, including the way insane numbers of police in scary riot gear descend on peaceful protesters and then… act as glorified park maintenance crews. Even the number of arrests has fallen dramatically since then beginning, when NYPD at one point kettled and arrested more than 700 OWS marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge.

They just don’t like tents. So messy!

The report comes from Minneapolis Examiner, so take it with a grain of salt… but the reporter, Rick Ellis, has a solid history including the Chicago Tribune and NBC13.com, where he served managing editor.

And he notes that Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland has mentioned being on a conference call with 18 cities trying to deal with OWS encampments.

More confirmation:

Photos from Demotix of a Homeland Security team arresting a photographer at Occupy Portland (see also photo at the top of this article). (via Digby)

And now the AP has a story up that confirms there were conference calls and strategy sessions among the mayors (but says nothing about consults with the Feds).

My only question is: Has President Obama totally lost his mind? Or has he just decided he doesn’t mind losing his base?

About the Author

Jeremy Bloom Jeremy Bloom is the Editor of RedGreenAndBlue. He lives in New York, where he combines his passion for the environment with his passion for film, and is working on making the world a better place.

3 comments

Crowds Transform Global Debt Conflict into State Police Crises « The Daily Crowd says:

July 2, 2012 at 3:49 pm

[…] (Portland) […]
Cities coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street with the Federal Government | Pacific Progress says:

November 16, 2011 at 9:39 am

[…] Cities coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street with the Federal Government.. Posted in Police State, Politics, Revolution | Tagged DHS, obama, Occupy, OccupyTheFed, OccupyWallStreet […]
Alan Orsborn says:

November 16, 2011 at 12:56 am

In answer to your question, I would say Obama doesn’t mind losing his base. He seems to be intent on rebranding himself as a Neo-Conservative ‘Democrat ‘ (if we can say that) world policeman who stands for domestic law and order. And he has the assassinations to prove it.

The aforementioned base, in my liberal neighborhood, seems to be totally about this. All the anti-war signs that flourished under Bush have come down. It’s more like they are rooting for a sports team than for a political ideology. Ideologies can be flexible after all, just so long as our team wins.