About 400 were arrested in 
Occupy Oakland protest

OAKLAND, Calif. (MCT) — Officials surveyed damage Sunday from a volatile Occupy protest that resulted in hundreds of arrests the day before when demonstrators broke into City Hall, smashed display cases, cut electrical wires and burned an American flag.

Police said about 400 people were arrested during Saturday’s daylong protest — the most contentious since authorities dismantled the Occupy Oakland camp late last year.

Mayor Jean Quan condemned the local movement’s tactics as “a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them” and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already strapped city. Damage to the City Hall plaza alone has cost $2 million since October, she said, about as much as police overtime and mutual aid.

Oakland has logged five homicides since Friday, and Police Chief Howard Jordan said the law enforcement “personnel and resources dedicated to Occupy reduce our ability to focus on public safety priorities.”

The Occupy action was publicized by the group as a planned takeover of a vacant building that would be “repurposed” as a “social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement.” In an open letter to Quan on Wednesday, the group warned that if police attempted to thwart the takeover, “indefinite occupation” of Oakland’s airport, port and City Hall could follow.

Police prevented an afternoon attempt by protesters to enter the city’s vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Demonstrators then headed to the nearby Oakland Museum of California, where arrests occurred after an order to disperse was ignored. One officer was cut in the face when a demonstrator threw a bicycle at him, another suffered a cut hand and a third was bruised, Watson said. At least one demonstrator was injured.

Later in the night, marchers entered the downtown Oakland YMCA, where hundreds of arrests took place.