So, you arrest 400 people who were allegedly committing crimes, and three days later you drop charges against almost all of them. Yes, OPD, your strategy with this whole Occupy Oakland thing does appear to be one of discouraging protest, despite the fact that we know things turned into anarchic chaos. What may have begun as a protest and attempted occupation of a vacant building turned into something more pointless, and riotous, whose purpose may have been simply to show disrespect to the city and stand up to police brutality. But all those rubber bullets and flash bombs, 400 people put in plastic cuffs and however many more pushed around, and all you've got are eight misdemeanor arrests and four felony arrests to show for it?

Of course we understand that Oakland doesn't have time to prosecute more than a handful of these cases, and would be hard-pressed to gather evidence against so many, and the arrests were really just a form of crowd control and dispersal.

But as one protester tells CBS, "The funny thing about all these arrests is that I think they are doing it to try to discourage people from being a part of this movement. But it’s really galvanized and radicalized people."

And, like this disgruntled Occupier was saying, all that radicalizing and wanton destruction makes the entire Occupy Oakland movement appear to be about fucking with the police, which isn't going to win them a lot of broad political support. So where is this all going to go?

[CBS]