Since when are there more Occupy arrests in San Francisco on a day of planned action than there are in Oakland? Oakland Police clearly exercised much greater restraint than they did in 2011 as they dealt with the thousands of protesters who gathered yesterday and last night in downtown Oakland. They estimate that the crowd was about 3,500 strong last night at a rally in Frank Ogawa Plaza (which all the Twitterers and Occupy folk still insist on calling Oscar Grant Plaza), and of the many who squared off with police, tossing paint bombs at them, shoving up against police lines with anarchy-symbol shields, and even setting at least one police cruiser on fire, only 23 people were arrested.
That's the Chron's official number anyway (CBS says it was 25), as compared to the 26 arrested in S.F.. Of the 23, one was taken in for suspicion of felony assault on a peace officer, and one for suspicion of burning that cop car. And while we say that authorities did seem to have shown restraint, they did whip out that ridiculous tank shown above (something probably more fit for dealing with a ground war with rebels from San Leandro than dealing with a bunch of recent college graduates waving anarchy symbols around), and they also whipped out the tear gas pretty damn early yesterday afternoon, just to show they meant business.
Did the huge gathering amount to greater sympathy for the cause of ending economic inequality? Maybe. But mostly it appears to have been peaceful despite the big numbers, and thankfully it didn't devolve into a totally apocalyptic scene of burning trash cans and roving idiots like it usually does.
