Police arrested Brendan Rosa, being pinned by three officers, above, in front of Trinity Church last Friday. The protester holding the Monster can, at left, managed to dodge arrest.
BY JEFFERSON SIEGEL | Last Fri., Aug. 17, at lunchtime, on the 11-month anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, about 20 occupiers were on the sidewalk in front of Trinity Church on Broadway, either sleeping or holding signs for passersby to read.
A police car from the First Precinct arrived and a lieutenant and another officer emerged. They joined two other officers who had been monitoring the occupiers. The police moved along the line of people lying down on and sitting on the sidewalk, telling the occupiers they had to remove any belongings that were placed on a ledge under the fence that surrounds the church.
People complied, but one young man, Brendan Rosa, apparently did not do so quickly enough. The police took his arm and the officers started walking him over to their police car as another officer carried a large plastic tub holding Rosa’s belongings.
When they advised Rosa he was being arrested, the young protester began screaming in objection. The officers pushed him onto the hood of their car, then wrestled him to the ground in front of a shocked lunchtime crowd of office workers and tourists.
Other occupiers gathered around and started screaming at the police. More officers arrived and there was a tense face-off for several minutes. Eventually the occupiers and police retreated to opposite sides of the sidewalk.
Fatima Shadidi, an O.W.S. medic who has been at the Trinity Church encampment since it formed more than two months ago, witnessed the arrest.
“Part of this protest is to give the homeless youth a safe place to sleep,” she said of some of the occupiers who are young and homeless.
Last year, Trinity denied O.W.S.’s requests for permission to use the Trinity-owned empty lot at Duarte Square, at Canal St. and Sixth Ave. The protesters had hoped this could be an “Occupy 2.0” encampment to replace their lost home base at Zuccotti Park, from which police evicted them in November.
Outraging O.W.S., Trinity pressed charges against occupiers who entered the lot last December and were arrested. One of them received a month-long sentence on Rikers Island because he was caught at the scene holding a bolt-cutter that was presumably used to cut a hole in the lot’s chain-link fence.
