Author Naomi Wolf knows a lot about legal rights to protest – she literally wrote the book on it. So when she saw New York Police giving inaccurate information to Occupy Wall Street protestors, she tried to talk to them about it. They lied to her. And when she wouldn’t back down, they arrested her and her film-producer companion.

It happened Tuesday night at a Huffington Post event in New York that Wolf was a guest at. When she heard NYPD telling the protesters (they were there to give a petition to NY Governor Cuomo) that they weren’t allowed near the building, because Huffington Post had an organizers’ permit that gave them control of the sidewalk.

Wolf knew her law, and she knew that couldn’t be right. So she went inside and found the guy with the permit. He told her that under its terms, protesters were allowed as long as they weren’t blocking the sidewalk.

When Wolf organized the demonstrators into a single-file picket line, the police were not amused. Thirty to forty white-shirt cops turned up and ordered the crowd to disburse – an order which Wolf knew was illegal. They had every right to be on the sidewalk.

But when she tried to talk to the officer who appeared to be in charge, he yelled at her to back away.

“I froze,” she told the Huffington Post.“I just couldn’t move. He said again, ‘Will you back down? Will you get out of my way?’ I hesitated another half second.”

And so, they arrested her. On false pretenses. She wasn’t obstructing, she was a guest at the event, and there was no issue of safety involved, although that’s the excuse they gave her down at the precinct.

Nor were they acting on behalf of the people they were claiming to represent, the event-holders. Mario Ruiz, Huffington Post Media Group’s vice president of communications, said “We did not instruct the police to move the protesters nor were we consulted by the police in connection with their decision to move the protesters.”

And of course, there’s video:

Stories on the earlier Citibank protest and arrests:

What can you do?