Rodri­go Duque, the own­er of the apart­ment build­ing and Occu­py pro­test­er, allowed some mem­bers of Occu­py Mia­mi to live there fol­low­ing the evic­tion of pro­test­ers from their camp on Jan­u­ary 31.

That detail seems to have been glossed over in the media. The term ​“occu­piers,” though obvi­ous­ly draw­ing from the name of the protest group, paints an inac­cu­rate depic­tion of this spe­cif­ic group as hav­ing been ille­gal­ly occu­py­ing the apart­ment build­ing. That’s not the case.

If a SWAT team drew down on unarmed occu­piers, that would still be a hor­ri­fy­ing, news­wor­thy sto­ry, but what makes the Mia­mi event addi­tion­al­ly alarm­ing is that these were not squat­ters, but rather legal res­i­dents. (pho­to by Chris Mazorra)

This week, I’ve been explor­ing all the dif­fer­ent types of ways police and the Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office in New York have been mon­i­tor­ing, bul­ly­ing, and harass­ing Occu­piers . Of course, this civ­il lib­er­ties accost­ing is by no means iso­lat­ed to the New York City area as we saw on Tues­day when dozens of police equipped with shot­guns and assault rifles stormed a Mia­mi, Flori­da apart­ment and drew their weapons on peace­ful pro­test­ers and chil­dren with the local Occu­py Wall Street campaign.

Dur­ing the raid, pro­test­ers claim police drew their weapons on chil­dren, forced a 57-year-old dia­bet­ic woman onto the ground, and alleged­ly harassed at least one indi­vid­ual, Ramy Mah­moud, dur­ing an infor­mal interrogation.

​“They are call­ing us ter­ror­ists, but what I saw today was demons point­ing guns at us,” Ramy Mah­moud adds to the account. ​“They ter­ri­fied us.”

Mah­moud claims he was asked ques­tions such as, ​“Are you a Mus­lim?” and ​“Do you love this country?”

​“I said hell no, I don’t love this coun­try, and it’s because of shit like this,” Mah­moud tells the Mia­mi New Times.

Police say they were respond­ing to alleged reports that res­i­dents inside were stock­pil­ing weapons to use in an upcom­ing demonstration.

​“They said that they had got­ten a tip that we had ​‘long guns’ and were going to use them at our protest,” Occu­py mem­ber Thomas Parisi tells the Mia­mi New Times. ​“But we are a peace­ful move­ment and told them that we had no inten­tion of doing any­thing like that.”

Police placed pro­test­ers in hand­cuffs ini­tial­ly, but lat­er released them at the scene and no arrests were made, keep­ing with the nation­al theme of the arbi­trary ​“grab and release” strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed by law enforce­ment in deal­ing with Occupy.

Like the rest of the coun­try, Flori­da police have under­gone a rapid mil­i­ta­riza­tion. Rania Khalek pro­filed this trans­for­ma­tion that tends to accel­er­ate in antic­i­pa­tion of polit­i­cal con­ven­tions like the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, which takes place in Tam­pa this year.

The Tam­pa City Coun­cil recent­ly vot­ed on using some of the $50 mil­lion in fed­er­al grants secured by the city for the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion for a ​“series of police upgrades” that will include an armoured SWAT truck and a high-tech com­mu­ni­ca­tion system. The city coun­cil agreed to spend near­ly $237,000 on a Lenco BearCat armored vehi­cle, which will be used in con­junc­tion with two aging armored vehi­cles the city acquired through the mil­i­tary sur­plus pro­gram. Tam­pa Assis­tant Police Chief Marc Ham­lin told the Tam­pa Bay Times that the trucks are strict­ly for the pur­pose of pro­tect­ing offi­cers from poten­tial gun­fire, not for day-to-day patrolling and crowd control.

When look­ing at a pho­to of the Lenco BearCat armoured vehi­cle, it’s clear ​“aro­mored vehi­cle” is only a slight­ly friend­lier euphemism for what this beast­ly mon­stros­i­ty actu­al­ly is: a tank.

Although the vote was unan­i­mous, City Coun­cil Vice Chair­woman Mary Mul­h­ern expressed alarm about the pur­chase. Mul­h­ern told Alter­Net, ​“I did­n’t even know that our police force had a tank and Ham­lin made a con­vinc­ing argu­ment that it’s been used to save a life. I would’ve vot­ed no if we didn’t already have one – it’s chill­ing that the police have a tank.” She fears these types of pur­chas­es could ​“mil­i­ta­rize” Tampa’s police force.

No evi­dence has emerged yet that the arrival of the RNC in the fall and the raids on Occu­py are relat­ed, but it’s impor­tant to mon­i­tor this kind of harass­ment of pro­test­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that SWAT teams are draw­ing their weapons on legal residents.