Dur­ing the march, I’d seem him act unnec­es­sar­i­ly aggres­sive toward pro­test­ers: shov­ing them out of his way even as they were try­ing to move back onto the side­walk, for exam­ple. He was act­ing so hos­tile, I decid­ed to take his picture.

When pro­test­ers returned to Zuc­cot­ti, ten­sions between police and activists explod­ed, and it all seemed to start with the actions of 1 st Precinct Com­mand­ing Offi­cer Edward Winski.

​“The streets are too nar­row for you guys to march down here. You know this,” one offi­cer explained to a march ​“pac­er,” giv­ing the offi­cial NYPD line for why pro­test­ers are not allowed near Wall Street.

Sat­ur­day’s day of action kicked off with a cou­ple hun­dred pro­test­ers gath­er­ing at Zuc­cot­ti Park before they marched around the finan­cial dis­trict, at one point pass­ing Wall Street’s famous bull stat­ue before the pro­ces­sion was forced to turn around.

Dozens of Occu­py Wall Street pro­test­ers were arrest­ed over the week­end dur­ing protests mark­ing the 6‑month anniver­sary of the move­ment, and there have been wide­spread reports of police vio­lence, some of which I wit­nessed first-hand.

Gothamist picked up on my report of Win­s­ki and linked to a cou­ple sto­ries about how Win­s­ki reached over police bar­ri­cades to detain an OWS pro­test­er dur­ing a march last Sep­tem­ber, and in Decem­ber arrest­ed pro­test­er Justin Wedes as he pas­sive­ly filmed the police.

I was stand­ing in the mid­dle of Zuc­cot­ti when the chaos first erupt­ed, and pro­test­ers stand­ing along the side­walk start­ed shout­ing for media. Police quick­ly formed a ring around the small clus­ter of pro­test­ers being arrest­ed, and being fair­ly short, I found it dif­fi­cult to see what was hap­pen­ing, so I attempt­ed to push my way past the officers.

​“Ma’am, please step back,” an offi­cer said, gen­tly push­ing me back­wards by my shoulders.

​“I’m press,” I explained, hold­ing up my yel­low, city-issued badge.

​“I know,” he replied flat­ly, repeat­ing, ​“step back.”

Explain­ing to the NYPD that press can’t real­ly do their jobs if we can’t see what’s going on does­n’t seem to hold much weight with offi­cers, so I moved and was even­tu­al­ly able to get a few shots of a young man, who was thrown to the side­walk and hand­cuffed. Anoth­er young woman was bent across a car and hand­cuffed there (pho­to above).

The scuf­fle was def­i­nite­ly the most vio­lent I’d seen since the fall when Occu­py began.

While we watched police load the pro­test­ers – about five of them, at the time – into a NYPD police van, I spoke with a dis­traught young man who kept telling any­one who would lis­ten that ​“this all began” because of him.

He’d been try­ing to get a pho­to with one of the police offi­cers, and sud­den­ly, ​“this guy, Win­s­ki, grabbed me by the arm and said, ​‘What? You think I’m fuck­ing stu­pid?’ and this oth­er offi­cer, Mur­ray, shoves me back­wards.” The young man claims, to the oth­er Occu­piers, it looked like he was being arrest­ed, which caused a pan­ic, and pro­test­ers start­ed rush­ing for­ward. That’s when he alleges the arrests started.

It’s dif­fi­cult to trace the lin­eage of these things, but what we do know is that police respond­ed with brute force lat­er that night after the protest start­ed to dwin­dle fol­low­ing an apex of about a thou­sand pro­test­ers flood­ing Zuccotti.

Dozens of demon­stra­tors sat down and linked arms at night and police start­ed arrest­ing peo­ple again, lead­ing them one by one from the park in hand­cuffs. By 11:30 p.m., offi­cers had massed on Broad­way and a com­man­der announced the park was closed, and police and pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards began plac­ing a ring of met­al bar­ri­cades around the park’s perime­ter, once again lock­ing vis­i­tors out of the park.

Col­in Moyni­han reports a woman appeared to suf­fer a seizure while in hand­cuffs and ​“flopped on the ground” as bystanders shout­ed for police to remove the cuffs and pro­vide med­ica­tion atten­tion. The woman laid on the ground ​“for sev­er­al min­utes,” as onlook­ers made ​“increas­ing­ly ago­nized demands” until an ambu­lance final­ly arrived and the woman was placed inside.

The woman is report­ed­ly Ceci­ly McMil­lan, an OWS activist once pro­filed in Rolling Stone. Jeff Sharlet wrote about McMil­lan back in Novem­ber 2011 for an arti­cle about the Occu­py move­ment (pho­to via Facebook):

She’s a for­mer cheer­leader; she used to want to be a politi­cian. She says her stud­ies and her work – she’s also a nan­ny – pre­vent her from sleep­ing in the park. But she’s not afraid to put her body on the line. She was arrest­ed after she charged Wall Street three times, a ​“direct action” that even some vet­er­an anar­chists – mil­i­tant and masked – con­sid­ered wild­ly coura­geous, if fool­ish. A cop thought so, too, blast­ed her with pep­per spray, knocked her down, stepped on her head and snarled at her, ​“Shut up. You get what you deserve, cunt bitch.”

Footage of McMil­lan being assault­ed, dur­ing which her ribs report­ed­ly break, and arrest­ed before she seizures:

Moyni­han reports by 12:20 a.m., a line of offi­cers pushed the remain­ing pro­test­ers, forc­ing them south on Broad­way, at times ​“swing­ing batons and shov­ing peo­ple to the ground.”

Kobi Skol­nick, 30, said that offi­cers pushed him in sev­er­al direc­tions and that as he tried to walk away, he was struck from behind in the neck. ​“One of the police ran and hit me with a baton,” he said.

The Guardian’s Ryan Dev­ereaux report­ed numer­ous instances of police vio­lence, at one point tweet­ing a pho­to of a smashed win­dow with the cap­tion, ​“Just saw police slam a pro­test­er into this door, 55 East 10th. This was the result. Arrestee was punched in the face.” (pho­to by Devereaux)

Video of police smash­ing the OWS medic’s head into the door (at 3:50):

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Video stream­ing by Ustream

​“A sergeant threw a young woman to the ground and pro­test­ers became enraged. Throw­ing debris in the street,” Dev­ereaux tweet­ed, adding the offi­cer who assault­ed the woman was the same sergeant who punched his cam­era­man and told Dev­ereaux he ​“did­n’t give a fuck” about his press pass back in December.

​“My neck is red, my press pass was ripped. I was doing noth­ing but stand­ing on the side­walk doing my job,” he wrote at the time.

Shawn Car­rie, an OWS pro­test­er, told Dev­ereaux he sus­tained seri­ous injuries from police, includ­ing a bro­ken thumb and frac­tured jaw, though a doc­tor had not con­firmed that. Car­rie was one of three pro­test­ers Dev­ereaux inter­viewed, who claimed they had asked for legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion with arrest­ed and were denied. Car­rie also claimed he had­n’t eat­en in 12 hours.

More raw footage of arrests. Offi­cer Win­s­ki can be seen using a bullhorn:

Police com­man­deered a city bus (pho­to #7 in Moyni­han’s report) and even a taxi dur­ing the arrests. Dustin Slaugh­ter tweet­ed a pho­to of the offi­cer using a city taxi.

​“Amaz­ing­ly – or maybe not so – NYPD are now using taxis too,” Slaugh­ter tweeted.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the Vil­lage Voice’s Nick Pin­to report­ed that Judge Klott, who set bail for Occu­piers, con­sid­ered whether defen­dants refused iris scans. This is fair­ly typ­i­cal treat­ment of Occu­py arrestees late­ly. I’ve spo­ken with sev­er­al pro­test­ers who allege they were promised speed­i­er pro­cess­ing by police if they agreed to the scans, and if they refused, were pun­ished with much longer hold­ing times.