Ousting Occupy L.A.—View from the Perimeter

Peter: Thanks for your time on the phone. Hope you feel better and glad you were there last night.

At any rate, here's a link to the article we ran about being formally excluded from the LAPD pool—it includes a summary of my experience at the LAPD HQ desk as I tried to enter the meeting to represent the Patch sites:



My colleague Dave Fonseca made it inside and did a great job covering from First and Main.

I spent some time at Dodger Stadium and arrived about 10:15 p.m., when the police perimeter was fully in play.

I had to work along the edges, pumping up against police from basically First and Alameda all the way to Third and Main.

As I mentioned, covering the story along the perimeter was interesting in its own way.

You could see a lot of the back up LAPD staging areas and there was much company.

One cop jeeringly waived his tear gas container at us from inside a parking garage at Main and 3rd, where some officers were sequestered.

I also encountered several sets of Occupiers who had left the area around 7 p.m. to return about 10:30 p.m. and fond themselves shut out.

They were trying to get in and couldn't and were not able to claim their tents and possessions. (I wonder if this, too, raises a civil rights issue.)

And I also got gathered up in a spontaneous raid by about 100 riot police on protesters gathering at Alameda and 2nd about 2 a.m.

(ED.: Several people—including myself—were shoved to the ground as a line of police pushed us off Alameda and on to the sidewalk. The officer who shoved us seemed genuinely dismayed—and a little sheepish—when I took his picture.)

I still wonder how the dispersal and use of riot police was justified there outside the perimeter.

Granted the several hundred protesters there were blocking the street and actually faced off against a line of cop cars from the crosswalk at one point.

Regarding media access: an officer at the barricade at Alameda and First said if I HAD an LAPD pass he would have let me in to walk down First Street to Main.

Did you hear that from anyone else? Was he right?

I also could have snuck through the shopping mall along Second Street near Alameda.

But I would have been quite exposed to arrest or other harassment at the height of the raid and police distraction.

I tried several times to walk in with groups of people, but we were always turned back.

As I said, I managed to get some great material, but I would have liked the flexibility to move in and out of the City Hall area without fear of being inappropriately harassed or arrested due to a miscommunication or misperception by officers.

As a female reporter, I would have particularly appreciated the security of a clear status as a journalist.

Please keep me and others at Patch posted about whether the ACLU tries to further press the issue of press access to Occupy events.

Gratefully, a lot of "unofficial" media—including my Patch colleague—were able to cover the event from the LAPD HQ.

Thanks.