Crowd control at Oakland protests: A visual explainer

Scroll down to see each frame of this slideshow.  As the Occupy Oakland protests continued this winter, so did confrontations between Oakland Police Department officers and protesters. In the most recent incident, which happened on January 28 after Occupy Oakland supporters attempted to take over the Kaiser Convention Center in order to transform it into…

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City Council meets to discuss Occupy Oakland camp

Hundreds of people attended the Thursday night Occupy Oakland City Council meeting, which lasted over five hours. The meeting was held to discuss recent events pertaining to Occupy Oakland, most notably the vandalism and property damage that occurred late Wednesday night when protesters clashed in the street with police officers. Almost 150 people signed up to speak before the council.

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Occupy Oakland day of protest continuing to roil downtown

ATM

Marches and protests continued Wednesday as part of the day of action organized by Occupy Oakland. Around 11:30 am, the Oakland Educational Association (OEA) teachers union, high school students and parents of children who attend the five Oakland elementary schools up for closure gathered in the outdoor plaza at Laney college in support of today’s strike.

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Late-night Occupy Oakland crowd marches jubilantly through city streets

A jubilant crowd of Occupy Oakland supporters poured into the city’s downtown streets late last night, after their “general assembly” approved supporting a citywide strike Nov. 2. But the crowd’s efforts to cross the bay to join the Occupy S.F. group were thwarted by BART officers, who shut down the 12th Street BART entrance amid cries of “Police brutality!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”

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Protesters clash with police throughout evening as tear gas fills the air

After a day of clashes with police, approximately 150 Occupy Oakland protesters remained outside of Frank Ogawa Plaza as midnight approached. There were at least five new arrests as of 9:15 pm this evening, according to police, and 97 were arrested during the day after police raided two Occupy Oakland encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and Snow Park near Lake Merritt.

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Occupy Oakland “tent city” faces eviction

It’s been 11 days since Occupy Oakland took over Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza, and now the tent city is bigger than ever and facing eviction. Over 550 people occupy Oakland’s plaza, even after they received an evacuation notice from the City Administrator’s Office on Thursday evening. Among the concerns listed on the notice are graffiti, vandalism to plaza infrastructure and “the historic tree,” and the disruption of the plaza for public use by groups who had to relocate events which had previously been scheduled at the plaza.

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Lawyers guild investigating excessive force accusations

Wearing a white tank top spotted with blood, Susan Harman, a 69-year-old former school principal and resident of Oakland, told a crowd of reporters that she was a victim of police aggression during the protests following the July 8 Johannes Mehserle verdict. The tank top she was wearing was the same one she had on that night when, she said, while peacefully protesting she was pushed down, hit on the head with a baton and arrested.

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City, community groups express pride following protests

Footlocker boarded and padlocked

As Oakland awaits next month’s sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer convicted last Thursday of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant, authorities, community groups and onlookers congratulated each other on the mostly non-violent protests that followed the verdict last Thursday. Joint planning among city, police and community groups helped keep the peace, they say.

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