Occupy protesters arrested for satirizing NYPD reach $22,000 settlement

Anonymous ?@AnonyOps 43m
#Occupy protesters arrested for satirizing NYPD reach $22,000 settlement http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/24/occupy-protest-settlement_n_5527486.html


Bicycling activists Keegan Stephan and Barbara Ross were arrested as they were protesting the NYPD's practice of arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who filmed the police at work. Dressed as comic exaggerations of cops, they were melodramatically ordering fellow bicyclists with the cycling collective Time's Up! to stop filming them.

"This was during the height of the suppression of Occupy Wall Street. The police were cracking down, especially on filming the police, so this was a theatrical way to draw attention to the fact that it is totally legal to film the police," said Stephan.

The joke went downhill when actual police officers showed up. Initially, Stephan and Ross were told they were being arrested for impersonating police officers. The charges against them were later downgraded to reckless endangerment and eventually dropped.

Their arrests were caught on tape:



Stephan and Ross sued the city for false arrest. They received the monetary offer in March. The settlement continues a pattern under New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of making peace with former Occupiers over the large-scale arrests during the movement's heyday.