Officers end four-hour standoff after Occupy movement demonstrators, mostly UC students, take over a bank lobby in San Francisco’s financial district.
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Protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement seized a Bank of America branch in the city’s financial district Wednesday, a demonstration that forced jittery customers and employees to flee and ended in nearly 100 arrests.
It took about 40 police officers in riot gear nearly four hours to clear the bank, but no one was injured.
Police said many of those arrested were UC Santa Cruz students who were protesting fee increases and budget cuts.
Police removed the protesters methodically, placing them in plastic handcuffs, citing them for misdemeanor trespassing and sending them off in police wagons for further processing.
“You’re the 99!” the protesters told them as the arrests began.
They scrawled messages in chalk on the bank walls — “Greed!” and “Give Us Back What You stole!” — and plastered pink phone message slips on desks and computer screens. One man was seen urinating in a corner.
The siege began after several hundred protesters gathered for a rally at noon in a plaza near the waterfront and proceeded to march across town to the Civic Center. The route was designed to take marchers past buildings where members of the UC Board of Regents have offices.
When the crowd reached the Bank of America branch, organizers opened the door and ushered protesters inside. They jumped on desks and banged drums while bank employees huddled behind a counter.
“Banks got bailed out; we got sold out,” the protesters chanted in a mood more jovial than angry.
“People united will never be defeated!”
After consulting with the police, bank managers tried to reclaim the lobby.
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