“This is not going away any time soon. And we don’t mind that. We don’t mind marches and protests. We understand that. What we don’t want is the criminal behavior that goes with it. If you want to have a protest, great, we will help you, let’s work together. You want to have a march? We will help block traffic, we will make sure no one’s hurt, that everyone’s safe. But if you’re going to have criminal activity where you’re endangering people around you, that won’t be tolerated. There are factors we really have to take into consideration as a city. This is not just an OPD thing — this is a community thing. And this is going to effect our tourism. You know, the city of Oakland was just named #5 greatest place to visit in the world by the New York Times. We have this great piece of publicity and now we have kind of this shadow of marches that do turn — some of them, not all of them — turn violent. Things are being thrown, set on fire, damaged. We don’t need that. We need revenue in this city. We want people to say, I want to go to Oakland this summer.”
— OPD public information officer Johnna Watson to me today on Occupy Oakland. Full piece on the latest arrests and OPD’s new “smarter policing” at AlterNet coming as soon as the great Joshua Holland edits it.
