Early yesterday morning, Boston Police Department officials made more than 100 arrests at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway as part of a new crackdown on the Occupy Boston movement, an extension of the ongoing protests against Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.
The arrests began around 1:30 a.m. after officials told protesters to evacuate the premises, as the park was closed after dark. BPD had already banned protesters from the area and distributed flyers warning protesters of possible detainment if they did not comply.
Granted, protesters were trespassing and disobeying police orders, but BPD methods need not have been so extreme. If authorities had learned anything from the protest’s Manhattan counterpart, they would have known that muscling in and using unnecessary force to contain peaceful protesters would only further exacerbate the problem and create inflated media frenzy around the issue. The Wall Street protests did not even receive a significant amount of sensational media attention until after major clashes escalated with the NYPD.
Boston protesters were nonviolent and nonresistant to arrest. The intimidating tactics of the BPD were completely uncalled for and will probably do nothing but add fuel to protesters’ fire.
Additionally, police arrested not only protesters, but also medics and legal observers. Some of those arrested were even taken to stations all the way in Roxbury and Brighton, a measure that seems a bit like overkill.
Police brutality should not be tolerated in any circumstances, especially surrounding a peaceful protest. Yes, Occupy Boston members were breaking the law, and yes, they were disturbing the peace, but there are more appropriate ways to go about containing their efforts than an unnecessary show of force. Perhaps officials knew this, in part, because they waited until 1:30 a.m. to even start making arrests. The act seems no less brutally forceful just because it happened in the middle of the night.
Officials are not helping their case by using such force. If they wish to quell the cries of protesters, they should leave them alone until the movement fizzles out of its own accord. If the BPD continues to use such tactics to contain the Occupy Boston movement, they will likely be seeing a much larger problem on their hands in the near future.
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