News is by now getting around that today there were mass arrests of Occupy Wall Street protesters—700 or more—on the Brooklyn Bridge. As over a thousand marchers made their way toward the bridge a few minutes after 3 p.m., they split into two groups. Some followed members of the Direct Action Committee who led the way up the elevated pedestrian walkway in the middle of the bridge. Another group, however, broke away and took to the Brooklyn-bound road on the bridge’s south side, eventually filling the whole roadway so that no traffic could get through. The front row of them locked arms and proceeded. At first, police had blocked neither entrance.
Before the marchers on the roadway reached the first stone tower, and having been led by a phalanx of senior police officers, they were intercepted from the other side. (Even The New York Times offers evidence that the police may have purposely planned to lure marchers into a trap.) Out came dozens of dark-blue shirted officers with plastic cuffs—actually, cardboard boxes full of them. Some officers unrolled the same type of orange nets they had used the previous Saturday to make nearly 100 arrests, while others lined up opposite the protesters, halted them, and began to apprehend and cuff them, one by one.