U.S. Park Police on Thursday arrested two Occupy DC protesters at McPherson Square on charges of assaulting two police officers following an altercation in which one of the officers was left vomiting on 15th Street after being kicked in the groin.
Police arrived at McPherson Square about 2:30 p.m. in response to a reported assault on a woman, police said. Police said they found several people in the square drunk and disorderly when they arrived. Witnesses said police approached one man in a tent — a protester known only as “Tank” whose real name was not immediately released by police — and asked him to leave. He emerged and, after first refusing to speak to police, started yelling at them, protesters said.
When police attempted to arrest him, Tank went limp — as protesters are instructed to do during an arrest — and refused to move, protesters said. He lay on 15th Street as several officers tried to lift him into a waiting police van. Tank didn’t fit in the van, police said, so officers maneuvered him into a patrol car.
“This guy was a behemoth,” Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser said.
A small crowd of bystanders yelled slogans of support and used cell phone cameras to videotape the scene as officers lugged Tank into the car. Police eventually used a Taser on Tank.
Some Occupiers, who have prided themselves on avoiding violent confrontations with police, attempted to calm those standing nearby. One shouted, “We don’t need this right now,” and told protesters not to “make the police nervous.”
Still, a man rushed out of the crowd and directly at the police officers and, police said, assaulted one of the officers. The second man was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer.
Meanwhile, Tank kicked an officer in the groin as police were trying to get him in a patrol car, police said. The officer vomited on the street and was taken to George Washington University Hospital, police said. The unidentified officer is “doing OK,” Schlosser said.
Tank remained in the police car, kicking the windows and shouting obscenities, eventually smashing one of the windows, police said.
He was charged with disorderly conduct, destruction of government property and assault on a police officer, police said.
Some Occupiers seemed shaken after the event. Two walked into the street to clean up the officer’s vomit.
The Fraternal Order of Police’s U.S. Park Police committee was unavailable for comment late Thursday, but D.C. police union chairman Kris Baumann said he was distressed by the day’s events.
“Both the federal and District government have been extremely accommodating to everyone involved in this,” he said. “Now we’re reaching a point where we’re talking about physical danger to police officers and lawlessness, and that’s not something we should be tolerating.”
