Stephen Baldwin

Stephen Baldwin was arrested on Thursday for alleged repeated failures to file his New York state personal income tax. Mr. Baldwin, an actor, conservative Christian and younger brother to 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin, allegedly failed to file taxes for three years--2008 through 2010--and he may owe the state over $350,000.

CBS New York quoted a statement from Rockland County, N.Y., D.A. Thomas Zugibe, who said Mr. Baldwin's "repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years" was just another element contributing to "the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and schools."

The actor, well-known for both his family name and his role in The Usual Suspects, is an outspoken conservative. Mr. Baldwin has appeared on Fox News as a political commentator. He once famously claimed in an interview with Fox that he'd "leave the country" if Barack Obama became president.

Mr. Baldwin has also had previous brushes with the law, most recently in August, 2012, when he was arrested in Harlem for driving with a suspended license.

If he is found guilty of evading taxes, Mr. Baldwin could go to prison for four years.

From Brent Betterly's Facebook profile

Three men who allegedly planned attacks on President Obama's Chicago headquarters and the mayor's residence have been arrested by Chicago police. Reuters reports anti-N.A.T.O. and Occupy Chicago-associated protesters Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly were charged Friday with "conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism, and possession of an explosive incendiary device." In a report published Saturday afternoon the Associated Press said prosecutors allege the men also planned attacks on police vehicles and substations.

Mr. Church, age 20, and Mr. Chase and Mr. Betterly--both 24--were picked up during a raid Wednesday on the South Side of Chicago. Authorities say they were planning to use Molotov cocktails during the N.A.T.O. summit, which begins Sunday.

Brent Betterly, originally from Florida, arrived in Chicago on April 27, according to a post he made on the Facebook timeline for a page dedicated to Occupy the Chicago N.A.T.O. Summit. "just arrived in chicago last night," wrote Mr. Betterly on April 28, "the people in occupy chicago have been awesome! thanks for the hospitality! this is going to be a great summit!"

Jared Chase is from Keene, New Hampshire. On May 2 Mr. Chase posted a news article about a peaceful protest of a Bank of America branch in downtown Chicago, commenting, "Thats me again lol."

Nothing on either man's Facebook indicates overt support of violent, Black Bloc-style protests.

In a statement quoted by Reuters, Occupy Chicago member Natalie Wahlberg ridiculed the charges against the men, stating that they "are utterly ridiculous." The Chicago Police Department, said Ms. Wahlberg, "doesn't know the difference between home beer-making supplies and Molotov cocktails."

More than 12 protesters have been arrested since the anti-N.A.T.O. actions began, but mostly for minor charges such as trespassing.

Mr. Betterly, Mr. Chase and Mr. Church will have bond hearings Saturday.

Cecily McMillan/Facebook

While there is a great deal of dispute over the content of the video showing the arrest of 23-year-old Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan Saturday night, the N.Y.P.D. has no doubt as to who was in the wrong. The Daily News, in an article about an investigation into online death threats made against the police on Twitter as well as comments in a UStream chat, reports that Ms. McMillan was "seen elbowing her arresting officer in the face" as she was being led out of Zuccotti Park.

The officer who arrested the activist was reportedly injured as well:

[Cecily McMillan] was treated at New York Downtown Hospital and released into police custody, cops said. She was charged with assault on a police officer.

Her arresting officer suffered a cut to the eye but refused medical attention, police said.

Social media reports from Occupy Wall Street supporters as well as members of the media indicate Ms. McMillan may face charges of aggravated assault and bail as high as $50,000, but the bail amount has not been confirmed.

The video published by the Observer here and subject to a great deal of parsing across the Internet as well as the comments attached to that post is below.

Update: A video of events surrounding Ms. McMillan's arrest was posted Sunday by WeAreChange. The events in question occur around 6:45 into the 14-minute video. This will probably raise more questions than it answers.

Cecily McMillan/Facebook

Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist once profiled in Rolling Stone, suffered a seizure Saturday night during protest action near Zuccotti Park. Many on-scene reported Ms. McMillan had trouble breathing after she was tackled and handcuffed by law enforcement.

A video uploaded to Youtube late Saturday night purports to show the attack. Two women can be heard commenting, "There's Cecily," then there is confusion as the police clearly perform a violent take-down on someone in the crowd.

According to Jeff Sharlet's November, 2011 article about the Occupy Movement, this may be Ms. McMillan's second violent encounter with police. She is an organizer for the Northeast region of youths involved in the Democratic Socialists of America, which Mr. Sharlet reports is "the largest socialist organization in the United States." Ms. McMillan, however, once led a more conventional life:

She's a former cheerleader; she used to want to be a politician. She says her studies and her work – she's also a nanny – prevent her from sleeping in the park. But she's not afraid to put her body on the line. She was arrested after she charged Wall Street three times, a "direct action" that even some veteran anarchists – militant and masked – considered wildly courageous, if foolish. A cop thought so, too, blasted her with pepper spray, knocked her down, stepped on her head and snarled at her, "Shut up. You get what you deserve, cunt bitch."

Reports from various sources over social media and live feeds on UStream indicate she had a seizure and has been taken to an emergency room, possibly with cracked ribs. Jeff Sharlet posted a link to the video on his Twitter feed and pointed out, "Camera's far off & u can hear body smack."

The video supposedly showing Ms. McMillan's arrest is below.

Update: Bucky Turco of AnimalNewYork has published a video of the same event from a different angle. It is no less confusing in showing what happened to Ms. McMillan:

Hang in there, Mr. Murdoch

Five staffers of News Corp's U.K. tabloid The Sun were arrested early today in what the A.P. termed an "early morning swoop."  Surprisingly they--and 3 others--were not nabbed for trying to convince the public woolly mammoths have returned to Siberia, but for allegedly bribing police and defense officials.

Others picked up in the sweep include a police officer, an employee of the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense and a military man. All are being questioned by the Metropolitan Police, who say arrests were made based on information obtained from News Corp's management standards committee.

Today's arrests are more fallout from the phone hacking scandal that has shaken British tabloids in the last year or so, strongly impacting News Corp properties in particular.

[NYTimes.com]

Robert Stolarik from NYT shoved by officer

During the Occupy Wall Street arrests at the World Financial Center Plaza this morning, credentialed New York Times freelance photographer Robert Stolarik was prevented from taking photos of the police descending on the Occupy Wall Street protesters. You can even watch it happen in the video! (It's at the two minute mark.)

We're reposting the raw footage of the event as we wait to hear how The New York Times plans to respond to the latest assault on a credentialed journalist, especially coming on the tail-end of the publication's group letter to Mayor Bloomberg and Ray Kelly about the infringement of journalist's First Amendment rights during Occupy Wall Street coverage. (Not to mention Commissioner Kelly's own chastising of officers preventing coverage.)

One officer appears to have shoved Mr. Stolarik down the steps, while another pushed him back with his baton.

Occupy protesters arrested

While even more members of Occupy Wall Street were arrested earlier this afternoon, 50 of those already charged in relation to the protests showed up to a New York's 2nd Circuit District court today to turn down Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's plea bargain. The D.A. had entered an offer for the offenders where the charges would be dropped on the condition that the individuals would not get arrested again for the next six months.

The fact that the offer was turned down shouldn't come as much of a shock to those who have been following the story. So far over 800 people have been arrested in conjunction to the Occupy Wall Street movement, most of whom were booked on disorderly conduct charges during the 700-person mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge early October. While D.A. Vance's offer (official title: "adjournments in contemplation of dismissal") might seem like a sweet deal, several members of the National Lawyers Guild who have taken on the cases of the protesters note that under the plea bargain, their clients would effectively be barred from participating in any more marches or protests, lest there is another "mass arrest" that would find them in violation of their conditional "Get out of Jail Free" pass.

Further complicating the issue is the seeming arbitrary nature concerning whether individual protesters were issued DATS (Desk Appearance Tickets) or actual summons during the time of their arrests.

Today's court appearance was concerning the 70 individuals who were arrested during a September 24th march to Union Square. Of those who showed up to New York County Criminal Court Judge Neil Ross, 50 of them refused the plea, meaning that they will be due back in court in January. Their lawyers have told reporters that they will move to have the trial dismissed at that time. If not, well, 800 individual trials are sure to take up a lot of the court's time and the city's money...which is exactly what the lawyers from the NLG are threatening should the District Attorney's office agree to totally drop the charges, unconditionally.

Meanwhile, 16 more people have just been added to this roster of would-be criminals, including Naomi Wolf, Rev. Billy Talun, and journalist Chris Hedges.

Rev. Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping

Approximately 15 people associated with Occupy Wall Street were arrested around 1:00 p.m. this afternoon while protesting eight blocks away from Zuccotti Park, at the headquarters of Goldman Sachs.

One of those people happened to be the Reverend Billy Talen, an outspoken activist from The Church of Stop Shopping who spends a lot of time down at Occupy Wall Street. Another was The Nation's Chris Hedges, who departed from The New York Times after they reprimanded him for speaking out against the Iraq War. So two out of five people arrested were high-profile leftist advocates? What are the chances?

(Very good, actually.)

You see, The Nation Instute's senior fellow wasn't just covering the event: Mr. Hedges spoke to OWS earlier this morning in a mock-trial of Goldman Sachs. Here was the schedule, as of 7:21 a.m.:

Outline of Today's Event:

09:45 Guests and Panel are seated
10:00 Introduction to A People’s Hearing, Tony and Sandra Nurse, Occupy Wall Street
10:10 Opening Statement, Dr. Cornel West
10:20 Background of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Chris Hedges
10:20 Witness Testimonials
11:00 Proposal of Verdict
12:00 A Call to Action – March to Goldman Sachs

Liberty Square, NY — Today (Thursday, November 3rd) the People, the 99 percent, will hold A People’s Hearing of Goldman Sachs in Liberty Square Park and march on Goldman Sachs! The people will bring to justice perhaps the single most egregious perpetrator of economic fraud and corruption in the United States. The Hearing will include testimonials from individuals directly affected by Goldman’s fraudulent manipulation of financial markets, including victims of housing foreclosures, pension losses, public lay-offs and untenable student debt.

The proceedings will also include expert analysis from Ralph Nader, Cornel West and Chris Hedges. Following the 99-minute hearing the people will decide on a fair and deliverable verdict via our own process of consensus-based direct democracy – and we intend to deliver it ourselves – to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs at 200 West Street, eight blocks from Liberty Square. We will ask for something our judicial and legislative systems have so far failed to deliver – the return of billions of taxpayer dollars to the 99 percent and criminal sentences for those Goldman Sachs executives who carried out the fraud. The event will be broadcast live via the Occupy Wall Street Livestream, among other public media outlets.

Mr. Hedges appears in one photo to be resisting arrest with a non-violent sit-down, lock-arms maneuver. Unsurprisingly, The Nation already is linking to a video of Mr. Hedges arrest. As far as we know, none of the other 13 people arrested were famous.

A "peaceful" protest?

With the weather getting colder and news outlets packing up and moving on to different stories, it's now up to Occupy Wall Street's own media team to start sending out videos of their violent arrests. But can we trust what we're seeing?

As we mentioned earlier, last night saw at least 10 protesters arrested in their march towards Union Square, where they were met by police in riot gear and orange netting. This video was sent around this morning by Vlad Teichberg, a member of General Assembly/OWS' media team, with the subject line "Graphic Footage of NYPD police attacking #occupywallst protestors solidarity march."

We've discussed OWS's image problem before, but the release of this video just about sums is up. In it, the protesters don't seem peaceful at all: after one of their members is forced to the ground and arrested (around the 4:10 mark) you can see a young man in a hoodie screaming directly into a police officer's face, "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?" while the N.Y.P.D. does its best to ignore him.

The video has also been highly edited to slow down the portions where the cops attack a protester, but remain at normal speed (and in fact focuses the lens away from) the moments where irate crowd members actually push police officers who are trying to force them back on the sidewalk. According to other outlets, the protesters weren't just screaming slogans either: ABC news reports the "goading" calls of people screaming "No justice, dirty pigs, cops come here," possibly in an attempt to get arrested themselves. They also pushed through the orange netting and cut through the ropes the police had set up to barricade protesters from the street.

If anything, the video works against OWS: if it was supposed to garner any sympathy towards the cause and bring awareness to the violence in Oakland on Tuesday--when a police/protester clash lead to several people being severely injured (one of whom, Iraq war veteran and U.S. Marine Scott Olsen, recieved a fractured skull during the fray)--it failed on several levels. It's highly edited and not "raw footage," and thus makes itself as open to criticism as any Fox video. It also doesn't make the protesters themselves look very good: instead of showing the police blindly attacking peaceful protesters, what we see here is an angry mob trying to push through a wall of cops in riot gear who, for the most part, refuse to take the bait.

Help us identify this undercover officer

Last weekend's arrests at Citibank have been thoroughly documented. The demonstrators have their side of the story (as they are told by the white shirt officer who arrives on the scene), and the police/Citibank have theirs. But before now we had not seen the footage of the undercover detective that Marshal Garrett, one of the men arrested that day, had spoke of. This officer infiltrated the protesters' group, made the largest scene out of the whole occupation, and then barred protesters from leaving.

Well, now we do. (H/t @NewYorkist)

Since the undercover officer on duty won't give his name (clearly he is not just making a citizen's arrest: when the police arrive they immediately turn to him and ask "Is this them?") and can be seen shoving an older woman who is trying to exit the bank, we're putting the call out: Can someone identify this man so he can give his side of the story? Let us know!

Update: In case anyone was unconvinced that he was an undercover cop, an eagle-eyed tipster pointed out that you can see his badge around 1:55 of the video. Screenshot below.