Around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, the Occupy Wall Street Livestream captured about 20 people being arrested outside a Citibank at La Guardia Place in New York. A protester announced via human mic that people had gone inside Citibank to close their accounts. They were asked to leave and complied, he said, but the bank’s security guards locked them in until the N.Y.P.D. arrived.
“Some wanted to close their accounts with Citibank,” he read from a cell phone. “When asked to leave, they began to exit but were locked in by security. When cops arrived, Citibank security came outside and dragged two individuals back inside to hold them under arrest.”
The protesters were loaded into the back of a police van as the crowd shouted, “Let them go! Let them go!” as 10,000-some people watched the scene on Livestream. “Liberate the unlawfully arrested!” one man shouted.
Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, who was on a list of tycoons the protesters identified for a home visit last week, recently said he’d be happy to talk to protesters if they’d like to come by the office. Their sentiments are “completely understandable,” he said at a recent breakfast hosted by Fortune.
Video was taken by a witness, Logan Price:
By now accustomed to such interruptions, the protesters continued their march after the arrests with the customary chants. “The people, united, will never be defeated,” and so on. “OBVIOUSLY THEY NEED TO GO BACK AND RESCUE THE PEOPLE IN THE TRUCK!!!” one viewer said in the Livestream chatroom.
OccupyWallSt.org says 22 arrested, as of 3:43 p.m. Other protesters marched from Zuccotti Park, the protest’s headquarters in the Financial District, to the Citibank at 555 La Guardia Place in solidarity with the arrestees, the website said.
Update, 5:04 p.m. Another video, uploaded to the #OccupyWallStreet TwitVid account, more clearly shows a woman being arrested after telling the police that she was a Citibank customer.
