NYPD Raid Occupy's Sleep-In Protest | Common Dreams

NYPD Raid Occupy's Sleep-In Protest | Common Dreams: his morning the New York Police Department began arresting Occupy Wall Street protesters who have reoccupied Wall Street for the last week by sleeping on Wall Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Occupiers say the arrests are in defiance of 2000 ruling allowing for protesters to sleep on the sidewalk, as long as they don't block building entrances or take up more than half of the sidewalk.

photo: OccupyWallSt.org The New York Times reports that a police captain announced at 6 this morning: “Sitting or lying down on the sidewalk is not permitted.” “Anyone who is sitting or lying down must now get up or be subject to arrest.”

Occupiers had started sleeping on the sidewalks in the financial district of Manhattan on April 9.

The occupiers believe that the 2000 Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir decision, which held "public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression" to be constitutionally-protected speech. They stated that if a few thousand joined the "sleepful protest," they "could lawfully occupy the entire length of Wall Street -- and beyond!"

Now ocupiers fear that "mass arrests may be imminent."