A rash of reports of sexual assaults at Occupy Wall Street protests across the country has both police and activists raising red flags.

Nearly a half-dozen assaults have been reported at Occupy camps, including three at the New York City protests, which have prompted protesters to set up a “women only” tent in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to provide a safe haven.

“The concern would be the rapes and attacks that aren’t reported,” said Sgt. Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a police union in New York City. “We have no way of really knowing. If you have three or five crimes reported, you really don’t know if it’s eight or 10 that happened.”


He also noted how young many of the protesters are.

"They are in the lion’s den, so it’s not surprising that they are more susceptible to crimes,” he said.

The first reported incident occurred on Oct. 8, when a man was accused of sexually abusing a woman who was in a sleeping bag at Zuccotti Park. The victim did not report the incident until a few days later, when she saw the suspect, David Park, 27, at the protest site again.

Park, a Connecticut resident, had been arrested for disorderly conduct at a previous march, and he had numerous warrants out for him in both New York and his home state before the protests began.

Another incident was reported last week when a Brooklyn man, Tonye Iketubosin, 26, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in her tent at Zuccotti Park on Oct. 25.

Iketubosin, a volunteer at the Occupy Wall Street “kitchen,” was questioned about the alleged rape of a second woman on Oct. 29.

Reports of sexual abuse also surfaced in Dallas, where a 23-year-old man was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old runaway girl, and in Cleveland, where cops opened an investigation of a sexual assault that allegedly occurred on Oct. 15.

Organizers for Occupy Wall Street did not return messages seeking comment, but they released a lengthy statement addressed to the participants.

“As individuals and as a community, we have the responsibility and the opportunity to create an alternative to this culture of violence,” the statement reads. “We are working for an OWS and a world in which survivors are respected and supported unconditionally… We are redoubling our efforts to raise awareness about sexual violence. This includes taking preventative measures such as encouraging healthy relationship dynamics and consent practices that can help to limit harm.”

The incidents of sex crimes, reports of petty theft, assaults and general outbursts of violence have sprung up not only around Wall Street, but in Occupy camps across the country.

And many of the protesters have become more aggressive overall in recent days.

The most serious incident was reported in downtown Portland last night -- cops responded to calls of a Molotov cocktail being set off near the city's World Trade Center. Authorities had received unconfirmed information a week earlier that people within the Occupy Portland encampment were constructing the crudely made bomb, which is normally fashioned from a glass bottle filled with gas and a soaked rag or cloth sticking out of the opening as a wick.

At the site of the Occupy San Diego camp, street cart vendors were forced to close up shop Monday when protesters, angry that they stopped receiving free food, ransacked and vandalized the carts.

The angry mob not only scrawled graffiti on the carts, they reportedly splattered them with blood and urine as well.

In addition, the vendors received death threats, according to local radio station KNX 1070.

Last weekend, a man was walking through Zuccotti Park taking pictures of the Occupiers' camp when an unidentified man approached him and struck him in the face, leaving his victim with a laceration to the face, according to law enforcement reports.

Also in lower Manhattan, a business owner made claims that she has been terrorized and her well-being threatened by Occupiers after she prohibited them from using her store's restroom to bathe.

Stacey Tzortzatos, owner of Panini and Co., located across from Zuccotti Park, got fed up two weeks ago when demonstrators broke a bathroom sink causing flooding in the shop and leaving her with a bill of $3,000 in damages, according to the New York Post.

In Boston, homeless protesters were removed from Dewey Square after they were discovered to have knives and stashes of illegal drugs.

“Paralysis is occurring across law enforcement. It’s becoming a Catch 22,” Mullins said. Referring to the protests in New York, he said, “To go in there to clear the park is going to cause confrontation. To not do so is detrimental.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/09/rash-sex-attacks-and-violent-crime-breaks-out-at-occupy-protests/#ixzz1dEChQoml

Van Jones has got to be proud, look what he started for his man Obama.

The Face of True Change!

A man was shot by an officer as he filmed a standoff between police and anti-Wall Street protestors in Oakland.
The incident unfolded onthe second day of protests in Oakland.
In the video posted on YouTube, Campbell, 30, is heard calling, 'Is this OK?' to a line of riot gear-clad officers.
He told the newspaper that he was asking if his distance from them was adequate because an officer had asked him to step back. A firearm held by an officer then is seen going off, followed by Campbell's yelps of pain.
In a TV interview, Campbell described the atmosphere before the shooting as 'calm' with 'no provocation or violence'.
He likened the incident to 'West Bank Israeli assaults on Palestinian non-violent protesters' and said he had been holding up a peace sign with his other hand when he was hit.
The Oakland Police Department, which also has been criticized for wounding an Iraq War veteran during an October 25 skirmish, did not respond to a request for comment.
University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey Alpert said the shooting was 'one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm' he'd ever seen.
"That just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force," Alpertsaid.
Campbell said he took video of the confrontation that occurred early November3 because he wanted to document any instances of excessive force, but did not imagine that he would be a target.

It must be true... Fox News

Rupert The Liar

yep,he wrote the Story hisself!
Anmd you accuse others of propaganda!
Holy Poop!

You REALLY don't have a clue about anything, do you?

What do you do, sit in front of the TV all day watching reruns of Bill O'Rielly or Sean Hannity? That would sure explain your posts!

Just FYI..... you know Faux is under investigation for criminal activities and manipulating the news....right?

The protest movement Occupy DC stormed the Washington Convention center on Friday night. About five dozen Occupy DC members gathered to protest the conservative free market group Americans for Prosperity “Defending the American Dream” summit dinner. A half a dozen people were either arrested or given citations.

As they tried to force their way into the building, protestors shoved both an elderly gentleman and an elderly lady to the ground. The elderly woman, reportedly 78-year old Dolores Broderson, fell down a flight of stairs outside the convention center. Broderson was taken by ambulance to the hospital.


Occupy DC protestors also tried to break down the doors of the convention center to enter. Protestors moved metal trash cans to block exits, stopping a woman in a wheelchair from leaving.

Another Occupy DC protestor used her young toddler, about two years old, as part of a human chain to block Summit attendees from leaving the dinner. Occupy DC has settled in D.C.’s McPherson Square in September without a permit, and similar to Occupy Wall Street is now a tent city.

Seeing the mayhem, and elderly people getting hurt, Jennifer Stefano, a former Emmy-nominated TV reporter who now runs Pennsylvania’s chapter of Americans for Prosperity, says she grabbed her cell phone and "went out into the crowd and shot some video.”

Stefano says: “I refused to walk out the back door and walked out the front. Not that I was very courageous. A whole crowd walked out with me, including a World War II veteran in a wheel chair who went out in front of me. He wouldn't go out the back either.”

(View here what Stefano recorded.)

Stefano also spoke with protestors, some of whom were masked. One told her: "I'm an honor student! I work 20 hours a week! I'm $35,000 in debt."

What does this tell you about the comparisons being made between the two movements?

“The Occupy vs. Tea Party movement is an interesting debate,” Stefano says. “But this is really about what the radical Left thinks, that they are owed a living versus the rest of us, who actually go out and work for it.”

Stefano continues: “What's sad is that the masked kid is the future employment pool for American businesses. This is who they have to hire. Kids who work 20 hours a week and are enraged by it. Kids who sign contracts and then decide it's all too much. This is a problem and reflective of the generation of kids that were given trophies for losing.”

Stefano adds: “He's deeply upset about being $35,000 in debt, yet he only works 20 hours a week. Maybe if he just worked that extra 20 hours -- or, heaven forfend, also get a second job -- he wouldn't be in debt.”

Stefano notes: “Also, if he had not run away, I would have asked, ‘So you're railing against banks and capitalist pigs, but, where did you get the loan? A bank. Who filled out the paper work? You. Who signed it? You.’”

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/11/08/debt-this-is-your-brain-on-debt/#ixzz1dEH5d2Ez

I rest my case!

Well he is young and Rupert the Liar has a massive influence on the Gullible as have Sean and Bill... disappointed that the last two might have Irish blood in them.

If someone tried to hold me in a building against my will, well I would hate to be them...............

Not to mention Fox News is the HIGHEST rated news network and is constantly polled the MOST trusted news network(by Liberal polling companies at that )

Oh yea, and using children as a shield well thats a move right out of the Al Qaeda playbook.

Dude! You're adding insult to your own self inflicted injury!

The people who have hijacked OWS are not the real OWS protesters. It has been taken over by the democratic party, ACORN, Al "Not So" Sharpton and general trouble makers. The original OWS dudes and dudettes are the ones I support.

When YOU (murdock) OWN 70% of the news media, you can make your own statistics!

Are they using them as a shield or are they showing the jack booted thugs in riot gear that there are small children. Apparently you don't know the difference.

Fancy that ...MOST trusted news network and he is in COURT for fraud

This guys posts are as credible as anything Faux News ever reported, therefore, he must know!

Some people.... they just don't get it!

all the same!
Brainbrothers!
Soros runs his Troops well!

On George Soros, Occupy Wall Street, and Reuters
Oct 13, 2011 16:44 EDT

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Occupy Wall Street — the soi-disant “99%” — were being secretly funded by billionaire Davos Man George Soros, exemplar of the 1%? Well, no, it wouldn’t, actually. As Noreen Malone points out, lots of the 1% have, like Soros, expressed sympathy with OWS, including Bill Clinton, Ben Bernanke, and at least one member of the Buffett family. And when you’re sympathetic to a cause, and have lots of money, often you donate money to that cause.

But in this case it looks very much as though there’s no connection at all between Soros and OWS. That makes sense: for one thing, Soros is a creature of Wall Street himself, and for another, he tends to fund well-organized groups with specific goals. Which, clearly, OWS isn’t.

Which is why today’s Reuters story about the connection between Soros and OWS has elicited so much derision around the blogosphere. Beyond allowing us to shoehorn the #ows and #soros hashtags into a single tweet, there’s no real substance to it at all:

There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.

Yes, there are people — led, it would seem, by Rush Limbaugh — who are loudly speculating that Soros is funding OWS. There might conceivably be a story in their rabble-rousing, which could point out that Soros’s agenda is hardly secret — it’s right there on his website for all to see.

Alternatively, as John Carney points out, there’s an interesting story in the way that OWS has raised money, through crowdsourced means like Kickstarter.

But the angle we went with is not a story, especially since Soros says he’s never even heard of Adbusters.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros’ Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

The Tides Center is not some great sloshing pool of money which takes in money and hands it out. Yes, one of the many things that it offers foundations is the opportunity to create collective action funds, enabling a group of donors to channel their money in a collaborative manner. The fact that Soros gave money to Tides and that Tides gave money to Adbusters in no way means that there’s an “indirect financial link” between the two. That’s like saying that there’s an “indirect financial link” between me and Mitt Romney, because I lend money to Citigroup (I’m a depositor at Citibank), and Citigroup has given money to Romney.

Besides, OWS wasn’t even dreamed of back in 2009. If somehow some Soros money did make it to Adbusters between 2007 and 2009 — despite Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn’s clear statement that “he’s never given us a penny” — then that’s still a good two years away from any connection to OWS.

The article is particularly problematic from my perspective because I’m incredibly proud of Reuters’s long tradition of impartial journalism. I’m on the opinion side, not bound by such things, and if you think I’m biased you’re right. (I should mention here explicitly that this post, just like everything else on this blog, is my personal opinion. It may or may not be shared by others within the organization. But it should emphatically not be taken as representing the views of Thomson Reuters.)

Reuters news stories like the one about OWS are held to a very high standard of integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. And there’s lots in this article which tilts hard to the right.

There’s the idea that Rush Limbaugh is a good place to look if you want someone to “sum up the speculation” and provide the news hook for the entire story. The idea that the Council on Foreign Relations is a “liberal cause”. The idea that the protests were “triggered” by a campaign poster featuring a “battle-ready mob” of people “dressed in anarchist black”. The description of OWS as “the so-called occupation”. And then there’s this:

Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests “Passionate but Pointless.”

Reuters cannot — must not — get a reputation as a right-wing media outlet. We have to report the news as impartially as we can. In this case, there was no story, and nothing to report. Inventing a tenuous and intellectually-dishonest link between Soros and OWS might get us traffic from Matt Drudge — but that’s traffic which, frankly, we don’t particularly value or care for. Much more importantly, it serves to undermine the heart of what Reuters stands for. And we can never afford to do that.