Occupy Wall Street members decided to occupy the windows of a Starbucks café with metal pipes Sunday, leading to their occupation of New York City jail cells later that Sunday night.
The Gothamist reports:
According to police, the two men who were arrested in front of the Sixth Street Community Center last night allegedly assaulted an NYPD sergeant with a metal pipe in front of the Starbucks on Astor Place. One of the men, 41-year-old Alexander Penley, is an attorney and has been an Occupy Wall Street organizer since the movement began in the fall.
Penley, along with 30-year-old Nicholas Thommen, were arrested around 10 p.m. after what witnesses described as a violent scuffle between the two men and police officers, and are charged with a litany of offenses, including assaulting a police officer, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon, resisting arrest, and inciting a riot. …
The NYPD's press release on the arrests refers to them as "anarchist-related arrests of individuals among a group of 25 who fought with police and who had tried to use eight-foot-long galvanized metal pipes to smash windows of a Starbucks at Astor Place and Lafayette Street at 8:45 p.m." The police also claim that patrons of Starbucks were hiding under the tables during the incident.