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Most of the Occupy LA protestors arrested during the early morning raid on their city hall encampment last Wednesday are out of jail. Of the nearly 300 protestors arrested, the AP reports 46 have been charged with misdemeanor crimes, including failure to disperse and resisting arrest. A hundred and eighty seven protestors were released without being charged and without bail. Many protestors were held through Friday afternoon and say the lengthy detainment under reportedly poor conditions was unnecessary. Upon arrest protestors report being held in vans for eight hours after arrest and being forced to urinate into a shared plastic bag. Police used zip-tie hand cuffs that cut the wrists and arms of many protestors, and forced them to wait for hours with their arms bound behind their back, leaving some protestors physically injured. While imprisoned protestors had no access to toothbrushes or soap. Female protestors report being transported to Van Nuys with no arranged transportation to return home upon release. The police raid on Occupy LA was largely portrayed as a peaceful in media accounts, but participants say journalists were behind police lines and too far away to accurately recount what occurred. One protestors likened the flood of hundreds police into the camp to “storm troopers… [d]estroying everything in their path.” The AP reports undercover LA police infiltrated Occupy LA in the days leading up to the raid, searching for information on whether protestors would use weapons during a raid. Reports of bamboo spears being utilized by protestors never materialized.

GUESTS: Cynthia Anderson-Barker, a civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild; Jonathan Alexander, a member of the KPFK staff, and an active participant in Occupy LA and one of the arrested on November 30th. He was released from jail on Friday.