'Park Police owes itself, and the public, an accounting of its actions Saturday.' SL (txt)

Profoundly believing in 'innocent until proven guilty,' as I do, I will not let admiration born of 8 years extensive interaction be erased by my concerns of the last weekend.  But I find behaviors of the Park Police this last weekend devastatingly troubling. 

1.    All available evidence suggests that Commanding Officer Beck totally, massively, gratuitously lied to Occupiers early Saturday morning.  It is virtually certain he committed, without reservation, that only tents with bedding, food, or health threats would be removed.  It is impossible that this was 90% of the tents, but 90% of the tents are gone, removed by the Feds.
2. Park Police arrest a journalist because he was known to be supportive of the occupiers?  Jerry Nelson, a Photojournalist for the Huffington Post, was arrested as shown on video tape linked from the Washington Post.  Just standing there, no melee in progress, Jerry is approached and hand-cuffed by the police.  ‘Someone identified you as assaulting them,’ the police said when Jerry asked why.  Jerry has been a fixture, an embed, if you will, in the park for 2-4 months under constant view of the police.  His behavior is totally and completely inconsistent with assaulting anyone.   Most recently a week ago when that retired cop started cutting down the Tent of Dreams, under police eyes, Jerry placed his body between the young demonstrators and the scissors of the retired cop, demonstrating extreme unviolence, never in any way threatening the perpetrator.
3. Why the gratuitous, ‘police state’ surges on at least two occasions?  One is captured on widely circulated youtube footage – the massive surge, shove, escalation at the library.  The other, in which I just barely escaped being trampled by a massive police horse, was the arrest of an individual buried 8 deep in a crowd north of the park, at about 5:30am.  20-30 officers, 6 on horseback, dozens with helmets and shields, 6 with swat team gear, night vision helmets, etc. explode into a 100% passive crowd paying no heed to the park at that moment what so-ever, treating them as though they were an armed, dangerous, violent mob, that never they had been. 

My admiration for the Park Police has developed during  what seems to have been a radical shift way from thuggery, brutality, about 2 years ago.  Is Beck a holdover from that era?  What happened?  

If the Park Police is the stellar institution I’ve thought these last 2 years, it owes itself a full public accounting of this.