About 6 p.m., Ann Wilcox, an attorney for Occupy D.C. at the scene, said police had determined that the shed was dangerous and issued the first of three warnings by megaphone, ordering the protesters to leave or face arrest. Instead, demonstrators started chanting, “Occupy Wall Street, Occupy K Street, occupy everywhere and never give it back.”
Two of the protesters on the shed’s roof jumped from the rafters into a moonbounce-like inflated cushion that had been set up by police. But the other four hung on until police went up in the bucket of a cherrypicker, which was parked at the open side of the structure to dislodge them.
Police put them, one by one, in a safety harness, plucking three of them from the rafters as the crowd cheered and chanted. It took about 15 minutes for police to remove the final protester, who had wrapped his legs around the building’s wood frame. Police tied a rope around him and dragged him onto a ladder.
The day-long confrontation was the first serious incident for Occupy D.C. since the birth of the movement, which has led to controversial happenings in several cities — including New York, Oakland, Boston and London. The most notable one occurred at the University of California at Davis, where police shot pepper spray at unarmed protesters, injuring several of them. The incident was caught on video and caused nationwide outrage.
District authorities had maintained a good relationship with the city’s Occupy movement and had largely taken a hands-off approach.
Until Sunday, there had been only a few scattered arrests in connection with Occupy D.C., and none at McPherson Square. Last month, about a dozen protesters were arrested after occupying a vacant school nearby. Six others were arrested after a traffic accident during a protest near the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, and D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said protesters had become “increasingly confrontational and violent.”
Although the shelter was constructed under cover of night and created a mood of Alamo-like defiance, Occupy demonstrators said it was not planned to provoke authorities. But the structure created a flash point nonetheless.
The demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “This is a peaceful protest,” but several shouted a stream of profanities, magnified by crowd choruses, against the police. Michael Patterson, 21, who described himself as a war veteran from Alaska, loudly taunted officers just inches from their faces. He was eventually grabbed, forced to the ground and dragged to a waiting police van, struggling and yelling.
By the time police removed the last person from the building, Patterson, who said he was charged with crossing a police line, and other protesters who had been arrested earlier in the day had returned to the park. Patterson said the protesters made a statement that they “are not the normal protest group.”
“We are not just going to march for two or three hours,” he said. “We are here to stay ’cause the system needs to change.”
Aside from individual scuffles and arrests, however, police were generally restrained.
In keeping with the fluid, heterogenous character of the Occupy movement, the skeletal shed with U.S. and D.C. flags flying above it swiftly came to symbolize just about anything the protesters chose. Some said it brought attention to the plight of the homeless, while others used the high-profile moment to raise issues from air pollution to factory farming to corporate excess.
A 70-year-old man with a bushy gray beard, who gave his name as “Bear,” said he had been living in a tent in McPherson Square for more than a year, but was delighted when the Occupy group moved in around him. “I’m proud and happy to be here today. I’m defending my home, too,” he said.
Staff writers Michael Bolden, Tim Craig, Allison Klein, Michael Rosenwald and Teresa Tomassoni contributed to this report.
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