Kelly: Cops showed restraint at protests

Police officers showed restraint during yesterday's Occupy Wall Street protests, city officials said.

As long as protesters didn't block traffic or "prevent people from going about their business," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, they were allowed to protest, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said Thursday. Protesters who broke laws or assaulted police were arrested, he said.

Television images and photos that showed officers arresting struggling protesters never look good, Kelly said. Police must get a protester's hands behind his back to handcuff him, he added.

This is part of the job, Kelly said. "That's what we do."

Mark Bray, of the Occupy Wall Street media team, disagreed with city officials about whether police showed restraint Thursday. Bray, a graduate student at Rutgers University, said he witnessed instances at Broadway and Wall Street that made him wonder if the police response was proportional, like when demonstrators didn't move out of the street fast enough for police.

"I personally witnessed incidents where what I consider excessive force was used" by police in lower Manhattan, Bray said. "They started shoving people to move them along."

"People wanted to be arrested," Kelly said. "Clearly, that was part of their tactics and strategy. When you want to be arrested, and you resist arrest, it's not a pretty scene."

Photos of a bloody protester or television broadcasts showing multiple officers subduing an individual don't tell the whole story, the commissioner said.

"They want to be dragged out," Kelly said of protesters who were arrested near the New York Stock Exchange.

Seven officers were injured during the "Day of Action" that started on Wall Street and was designed to disrupt city life to draw attention to the Occupy Wall Street cause. Ten protesters were injured as police arrested about 250 people. The injuries included scrapes, bruises and one head injury, but all were expected to be treated and released, Kelly said.

Among the seven injured cops, Officer Matthew Walters, 24, needed 20 stitches on a cut to his left hand caused by a protester who tossed a star-shaped glass object at him, Bloomberg said. Five other officers had vinegar thrown in their faces by protesters, Kelly said. They were treated at hospitals and released.

Bloomberg and Kelly visited the injured officers at Bellevue Hospital in the afternoon.

Fewer than the 10,000 protesters that Occupy Wall Street organizers had predicted would descend on the city's financial district showed up, the mayor said.

"It was not overwhelming numbers," Bloomberg said. "People were able to go about their business."