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Occupy protesters are like a bunch of neighborhood kids who've figured out which houses they can pelt with eggs and rocks and get away with it. And in the Bay Area's thriving anarchist/protest community, everybody knows the answer to that one: Oakland City Hall. It's an unrestricted public space with little police presence, even less common sense from its elected leaders and easy access to the rest of downtown. The place is perfect. Sunday night, a group of about 200 protesters gathered outside City Hall and proceeded to march through downtown shattering store windows and car windshields and tossing paint...

OAKLAND -- A crowd of as many as 100 protesters marched through downtown Friday, breaking car windows and a window at Barack Obama's local campaign office. Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland police, confirmed in an email that a window of Obama's campaign office at 16th Street and Telegraph Avenue was smashed. Police also confirmed that several car windows were broken. The protesters began organizing about 9 p.m. and marched up Broadway. Police also said they were following the protesters during the march.

OAKLAND -- A proposed law would make it easier for police to arrest Occupy Oakland agitators by prohibiting them from possessing their weapons of choice at protests. The proposal would make it a misdemeanor to bring a host of items to protests including shields, fire accelerant and pressurized paint sprayers that several Occupiers have used against police officers and private property. Rather than having to catch Occupy agitators in the act of damaging property or using the makeshift weapons, police would be able to arrest protesters they saw carrying the prohibited items, potentially weeding out agitators before protests get violent....

Hundreds of protesters took over a vacant building on Turk Street owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco on Tuesday. One climbed to the roof, threw a brick and struck a man with a video camera standing in the swarm of police and demonstrators below. Police arrested Jesse Nesbitt, 34, of San Francisco on felony charges of aggravated assault after he ran out the back of the two-story building at 888 Turk St. But they didn't find another man who hurled metal pipes into from an adjacent rooftop. The Occupy activists had marched from Market Street to the Western Addition...

Business owners in San Francisco's Mission District, cleaning up after a night in which protesters damaged more than 30 stores and restaurants and vandalized cars, questioned Tuesday why activists had singled them out and why police hadn't done more to halt the rampage. Among those dealing with the damage were officers at the neighborhood police station, where black-clad, masked activists threw paint and bashed the front door Monday night. Even as they defended themselves from criticism that they had allowed the vandals to run wild - one restaurant owner said officers even appeared to be "escorting" the group - high-level...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Several hundred Occupy protesters massed in front of the downtown San Francisco headquarters of Wells Fargo Bank on Tuesday with the intention of disrupting a shareholders meeting there. Waving picket signs and broadcasting over speakers on a pickup truck parked in front of the 465 California St. bank building, demonstrators chanted, "Let us in," and, "They got bailed out, we got sold out." . . . More than a half-dozen protesters chained themselves to each other and were trying to block the entrances to Liedesdorff Alley, which shareholders have been using to gain access to the bank...

My Sunday column is on the Reynoso report on the UC Davis pepper spray incident. You can read the Reynoso report here. . . . The Reynoso report confirms some of the CAS findings. A professor offers extra credit to students who attend the Occupy UCD rally and write a report on it. Another professor tells students they are the law. The problem with professors who see it as their job to promote “social justice,” is they’ve forgotten that their job is to educate.

Several dozen UC Davis students are protesting the upcoming court date of the "Bankers' Dozen," the 12 students linked to demonstrations in January and February that shuttered an on-campus U.S. Bank branch. About 400 students rallied Thursday afternoon at the university's Memorial Union to speak out against allegations of conspiracy and blocking access filed against the dozen in late March by Yolo County prosecutors. The event was peaceful and no incidents were reported. Students and supporters then marched across campus to Mrak Hall, chanting "Drop all charges," occupying stairwells and the building's lobby. Some students quickly set up tents and...

The California Highway Patrol shelled out an additional $166,000 in overtime costs to monitor last month's rally and "Occupy" demonstration at the state Capitol to protest cuts to higher education, the department said today. CHP deployed an additional 288 sworn personnel to the Capitol for the demonstration, bringing the total number of officers on scene to 367, the department said in response to a Bee inquiry. That presence included roughly 100 officers outfitted in riot gear stationed outside the building as the mostly peaceful protest continued into the evening. Thousands of students, teachers and activists descended on the Capitol for...

A federal judge is allowing protesters to proceed with a class-action lawsuit against Oakland and Alameda County U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson granted class certification Friday for the 150 plaintiffs arrested Nov. 5, 2010, while protesting the sentence given to Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant III. The plaintiffs, represented by the National Lawyers Guild, said Oakland police herded them into a residential block where they were arrested, denied bathroom access for eight hours and later placed into crowded county jail cells. "California law requires most misdemeanor arrestees to be released at...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – About 30 Tennessee Highway Patrol officers moved into War Memorial Plaza overnight and removed the final Occupy Nashville tent, according to the group. Occupy Nashville said that the troopers came onto the Plaza around 3:50 a.m. Monday. The group said Christopher Humphrey was asked to come out of the tent on War Memorial Plaza. When he did, he said the troopers proceeded to remove his tent, as well as one nearby from the plaza. They said the troopers initially removed their information table, donation box, and other protest materials, but the troopers agreed to return them after...

Another day of protests played out at the state Capitol on Monday with thousands of demonstrators denouncing soaring higher education costs and a select group spending most of the day inside the rotunda to achieve one goal: getting arrested. By the time the spectacle petered out Monday night, the California Highway Patrol tallied 68 arrests of people who refused to leave the Capitol rotunda after it closed at 6 p.m. Four others were arrested earlier, three on charges of creating a disturbance and one because he was carrying a switchblade, authorities said. The main group of arrestees, who will be...

As hundreds of students continued to protest cuts to higher education at the state Capitol this afternoon, Gov. Jerry Brown said in a prepared statement that the students reflect the frustration of millions of Californians. About 350 of the thousands of demonstrators who descended on the Capitol this morning remain inside the building. About 200 protesters gained entry to the Capitol rotunda before California Highway Patrol officers blocked entrances to the area, leaving others to shout from the hallways. "The students today are reflecting the frustrations of millions of Californians who have seen their public schools and universities eroded year...

Several thousand protesters descended on the state Capitol Monday to protest the rising cost of higher education and call on lawmakers to increase funding for California's public colleges and universities. Speakers at a rally on the west steps of the Capitol blasted the budget cuts to higher education and the cost of tuition and fees at campuses throughout the state, framing access to a degree as a right that should be extended to students of all socioeconomic standings. "Regardless of our backgrounds, we all have been wounded by these cuts," said Sydney Fang, a student senator at UC Berkeley. "Today...

A massive student rally in support of higher education funding planned for Monday at the state Capitol is being co-opted by labor and Occupy activists, says an executive with one of the student groups. In the run-up to Monday's rally, two groups, Refund California and Occupy Education California, have issued press releases and given interviews about their plans to "Occupy the Capitol." But Miles Nevin, executive director of the California State Student Association, says those two groups have "nothing to do with this event." "We are majorly losing the media battle. They are trying to take over our event," Nevin...

San Francisco police arrested a total of 23 protesters during Occupy San Francisco's "Day of Action" Friday, including 19 during the bank protests in the day and four people involved the evening's occupation of an abandoned hotel. Of the 19 arrested during the day, police arrested 17 on suspicion of trespassing at Wells Fargo, one at Bank of the West and another for attempting to remove a baton from a police officer, San Francisco Police Department spokesman Carlos Manfredi said Saturday. Police arrested four people in connection with the evening's occupation of the empty Cathedral Hill Hotel at Van Ness...

One month after the pepper-spraying of student protesters at the University of California, Davis, officials are struggling with how to move forward, even as they prepare for the possibility of new protests and building takeovers when students return next month. Anger over the rising cost of a college education in California is so great, university officials told a legislative panel Wednesday, that they are concerned about students building new encampments. But so far the only consensus on how to deal with the protests going forward is to avoid using police force to quell the unrest.

To think it started out so peacefully. But with frustrations running high more than a month after the Occupy movement took root across the country, encampments are falling like dominoes as authorities over the past few days have been raiding and clearing out tent cities from New York and Texas to Oakland and Berkeley.Now, the battleground is moving from the public square to the courtroom, as protesters seek legal help to resurrect the tents and, in the process, maintain the leaderless movement that has been increasingly marred by violence and confrontation.Behind the scenes, police chiefs and mayors from the Left...

Three events planned for Oakland's historic Rotunda Hall were canceled this month. Four cafes abutting Frank Ogawa Plaza say customers are reluctant to visit, and they've cut employee hours. Several merchants on or around Broadway, including the Oaksterdam marijuana empire, say business is down. Meanwhile, two other cafes at the plaza say sales are better than ever. And a block away at City Center Plaza, the midday flow of office workers grabbing lunch is undiminished. As Occupy Oakland enters its fifth week, the encampment's impact on neighborhood businesses appears to consist largely of reduced sales - and a few increased...

BART would get authority to ban those who repeatedly break the law -- fare cheats, vandals or protesters disrupting train service -- from entering its stations, under a bill passed by state lawmakers and sent to the governor's desk. Assembly Bill 716 would give BART and the Sacramento and Fresno public transit systems the authority to bar someone cited on three separate occasion over 60 days for infractions on a train, bus, station, or stop.