Occupy Oakland activists escape hate-crime charges
Source: SF Chronicle
Alameda County prosecutors dropped robbery and hate-crime charges Monday that they had filed against three Occupy Oakland demonstrators who got into an ugly altercation with a woman at a rally.
The activists - Michael Davis, 33; Nneka Crawford, 23; and 25-year-old Randolph Wilkins - had been scheduled to go to trial Monday.
Instead, Crawford and Wilkins were cleared, while Davis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor vandalism in a separate case in which he was accused of using chalk to write disparaging comments about Oakland police inside a BART station.
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At a preliminary hearing into the Feb. 22 altercation on Piedmont Avenue, prosecutors said Crawford had repeatedly called a woman who confronted protesters a "dyke bitch" as Davis grabbed her wallet.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/21/BASF1OLD3C.DTL
