O SHIT: Cecily McMillan jurors tell judge Occupy activist should not go to jail

[struggle4progress]

43. Officer Testifies About Encounter With Occupy Wall Street Protester (NYT)

By ALAN FEUER
APRIL 14, 2014

... When Officer Bovell entered the park with dozens of his colleagues, he said, he saw a young woman in the crowd, flailing her arms and shouting curses at a female officer. Officer Bovell approached the shouting woman and, he testified Monday, calmly tried to inform her that she had to leave the park, which, he added, was scheduled for a cleaning. He said he told her that she was “more than welcome” to return after the cleaning was done.

What followed the exchange between them remains a dispute and stands as the central question at the young woman’s criminal trial, which is underway at State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Taking the stand to give his account, Officer Bovell said that as he tried to escort the woman, Cecily McMillan, from the park, she whirled around and her elbow hit him — “pretty hard,” he put it — in the eye. Ms. McMillan, who has been charged with assault, said it was an accident. She contends that she unintentionally struck Officer Bovell after he accosted her from behind, grabbing her right breast ...

... Ms. McMillan, a 25-year-old labor organizer, was one of the few defendants who chose to go to trial, worried that by pleading guilty to a felony assault she would permanently damage her record. And so she sat in court on Monday morning as Officer Bovell told the jury how he tried to escort her from the park — an effort, he contended, Ms. McMillan met with stubbornness and expletives. “As I’m walking her out,” Officer Bovell testified, “I remember her saying to someone: ‘Are you filming this? Are you filming this?’ Then I remember the defendant crouching down and lunging with her elbow and hitting me in the eye” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/nyregion/officer-testifies-about-encounter-with-occupy-wall-street-protester.html