The protesters did not.
And why the hell are pvc pipes and lock boxes classified as criminal instruments?
Another article here:
http://privacysos.org/node/802
On December 12th, seven activists locked themselves together at the main entrance to the port of Houston, in solidarity with the port shutdown action in Oakland and in coordination with activists in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. The seven were arrested and charged with felonies under state law: Unlawful use of a criminal instrument.
The judge who first heard their charges threw them out of court in December 2011 citing lack of probable cause. In other words, she didn’t think that the lock boxes were criminal instruments.
Prosecutors didn’t give up so easily, however, and convened a grand jury. The Houston seven were indicted once again. One of the indicted 7, Austin based activist Ronnie Garza, writes:
Months later, we received a tipoff about a person we knew at protests as "Butch"... eventually we found that Butch was actually an APD [Austin Police Department] Narcotics Detective named Shannon G. Dowell. It turns out that Dowell got the materials for, assembled and dropped off the lock boxes with protesters to use in Houston.
From the Austin Chronicle:
According to an affidavit by David Cortez, head of Occupy Austin's bank actions committee, it was Dowell who encouraged the activists to don the lockboxes. "He was a fairly quiet individual who never contributed much to our meetings," Cortez recalled of Dowell, "but consistently pulled myself and others aside individually in order to express his frustration with debate and eagerness for more aggressive and provocative actions than our standard peaceful & nonviolent ones," reads the affidavit. According to the affidavit of fellow OA member Yatzel Sabat, possible acts of civil disobedience, "including trespassing, sit-ins or obstruction of passage ways" had been discussed at meetings but it was Butch (Dowell) who was involved in the initial discussion of using lockboxes, and it was he who "acted more excited about the idea," reads the affidavit. "He volunteered to gather the piping and other materials by purchasing it at Lowe's and delivering it back to the members of the group that were planning to go to Houston for the demonstration," she continued. "Butch persuaded us to use these arm tubes."
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