May 1, 2012: SFPD Moves in on 888 Turk
After the street festival in San Francisco held for May Day, Occupy SF marched to the building they intended to "occupy". The building was located at 888 Turk Street, it is the same building we took over on April 1 and was evicted from on April 2.
After a while of standing around and watching the Occupiers, SFPD finally moved in on the building and attempted to put up barricades. Many of the protesters were moved off to the side and only few remained in front of the building. Not wanting to be caged in, people in front of the building began attempting to pull the barricades away from SFPD and take them down. When protesters began pulling the barricades, that's when things started to get tense. After a while, someone from the roof began throwing bricks at the police. The person throwing bricks quickly stopped and was later arrested for it.
Shortly after the bricks got thrown, Occupy SF did manage to take the SFPD's barricades and used them to barricade the door to the building. SFPD's barricades and chairs were used in the hopes that if SFPD raided them building, this would slow them down at least a little. After things settled down and the people came off the roof, most of the protesters moved off to the side of the street again. At this point, there were about five people inside and six of us outside. After a while of taking pictures and recording, I decided to join the protesters having a peaceful sit-in in front of the police.
At the time I joined the others, there were about twenty to thirty riot cops in front of us. But as time wore on, SFPD's numbers wore down. By the time SFPD left, I'd say there were no more than ten riot cops in front of us. After about two or three hours, SFPD just abruptly left. It was out of nowhere that they retreated.