NEW YORK CITY: Cops Pepper-Spray Wall Street Protesters, Over 100 Arrested

Yesterday the NYPD crashed a protest march from Union Square to Wall Street, pepper-straying some young women and arresting over 100. The #OccupyWallStreet action has been going since last week.

Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent. Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor. At least 80 people were carted away in police vehicles and up to five were hit with pepper spray near 12th St. and Fifth Ave., where tensions became especially high, police and organizers said. The National Lawyer's Guild, which is providing legal assistance to the protesters, put the number of arrests at 100. Witnesses said they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground screaming after they were sprayed in the face.

Many of those arrested claim they were peacefully and legally occupying the public sidewalk. In the clip below, you can clearly see that the women being pepper-sprayed were penned in behind a police fence and were not a threat to anybody.