The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is coming under criticism for forcing public bus drivers to abandon their routes and transport anti-Wall Street demonstrators arrested for disorderly conduct on Saturday. About 700 protestors were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

The union representing the drivers, Transport Workers Union Local 100, went to court to ask a federal judge to bar the police and the New York City Transit Authority from forcing drivers to help disrupt the protests. Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled against the union, saying it could not block the NYPD from arresting city bus drivers who refuse to transport protesters to prison. However he did say that the union could move ahead with a case seeking a permanent injunction that would stop the police from commandeering bus drivers to drive prison buses.

 

Union officials have publicly declared that their organization supports the demonstrators, and urged their members to join the protests on Wednesday.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Cops Can Arrest Transit Workers Supporting Occupy Wall Street (by Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service)

N.Y. Police Can’t Use Bus Drivers in Protest Arrests, Union Says (by Patricia Hurtado and Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg)

TWU Blasts City for Putting Handcuffed Occupy Wall Street Protesters on Buses (by Pete Donohue, Emily Sher and Helen Kennedy, New York Daily News)