Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets, Flash Grenades and Smoke Bombs to Evict Occupy Oakland

Late last night, Oakland police, under orders from the city, began surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment in preparation to oust the protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Approximately an hour ago, hundreds of Oakland police officers raided the camp. Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or arrest the demonstrators who remained in the plaza. The Occupy Oakland Twitter account live-tweeted the raid.

One protester at the scene captured an image of the riot police using smoke bombs:

If you have any video of the raid on Occupy Oakland, feel free to send it to ThinkProgress.

UPDATE

One protester interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle remained upbeat. “People are going to keep coming back. What are they going to do, send cops in every night and waste taxpayer dollars?” asked Gabe Meyers. “The cops are the 99 percent, but they’re doing the work of the 1 percent. Wall Street is proud of them every time they clear out an encampment.”

UPDATE

One protester captured video under the punkboyinsf UStream account. At 11:40, protesters began chanting, “You are the 99 percent!” to police moving in on the camp. At 17:30 in the following video you can see the police utilizing gas weapons. As the camp is raided, the protester says into the camera, “Sorry guys I can’t be any closer this stuff is going to make me sick,” referring to tear gas. The videographer also claims to have seen a sound cannon being used by the police:

Video streaming by Ustream