Occupy Wall Street Arrests in Context
Yesterday the Occupy Wall Street movement passed a milestone — five thousand arrests since the Zuccotti Park encampment was established on September 17. As a result of multiple crackdowns overnight, the tally now stands at 5,163 arrests in 75 days, an average of almost 69 a day.
Let’s put those numbers in perspective.
In the most recent year for which data exist, there were 13,120,947 arrests in the United States. (That’s one for every 24 people in the country, including babies.) Almost 36,000 arrests each and every day.
Assuming those numbers are about right for the last few months, that means that one out of every five hundred people arrested in the US since mid-September was arrested in connection with OWS.
