A 23-year-old man was arrested Tuesday afternoon for allegedly carrying a concealed, unloaded handgun inside the Occupy SF encampment at San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza, a police spokesman said today.
At about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a member of the Occupy SF movement alerted a police sergeant that a man inside the encampment had a gun hidden under his jacket, police spokesman Sgt. Daryl Fong said.
The witness said he heard the man talking to another member at the camp who said “he did not want to go back to prison,” then opened the jacket to reveal the gun, Fong said.
The sergeant asked for assistance from other officers, and police eventually found and detained the suspect on the north side of the encampment. A search revealed an unloaded semi-automatic pistol holstered on the man’s right hip, Fong said.
The man, identified as Jonathan Waknine, a resident of Valley Village, near Los Angeles, was arrested and cited for possession of a concealed firearm. He was later released, Fong said.
Members of Occupy SF, the local version of the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in New York in September and has spread nationwide, have been camping out at the public plaza at the foot of Market Street for several weeks.
The group is citing the economic disparity between the country’s richest and poorest citizens and is calling for increased regulation of banks and Wall Street investment firms, among other demands.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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