I wish I could say I'm surprised, but honestly, I'm not.
Occupy Wall Street -- located mere blocks from the World Trade Center, and consequently, the 9/11 memorial -- has defaced the memorial honoring the thousands who died there ten years ago. As a result of the recent violence, sexual assault, and vandalism, Manhattan's most elite squad of homocide detectives has been assigned to monitor the protesters camped in Zuccotti Park.
The NYPD has moved three elite Manhattan homicide detectives and a deputy chief to the raucous Occupy Wall Street protest in response to a rash of sex attacks, thefts and vandalism -- including graffiti scrawled on the nearby 9/11 Memorial, The Post has learned.
The detectives, who began working cases at the park two weeks ago, are also investigating two acts of vandalism on the 9/11 Memorial.
In the first, a heart was etched near a name on the bronze memorial. Cops suspect the perpetrator may have been a family member of a victim.
And last week, a drawing of a skull was found on the memorial. Both marks were removed.
They have reason to suspect that OWSers are behind the latter instance of vandalism.
When the protests began, the members claimed that their goal was to raise awareness about the plight of the "99%." They said they were doing this for the ordinary Americans harmed by evil Wall Street greed. In a misguided way, they claimed to be patriots.
The "occupiers" actions in recent weeks, however, have put that assertion to bed. Turns out, combatting corporate greed was just a great excuse to throw a party in the streets!
Ordinarily, the unserious behavior exhibited by so many "occupiers" -- the drum circles, the open-air sex, the "human microphone," and "consensus-building-by-twinkles" -- would simply be cause for laughter. But the revelry's gone too far.
Whatever good intentions some of those original "occupiers" may have harbored have been stamped out by crime. Now, there is something maliciously farcical about this protest. What was once a camp-out to "raise awareness" -- albeit of a stance based on false premises -- has become a veritable slum.
The reports of rape, theft, and death illustrate the kind of degenerates that the protest has attracted -- and now, the vandalized 9/11 memorial. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more disrespectful act toward the innocents who lost their lives in the most brutal attack conducted on American soil.
These "occupiers" hold nothing sacred beyond their own desires. Whatever credibility anyone could have attributed to the "occupation" at its start has long since exhausted itself. Their absurd demands, coupled with their reprehensible behavior, show them for what they really are. Occupy Wall Street is hardly a profound movement calling for necessary social change. It's a kegger gone violently wrong.