The arrests and demonstrations came on the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Demonstrations raged across the country yesterday as part of a "national day of action."
Chanting "All day, all week, shut down Wall Street!" more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered near the New York Stock Exchange and staged sit-ins at several intersections.
Helmeted police broke up some of the clusters, but most of the crowd reassembled in Zuccotti Park, where the encampment that served as the unofficial headquarters of the Occupy movement was broken up by police earlier this week in an early-morning raid. Protesters later streamed toward the Brooklyn Bridge, where dozens more were arrested.
Lewis joined the protest at Zuccotti Park in his uniform Tuesday night, according to the New York Observer.
In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday, Lewis said that police are "just workers for the 1 percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited."
"They're trying to get me arrested, and I may disappear, OK," Lewis said. "But as soon as I get out of jail, I'll be right back here."
In photos posted to Twitter yesterday morning, Lewis is seen at the protest holding up an orange sign that read "NYPD Don't Be Wall Street Mercenaries."
In a video of Lewis' arrest posted later yesterday, he is being led away in plastic handcuffs to boos and cheers from the crowd.
A Philadelphia police spokeswoman said that although it is not against department policy for a retired police officer to wear his old uniform, it violates state law.
"It's like impersonating a police officer, even though he's retired," the spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for the NYPD said that he did not know if it was against New York state law and that he could not find out because everyone in the department's legal office was at Occupy Wall Street.
- Daily News wire services
contributed to this report.
