In one of the largest mass arrests in recent Boston history, the Boston Police Department cleared a park of over 100 activists with the 99 Percent Movement in the early hours of Tuesday morning, dismantling and destroying tents that had been set up on Monday. Startling footage shot by Weekly Dig’s Lauren Metter shows members of Veterans for Peace, an organization of U.S. military veterans who oppose war, being arrested by members of the Boston Police Department, their flags — including the American flag — being thrown to the ground:

Before the arrests and clearing of the park, the police surrounded it, lining up over a dozen paddy wagons along one side. They told members of the media to leave and not to film proceedings. After a five-minute warning to disperse, police moved in, first arresting the peacefully protesting veterans — who included a female veteran of the Iraq War, according to the Boston Phoenix — and then other Occupy Boston activists. According to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, about 100 arrests were made.

The police then tore down the protesters’ encampment. Live feeds from onlookers showed Boston Police dumping dismantled tents, signs, and chairs into waiting garbage trucks, destroying the protesters’ property.

Tuesday morning’s mass arrest marks the first significant confrontation between police and Occupy Boston. Activists in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street began an occupation of Dewey Square Park, a small park in the heart of Boston’s financial district on Friday, September 30, without conflict. The number of participants in Occupy Boston outgrew the space over the week. On Monday morning, dozens of protesters set up a new occupation on the Rose Kennedy Greenway between Pearl and Congress Streets, one block northeast of Dewey Square. Over the course of the day, the Boston Police Department issued warnings to the occupiers of the new encampment that they were at risk of arrest because of potential damage to the greenway.

Over Twitter, a department spokesperson warned activists the police wanted to “curtail additional damage to newly developed green space” because “the Greenway Conservancy recently invested over $150,000 in new plantings for all to enjoy.” The Greenway Conservancy is a private non-profit organization that raises funds for the public park. Its board is comprised of several of Boston’s wealthiest financiers.

Before the mass arrest and destruction of the second Occupy Boston encampment, police media relations issued a statement that “the Boston Police Department respects your right to protest peacefully.”

An assistant editor with a right-wing magazine admitted in a column Saturday evening to posing as part of the 99 Percent Movement in D.C. “in order to mock and undermine” it. Patrick Howley, an assistant editor for the American Spectator, was committed enough to his deception to be at the vanguard of a demonstration that saw police firing pepper spray and closing a downtown Washington museum.

In his column, Howley says he took part in the demonstration Saturday at the Smithsonian Institute’s Air and Space Museum reportedly directed at an exhibit about the unmanned drone aircraft used by the U.S. and others for spying and, increasingly, targeted killings in far-flung hotspots.

As between 100 and 200 anti-war demonstrators arrived at the steps of the museum — some of them affiliated with a group organizing the “Occupy DC” spinoff of the Wall Street protests — a few intrepid protesters made a rush for the door despite apparent warnings from security guards. One of them was Howley, who recounts that “as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside the museum.”

A spokesperson for the Smithsonian said at least one person was pepper sprayed by a guard. According to Howley, “I got hit.” The conservative writer then went on to explain what exactly he was doing leading the charge past museum guards into the building itself:

[A]s far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story. Under a cloud of pepper spray I forced myself into the doors and sprinted blindly across the floor of the Air and Space Museum…

The liberal blog Fire Dog Lake, which labeled Howley an “agent provocateur,” used a detail of a photo shot of the protesters just inside the entrance, and lined it up with Howley’s Facebook profile photo:

True to his admitted purpose, Howley mocked the 99 Percent Movement for a disorganized meeting at Freedom Plaza, the base camp for D.C.’s “Occupy Wall Street” franchise, derided the bulk of protesters for not disobeying the museum guards (“all of a sudden liberal shoes started marching less forcefully”), and said he was “proud” to get pepper sprayed:

I deserved to get a face full of high-grade pepper, and the guards who sprayed me acted with more courage than I saw from any of the protesters.

The evidence doesn’t seem to show that Howley incited protesters to do anything they weren’t already primed to do, but his stated intention to “undermine” the 99 Percent Movement and associated demonstrations — and his position leading the charge of protesters at the museum entrance — indicate a little more activism than simply an attempt to get a close look at protests, as Howley says, “for journalistic purposes.”