This Video of NYPD Arresting a Woman at Citibank Certainly Doesn't Look Good
[There was a video here]
Let's not jump to conclusions about this video, which (at about a minute in) shows a woman dressed in a business suit, carrying her Citibank checkbook, trying to leave her bank only to be dragged back inside and arrested by a plainclothes NYPD officer.
After all, we don't know what she was doing before she calmly tried to explain to the officer that she is a Citibank customer! Maybe she was trespassing, at the bank where she keeps all of her money and is likely charged for the privilege of doing so? Presumably, she's one of the 24 people who were arrested at a Citibank near Washington Square Park in Manhattan on charges of "criminal trespassing" yesterday—Occupy Wall Street protesters who were staging a mass account-closing, but who, Citibank claims in an official statement, "were very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked." (Citibank also says that "[o]nly one person asked to close an account and was accommodated.")
Then again, Citibank says "we didn't lock people in our branch" ("we," as though the Citibank flack team was cold chillin' at the LaGuardia Place Citibank with the tellers), but did "close the branch until the protesters could be removed," which, to our minds, raises more questions than it answers, especially in the context of a video showing a woman—a bank customer—being dragged back inside her own bank to be arrested.
Maybe Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit could answer some of those questions? Feel free to give him a ring.
