LA leaders take back Occupy deal

DAVIS, Calif., Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Occupy Los Angeles leaders said city officials reneged on an offer to lease office space to the protesters after the Daily News published details of the deal.

City officials offered to lease 10,000 square feet of space at the Los Angeles Mall to protesters for $1 a year, the Daily News said. But the deal fell through when details became public.

"They didn't like the media attention," Occupy LA organizer Ryan Rice said Tuesday after meeting with representatives from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office.

The Irvine, Calif., City Council said Tuesday it would give Occupy Orange County demonstrators two more weeks to stay on the City Hall lawn.

"I cannot believe the City Council is allowing them to destroy the city. Non-Irvine residents have more rights than the residents of Irvine," resident Dori Dumon told The Orange County Register.

In Northern California, 100 campers from the Occupy Oakland faction moved out of a vacant lot near 18th and Linden streets after a peaceful confrontation with police. The campers did not know where they would move next, the Oakland Tribune said.

Meanwhile, former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton will head an investigation into the pepper-spraying of University of California, Davis, student protesters, officials said.

Bratton, now chairman of New York's Kroll Inc. risk consulting firm, will lead an independent, university-sponsored review of the Friday incident and report his findings next month, university President Mark Yudof said.

Bratton's fee is under negotiation, officials said.

The incident -- in which two UC Davis police officers sprayed the chemical weapon in the faces of non-violent, seated Occupy movement protesters -- sparked nationwide outrage after video footage was broadcast and posted online.

The video, which has gone viral, has led to demands Chancellor Linda Katehi resign and galvanized protesters on other UC campuses, including UCLA, Berkeley and Riverside.

Katehi said Monday she put the Davis campus police chief on administrative leave as a way to try to rebuild trust on campus.

Yudof said the Bratton investigation would be conducted in place of a planned internal review of the incident. He said Katehi and Democratic state Assembly Speaker John Perez of Los Angeles had asked for an outside investigation.

The Yolo County district attorney and Sheriff's Department, both based in Davis, are expected to conduct a joint review, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Claudia Magana, president of the system-wide UC Student Association, told the Times she considered the Bratton hiring and other recent UC responses "steps in the right direction."

But she said many students would remain leery until they saw how campus police treated future protests.

Yudof also appointed UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley Jr. to lead an examination of police policies in handling student protests at all 10 university-system campuses.

MSNBC reported a prominent Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry proposed an $850,000 plan to undermine the Occupy movement and politicians who express sympathy for the protests.

The pitch by Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford to the American Bankers Association proposes the association pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct "opposition research" on Occupy Wall Street, to construct "negative narratives" about the protests and allied politicians, the network said, citing the memo.

The lobbying group, which also has Republican Party ties, argues the movement could get significant Democratic Party support and Wall Street interests could be ravaged if Democrats score big victories next year.

If Democrats embrace the movement the way Republicans embraced the Tea Party, "This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. ... It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bulls-eye," the memo says.

Two of the memo's authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

ABA spokesman Jeff Sigmund told MSNBC the association got the memo but did nothing with it.

"Our government-relations staff did receive the proposal -- it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way," he said in a statement.

CLGC did not return calls seeking comment.