To serve and protect who?

It wasn't surprising to me when the various levels of government in the US and other countries moved in to forcibly remove OWS protesters from the camps that they had established in many major cities. The individual's right to assemble and to speak was little more than a puff of air in the face of armed and armored riot police wielding truncheons and pepper spray.

Government oppression, massive bank fraud - 5
People - 0

After the various bailouts that the people opposed but were forced to pay for, the government's lack of willingness to protect homeowners from illegal foreclosure, the government's complicity in the mass fraud perpetrated by the various TBTF banks by not enforcing regulations or punishing those guilty of crimes and the recent repression of the people, it is nice to see that the people haven't given up. Of course I don't expect a different result.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving on to a new target. 

Protesters across the United States are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signalling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality. Groups in more than 25 cities held protests Tuesday on behalf of homeowners facing evictions.

It is in no way surprising to see the following response from those on the front lines of the police state:

In Portland, Ore., police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said he's aware the movement called for people to make a political statement by occupying foreclosed homes, but said police will "treat them all as trespassers." 

In Seattle, police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said his department sees squatting in private properties as the same violation of trespassing Occupy Seattle made when it camped in a downtown park. 

"It's no different than when people were trespassing [in the park]," Whitcomb said. "We went nights and days, letting people camp in the park. We relied on education and outreach, rather than enforcing the law to the letter."

So when the banks were illegally forcing people from their homes through faulty foreclosures, the police were there to force people from their homes on behalf of the banks. Now that the people want to reclaim what is theirs, the police will be there to arrest them in order to protect the sanctity of the bank's property.

Its unfortunate that this is what things have come to, but it has been long said that people get the government that they deserve and when people continue to empower a increasingly centralized government, one shouldn't be surprised when it begins to flex its muscle for its own purposes rather than those of the people they are supposed to serve.