Downtown Austin crawling with cops

AUSTIN (KXAN) - After chaos and dozens of arrests at Occupy Wall Street protests across the country, the Austin Police Department is not taking any chances.

Thursday, officers were posted on sidewalks, patrolling the streets and perched on rooftops surrounding City Hall in Downtown Austin, keeping watch on the crowd.

Demonstration planners anticipate as many as 5,000 people participating. Austin police started developing their security game plan a week ago.

A command center was set up near the Town Lake Animal Shelter. The armored SWAT vehicle was parked at the site and dozens of police officers, who have undergone special crowd control training, met there to receive assignments.

Susan Gray, who has helped organize Austin's protest, saw the number of cops cars and decided to pull over to tell police officers it was overkill.

"It’s ridiculous because [protesters] are not coming in violence. All they’re trying to say is we are sick and tired of corporate greed," said Gray. "It’s people congregating in peace to say we’ve had enough of this and I don’t understand why. It’s makes me sad that this is their response."

An officer told Gray the city expects the protest to remain peaceful.

Austin police chief Art Acevedo, who joined officers at City Hall, said the department is hoping for the best, but planning for the worst.

"You say it’s overkill, but the same people -- if we didn’t have sufficient resources if something went wrong -- then they’d be saying, 'Where were the police?'" said Acevedo.

Thursday afternoon the crowd was calm. One police officer posed for a picture with protestors who held up a sign that said "We love APD."

"I know a lot of these activists are good-hearted people, the last thing I want to do is as a result of improper planning, or lack of planning we have one of them get hurt," said Acevedo.

Acevedo would not expand on how many extra officers have been brought in for the protest, but said many of them were already on the clock serving in another capacity.