Photographs by Benjamin R. Freed

The Occupy D.C. protester who allegedly hurled a bottle of Coca-Cola into the face of a U.S. Park Police officer at last weekend’s massive clearing out of McPherson Square was released today to a halfway house pending his next court date.

Appearing in D.C. Superior Court, Jeremiah D. DeSousa, who was arrested moments after the officer was struck, waived his right to a pretrial hearing and instead will appear at a felony status conference on February 28. DeSousa is charged with assaulting a police officer.

DeSousa was arrested in the middle of perhaps the tensest scene last Saturday, when a large group of Park Police officers along with an equally great number of sanitation workers in hazardous-materials jumpsuits conducted a sweeping inspection of McPherson Square to determine which of the hundreds of tents that had filled the downtown park since early October were in violation of the National Park Service’s long-standing ban on camping there. (By the end of the process, which stretched into Sunday morning, the answer was, “most of them.”)

At several points throughout that day, demonstrators pushed up against officers, who were dressed in riot gear including helmets and hard plastic shields. Shortly after 5 p.m., when officers pushed a large mass of protesters and reporters out of the square’s northwest entryway and onto K Street NW. A few minutes after, screams erupted and emotions flared when a group of officers tackled DeSousa to the ground and restrained him after he allegedly flung the full soda bottle at a Park Police lieutenant, who was quickly transported to Washington Hospital Center where he was treated for injuries to his right eye.

DeSousa, along with 11 others arrested during the clearing out of the Occupy sites at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza (only one was arrested at the latter), was arraigned Monday. He remained in custody between Monday and today’s hearing. In court today, DeSousa, who hails from Charlotte, N.C., told a judge he joined Occupy D.C. because of his nine-month-old son, according to Sara Shaw, another demonstrator who observed the hearing.

Also back in court today was DeSousa’s fellow protester Nathan Gorecki, who was also charged with assaulting a police officer after he allegedly threw a bamboo stick that struck an officer’s helmet during the McPherson Square crackdown. Gorecki, who is know to his fellow protesters as “Shangry” for his short stature and obloquious voice, will be released at 6 p.m. with an order to stay at least two blocks away from McPherson Square.