Sam Jewler was one of five members of Occupy D.C. arrested Friday morning after sleeping outside Bank of America on Vermont Avenue. (Photo by Anonymousegray)

The sidewalk outside the Bank of America branch at 1090 Vermont Avenue NW is the cool place to camp out these days, with five more members of Occupy D.C. being arrested Friday morning after spending the night huddled by the ATM.

The activists are the latest to be arrested in what the seven-month-old protest movement is calling “sleepful protests”: Since it’s against National Park Service regulations to sleep in their hub at McPherson Square, some demonstrators decided to start dozing off in front of outlets of the banks around which the Occupy movement has channeled its frustrations.

That puts them under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police Department, which since Tuesday has arrested12 members of Occupy D.C. in what has become a morning routine of enforcement of the District’s codes regarding the obstruction of public spaces.

But some of the protesters arrested say they have been detained wrongfully, and are planning to fight to have their arrests overturned in court next month.

“They said we were violating a statute involving blocking the sidewalk,” Brian Eister, who was arrested Friday morning, said in a phone interview shortly after being released from lockup at MPD’s Second District headquarters. “We were sitting right next to the building so we were taking up about a foot and a half of a 30-foot-wide sidewalk. We took up very little space.”

Sara Shaw, a longtime member of Occupy D.C., said that over the past week, the overnights outside Bank of America have swelled in the number of participants it attracts. About 25 demonstrators spent last night on the broad sidewalk outside the bank, most nestled in sleeping bags placed on makeshift cardboard mattresses, Shaw said.

On Friday morning, the group woke for an early-morning march down Vermont Avenue from the bank to the headquarters of the Treasury Department next door to the White House. They returned to Bank of America to encounter about two dozen MPD officers idling outside. The same scene has materialized the past several days.

“It seems like someone’s calling them and complaining,” Shaw said. Occupy D.C. believes the arrests this week are bogus because its members were not blocking the entirety of the sidewalk outside the bank. Section 1307 of the District of Columbia’s criminal code reads:

It is unlawful for a person, alone or in concert with others, to crowd, obstruct, or incommode the use of any street, avenue, alley, road, highway, or sidewalk, or the entrance of any public or private building or enclosure or the use of or passage through any public conveyance, and to continue or resume the crowding, obstructing, or incommoding after being instructed by a law enforcement officer to cease the crowding, obstructing, or incommoding. A person who violates any provision of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be fined not more than $500, imprisoned for not more than 90 days, or both.

The demonstrators arrested this morning, including Eister, declined to pay a fine and instead will have a hearing May 12 in D.C. Superior Court where they intend to argue to see the charges dismissed.

Viewed on a live video stream, the scene outside the bank this morning was quite sedate. “The police didn’t seem too enthusiastic about enforcing it,” Eister said. And indeed, today and on previous days, the interactions between police officers and the Occupy members they arrest have been quite calm.

Eister added that the officers patrolling the area at night don’t seem to mind the protesters’ slumbering presence. “The cops who come by at night are very friendly and tell us we’re fine as long as we’re clearing the way. But they completely let us lay on the sidewalk and sleep,” he said.

Meanwhile, Eister and Shaw, along with other members of Occupy D.C., say that despite the arrests this morning and those of the past few days, they plan to keep spending their evenings outside that branch.

“We’re going to keep going back and trying to expose Bank of America,” Eister said. And Occupy groups in other cities are using the same tactic, even if Occupy D.C. and Occupy Wall Street disagree over which movement thought of the “sleepful protest” first.

Seems like ATMs are the new place to occupy.

UPDATE, 4:55 p.m.: Bank of America declined to say anything about the ongoing demonstration outside the Vermont Avenue branch. “We do not have a comment,” Nicole Nastacie, a spokeswoman for the bank, wrote in a one-line email.