When Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao took the stage in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday during the Republican National Convention, she proclaimed, 'It's so great to be here in New York!' The crowd's golf-clap response was less than enthusiastic. Outside the garden, Chao's sentiment met a similarly unenthusiastic reception. 'Please book me now. Charge me with anything. Just get these handcuffs off me,' begged Steve Cohn, a New York native and Wall Street employee who was being arrested for disorderly conduct, though his demeanor seemed far from disorderly. 'I was just peacefully protesting on the corner,' he said as an arresting officer confiscated his glasses. 'These handcuffs are way too tight. I study jazz bass. I can't feel my fingers. I'm getting scared.'

As peaceful protesters watched one of their ranks get arrested on Tuesday in Union Square, they spontaneously burst into the chant, 'Show me what a police state looks like: This is what a police state looks like!' Though it seems like hyperbole when read in a newspaper, the cry echoed a sentiment felt by many New Yorkers throughout the RNC's stay -- New York was no longer their own. Watching arrests at the die-in on Wednesday, Scott Link, a New York resident and former Fulbright Scholar, was reminded of his travels as a student. 'There's more security here than in East Berlin in 1983. There, there was just one checkpoint coming into the city. Here, the rules change every five minutes.' His colleagues, apparently, felt the same way. 'Everyone's pissed off. Half my office is off. Everyone that's able to leave the city has left the city.'

Many NYPD officers would probably have preferred that option. As protesters milled about Union Square Wednesday night, a police officer chatted amiably with some of the more prominent organizers, even buying several anti-Bush stickers from a street vendor. As they dispersed the crowd surrounding the die-in earlier that evening, most officers were sternly cordial. 'Let's do this peacefully, let's work together,' said one officer as he slowly inched his bike towards the restless onlookers. 'Just doing my job, nothing personal.' Still, other protester-police interactions were not so polite. One New Yorker, a woman in her early 40s who was walking home when she paused briefly to look at an arrest, was harassed by an officer behind the barricade. 'We got these cuffs ready for you right here,' the officer shouted, prominently displaying the objects in question, 'You just come on over here and get in them.'