A.M. Splash: Occupy Bank Protest Arrests; UCB Tents Dismantled; GE Picks San Ramon for $1 Billion Center

Dozens of college students from Northern California took their Occupy-flavored protest indoors with a noisy flourish Wednesday, cramming into a Bank of America branch in the Financial District, pitching a tent and chanting "shame, shame" until they were arrested.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on Wednesday demanded "dramatic changes" at the mushrooming Occupy SF encampment on the Embarcadero, a compound of more than 200 tents and larger communal structures that he called a public health nuisance.

While Occupy camps around the Bay Area were relatively quiet overnight, police in riot gear cleared out tents at Sproul Plaza in a surprise, quick raid early this morning. Two people were arrested in the raid that started about 3:30 a.m., but otherwise the police action on the UC Berkeley campus was orderly.

Organizers and university officials expected a large turnout for a one-day faculty strike at the Cal State University East Bay campus on Thursday. While faculty at CSUEB and Cal State University Dominguez Hills are the only ones officially striking, many of their colleagues from other campuses are expected to join them in solidarity, said Kim Geron, California Faculty Association vice president.

General Electric said Wednesday it has picked San Ramon for a $1 billion technology nerve center to be staffed by 400 software engineers who will spearhead the company's vision of an "industrial Internet" of smart machines.

The Millbrae City Council has voted to disband the city's police force and move toward outsourcing law enforcement to the San Mateo County sheriff's office as a cost-cutting measure.

Top San Jose officials want to shelve plans to outsource airport policing to the Santa Clara County sheriff -- at least for now. The city budget approved in June had assumed the sheriff would take over the policing of Mineta San Jose International in February. But city officials now say Police Department cost-cutting has reduced the savings from outsourcing to a level they don't feel is worth the headache of completing such a major switch in two months.

Bay Area transportation commissioners said Wednesday that Caltrans has much to explain about why it failed to notify other officials that a technician who had fabricated test data on several structures also tested the new Bay Bridge.

A 19-year Sonoma State University student who killed a toddler and injured her mother when she hit them in a Rohnert Park crosswalk while texting and driving was sentenced Wednesday to five days in jail.