After three nights of arrests, Occupy Cincinnati protesters Sunday night chose to leave Piatt Park at its 10 p.m. closing time and march on the sidewalks around the park. Eleven members were arrested Saturday night for staying on the square after a rally past the 3 a.m. time allowed by its permit. The group is still waiting for a federal judge to rule on whether or not Piatt Park's 10 p.m. closing time is a violation of the First Amendment.

Chicago Police arrested 130 Occupy Chicago protesters over the weekend, and the group plans to picket Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office in response. Protesters described harsh treatment by police, with some spending more than 24 hours in jail. The picketing at City Hall will reportedly include a nurse's union in response to two nurses and a union organizer being arrested while volunteering at Occupy Chicago.

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Cincinnati Police arrested more than 20 Occupy Cincinnati protesters last night. Here's a recap of the events, which notes that a parade to honor local billionaire Carl Lindner was scheduled for this morning.

Here's an impressive collection of reports that back up nearly every grievance articulated in its first official press release. The research was done by a young woman in Boston who runs a Congressional watchdog website called C-SPAN geek. You can follow her on Twitter here.

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More than 20 Occupy Cincinnati protesters were arrested last night just hours before a morning parade was scheduled to celebrate the life of local billionaire Carl Lindner, who died on Monday. The Enquirer's homepage this morning includes a lengthy account of the arrests and reactions by Occupy, along with a live feed covering the parade, which was to begin at Great American Ball Park and end near a Kenwood restaurant where Lindner enjoyed eating.

Lindner supporters gathered at various locations along the parade route, including dozens of Cincinnati Police standing outside District 1 around 9 a.m. Students stood outside a school on 9th Street singing songs about going to heaven. (Occupy Cincinnati representatives have not acknowledged the correlation.)

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A federal judge has ordered police to stop ticketing Occupy Cincinnati protesters after the group filed a lawsuit against the city for banning people from Piatt Park when it closes. The city has already ticketed protesters approximately $25,000.

J. Robert Linneman, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, according to Bloomberg Businessweek:

"This case is not about the whether you agree with the political views of Occupy Cincinnati or Occupy Wall Street; it's about the right of the people to assemble in a public park and to engage in protected speech."

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As has become the norm during the last few election cycles, Cincinnati's police union is reluctant to publicly reveal its full slate of endorsements, for some strange reason. No matter: CityBeat managed to get this year's information.

Working through multiple sources at different campaigns, we've compiled what we believe to be an all-inclusive list of endorsements made by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), Queen City Lodge No. 69.

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David M. Kennedy, whose Operation Ceasefire program has helped turn around Cincinnati's homicide rate, will be back in town Oct. 11 to discuss his new book, Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship and the End of Violence in Inner-City America.

The book, which will be published Oct. 4, relays how Kennedy's Ceasefire philosophy works and how he came to craft it via a long journey that included “riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members and sitting on stoops with grandmothers.”

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As CityBeat did in the 2007 and 2009 election cycles, we’ve once again sent a questionnaire to the non-incumbent Cincinnati City Council candidates to get their reactions on a broad range of issues.

Nine of the 14 non-incumbents chose to answer our questions. Others either didn’t respond or couldn’t meet the deadline.

During the next few weeks, we will print the responses from the non-incumbents to a different topic each time.

Today’s question is, “The Police and Fire departments constitute 69 percent of the city's General Fund spending. Do you believe this amount can be lessened without affecting public safety?”

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Almost a full decade after Cincinnati voters passed a charter amendment that changed the way police chiefs are selected, it's being used for the first time.

City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. announced this morning that he's selected a candidate from outside the current police ranks to head the Cincinnati Police Department. James E. Craig, who currently is the chief in Portland, Maine, will take the top spot here beginning in about a month, a city spokeswoman said.

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City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. says allegations by two municipal workers that a Cincinnati councilman used a racial slur can neither be proven nor disproven, so the charge has been dropped as “unfounded.”

In a three-page memorandum given today to the city's Human Resources Department, Dohoney announced that there will be no disciplinary action taken against the two workers due to the administrative investigation concluding “there were no unbiased witnesses to the incident.”

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(**UPDATE FOLLOWS BELOW)

A sanitation worker has filed an incident report with Cincinnati Police alleging City Councilman Chris Bortz threatened him and used a racial slur while doing so.

The alleged incident occurred Thursday morning outside of Bortz' townhouse in Mount Adams, when the worker blew the horn on his garbage truck a few times because the vehicle's path was blocked by the councilman's parked car.

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