Occupy Has Mellow 2nd Birthday, With Appearance From the Hipster Cop

A sea of police officers formed around Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning, prepared to keep the peace.

Around midday, officers massed at Washington Square Park and were bound for Times Square later in the afternoon. They kept a wary eye on the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who were holding a series of rallies to mark the second anniversary of the movement.

But the day went by without much drama â€" at least not on the scale of incidents in the past. One moment that set off outraged complaints came when several protesters were arrested downtown for violating a law that forbids groups of three or more people wearing masks in public.

The turnout for Tuesday’s protest was smaller than for the first anniversary events last year, which caused some private grumbling among protesters. And it was a far cry from the large crowds of the movement’s early days in the fall of 2011, which came to an abrupt end when the police cleared the camp in an overnight raid.

Still, the energy was high as the organizers of the event addressed a crowd of at least 100 at the morning gathering downtown.

“We’re still here! Still fighting! Still strong! Still Occupy!” shouted Sumumba Sobukwe, a leader of the group, wearing aviator sunglasses and a pork pie hat.

The rally doubled as a book release party to promote “Occupy Finance,” a new handbook produced by a subset of the movement known as the alternative banking group. The book, copies of which were available free, offers a guide to the financial system and the events surrounding the crisis, and it proposes a policy framework that it calls “popular regulation.”

Complex topics like synthetic collateralized debt obligations are discussed at length in the book, but the writers say they want the book to appeal to a general audience.

“If this seems immensely complicated and confusing, it’s because it is,” the book says, “and it was designed to be that way.”

At the end, the book advises readers how to combat “well-informed futility syndrome.”

A lead author of the book, Cathy O’Neil, has a background in finance, working at one point at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. These days, however, she is deeply involved in the Occupy movement, running weekly discussions about finance in a room at Columbia University that are open to the public.

Even bankers have come to these sessions, people Ms. O’Neil described in an interview on Tuesday as “independent thinkers” from firms like BNP Paribas, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

“I have never met anyone in finance who is not sympathetic to Occupy,” she said.

While the crowd may have been smaller on Tuesday, the familiar features of Occupy Wall Street were on display. Protesters held signs with slogans like “Too big to fail is too big” and sang folk songs accompanied by acoustic guitar.

“Even though there aren’t as many people as last year, it still feels strong,” said Katrina Oaks, a 27-year-old protester from Daytona, Fla.

Within the last week, she estimated, the number of people sleeping in front of banks in lower Manhattan grew to about 50 from 30, as protesters arrived from other parts of the country.

Another protester, Fury Young, 24, said a recent study about income inequality showed that the issues of the movement remained as relevant as ever. Mr. Young, who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said he had watched the area become an “emerald city for the wealthy.”

“Since Occupy started, activism has become my life’s vocation,” he said, though he added that he also works as a set builder.

One face stood out from the others on Tuesday: the hipster cop.

That would be Rick Lee, a detective in the First Precinct, who gained a measure of fame in 2011 after photographs circulated online showing his unusually fashionable attire. While the Occupy protesters generally have an adversarial stance toward the police, it’s more complicated with Mr. Lee â€" more of a love-hate relationship.

On Tuesday, Mr. Lee was outfitted in a light blue shirt and navy cardigan from Ralph Lauren, and a striped tie and grey trousers from Brooks Brothers. His wingtip shoes were from Ralph Lauren as well.

As for his jacket?

That was issued by the N.Y.P.D.