Stu Loeser (Photo: Facebook)

This morning, we wrote about an interview NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and the Department's top spokesman Paul Browne gave to the Queens Chronicle in which Mr. Browne discussed the arrests of reporters following the police raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park.

"Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner for public information, who accompanied Kelly to the interview, added that only one journalist was arrested during the operation, despite stories to the contrary, which he called 'a total myth,'" Chronicle Editor in Chief Peter C. Mastrosimone wrote.

We noted that this seemed to be a discrepancy with an email Mayor Bloomberg's top spokesman sent in response to a post on the Awl describing reporters arrested while covering the Occupy Wall Street raid in which he acknowledged five reporters with press credentials were arrested.

We reached out to both Mr. Browne and Mr. Loeser to explain why they seemed to be in disagreement. A heated Mr. Loeser called us back to explain that only one reporter was arrested in Zuccotti Park itself while the other reporters were arrested in other areas that day.

"He's talking about the issue at Zuccotti Park," Mr. Loeser said of Mr. Browne's comments. "There's not a discrepancy."

Following the raid on the park, protesters spilled out in the surrounding streets and spent hours clashing with the police. They also attempted to takeover Duarte Park on 6th Avenue and Canal Street, which is owned by Trinity Church. Two of the five reporters were arrested covering this action. We asked Mr. Loeser whether he felt that, by only referring to one of the events on the day of the raid, Mr. Browne was obfuscating the issue of arrests at the park. Mr. Loeser emphatically rejected that notion.

"Going into Trinity's space at 6th Avenue and Canal more than a mile from Zuccotti Park is not the clearing of Zuccotti Park," he said. "You are randomly saying that the issue at Zuccotti Park and the issue miles away, hours later that day when people protested afterwards are the same thing."

Mr. Loeser also noted his email was specifically responding to the fact many of the reporters named by the Awl did not have official credentials. He also pointed out the arrested reporters subsequently had their arrests voided, a distinction that may have been lost on reporters when they were in custody and unable to cover the protests.

"They weren't at Zuccotti Park. They just weren't," Mr. Loeser said.

We spoke with one of the reporters who was arrested that day and they told us they remain "mad" at Mr. Loeser because they feel his email and related tweets minimized the number of journalists arrested by only focusing on reporters with credentials. They also took issue that he pointed to the fact at least three of the arrested reporters were trespassing when they followed the protesters into Zuccotti Park as apparent justification for the arrests.

"I'm still so mad at Stu about these blasts of emails and tweets that he sent out claiming that it was all--that no media people were really arrested and that, if we were, it was really our fault. I'm still so pissed at him," said the reporter, who asked that their name be withheld because their employer would not want them speaking to another media organization.

As of this writing, Mr. Browne has not responded for a request to comment on this story.

Update (6/8/12 7:01 P.M.): The NYPD now says there were actually two reporters arrested during the raid.

Stu Loeser as he is most often seen, wielding his Blackberry a few steps away from the mayor. (Photo: Facebook)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's staff apparently got quite a kick out of the NYPD's surveillance video allegedly showing Occupy Wall Streeters pouring poop in a plaza and at a Chase ATM in Lower Manhattan. Two members of Mayor Bloomberg's press team Tweeted the footage along with mocking parodies of popular Occupy slogans.

"Whose poop? Their poop!" wrote Mayor Bloomberg's press secretary, Stu Loeser.

Mr. Loeser's Occu-parody was, as of this writing, one of seven Tweets he posted about the poop tapes. In another missive, Mr. Loeser described his reaction to the NYPD's press alert announcing the dramatic dumping footage.

"I've read 1000s of @NYPDnews DCPI 'sheets' - never laughed at a subject line until today's 'OWS Human Feces Arrest - It Happens,'" Mr. Loeser wrote.

He also called the clip "must-see TV, but before dinner" and described it as indicative of larger truths about the Occupy Wall Street protests.

"#OWS dumping huge amts of urine and feces in a bank & FiDi plaza is telling in & of itself," he wrote.

Mr. Loeser wasn't the only member of the City Hall press team who took to Twitter to have a laugh at the poop pouring protest. Mayor Bloomberg's deputy press secretary, Julie Wood, re-Tweeted two of Mr. Loeser's poop-related posts along with an Occu-parody of her own.

"hey hey! ho ho! a lot of people had to go!," Ms. Wood wrote.

The desire of Mayor Bloomberg's press team to highlight the more unseemly aspects of the Occupy Wall Street protests clearly makes sense. Mayor Bloomberg took quite a bit of heat for his decision to clear the protesters from Zuccotti Park Last November, however the mayor maintains he evicted the occupation because it posed a "health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community."

Mayor Bloomberg (Getty)

Mayor Bloomberg has a sports-filled weekend planned. He's going to watch the Giants go up against Jets and the Knicks playing his hometown Boston Celtics. However, the mayor refrained from publicly picking favorites during a press conference celebrating the new taxi bill today. 

Mayor Bloomberg gave a completely non-partisan answer to a reporter's question about the contest between New York's two football teams.

"One of the teams will win and the other one will not, and then we'll see whether, in the crazy NFL East, one of the teams--or whichever divisions they're in--they can still compete," he said.

Stu Loeser, the mayor's press secretary, interjected.

"Mayor. just a response to that for the people in the back of the room, can you tell them what color your tie is?"

Mayor Bloomberg's tie was green and blue, a nod to the colors of both football clubs that was probably mere coincidence since the mayor initially didn't realize his neckwear had a blue streak.

"My tie is green, but I don't know what that means," said Mayor Bloomberg. Someone in the front row pointed out the tie's indigo stripe to him.

Though he wasn't asked, the mayor, a Massachusetts native, couldn't resist weighing in on the weekend's basketball game too.

"My youngest daughter and I are going on Saturday to the Jets/Giants/Giants/Jets, and on Sunday, we're going to go to the Knicks/Celtics, which is what I thought you would ask about given that I grew up in Boston," Mayor Bloomberg said.

In spite of his apparent eagerness to discuss basketball, the mayor wouldn't take sides in that matchup either.

"When it comes to the Celtics and the Knicks, I have Knicks tickets, I bought Nets tickets--I like good basketball," Mayor Bloomberg said. "All the Celtics that I knew no longer play, they've all retired, but I do remember many good times at Boston Garden. I was a big basketball fan in those days."

Reminiscing about his Celtic memories prompted the mayor to note that his fandom only applied to basketball and not the hated Boston Red Sox.

"I don't remember ever going to Fenway Park, but eat your heart out, I went to day camp with Warren Spahn's daughter," Mayor Bloomberg said.

It's a 100-point scale, with higher being better, and the site claims to crunch over 35 variables to generate a number that "is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets."

So, here are the rankings for some New York figures. In short, Bloomberg (71) does pretty well, but Anthony Weiner (76) looms large over us all.

If you find rankings for other politicos, stick them in the comments section.

36: John Liu

41: Scott Sringer

42: Stu Loeser

43: NYC Council

47: Bill de Blasio

54: Howard Wolfson

56: Andrew Cuomo

62: Azi Paybarah

71: Mayor Bloomberg

73: Ben Smith

75: Jack, creator, co-founder of Twitter

76: Anthony Weiner