Stu Loeser, a spokesman for New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, says the best way for reporters to avoid being arrested while covering Occupy Wall Street is to carry a press pass issued by the New York Police Department.

But the NYPD isn’t issuing press passes to reporters covering Occupy Wall Street, as we learned when we contacted them Thursday.

“We aren’t issuing press credentials to reporters covering Occupy Wall Street,” said Detective Gina Sarubbi, NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

So far the NYPD has arrested  26 journalists covering the protests in New York this week,  including two AP reporters and a Vanity Fairphotographer. Loeser  defended the arrests Thursday, according to a memo reprinted by The New York Observer. “You can imagine my surprise when we found that only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials,” he wrote.

Loeser added, in a tweet to Megan McCarthy, the news editor at The New York Observer (and a former Wired writer), “you don’t have a press pass; that’s your option. But why should some random NYPD take your word that you’re press?”

But Detective Sarubbi said that even if the NYPD were issuing press passes to cover the protests, there are no appointments available to get a press pass before January 2012.

Wired has been trying to get NYPD press credentials for freelancer Quinn Norton, who is on special assignment to cover the Occupy movement. Even before this week’s arrests, the NYPD made it clear they would not issue her credentials, as she first had to comply with Kafka-esque rules, such as proving she’d already covered six on-the-spot events in New York City — events that you would actually need a press pass to cover.

When I asked if six stories on Occupy Wall Street would count, Sarubbi said no.

I then tried to make the case that issuing press passes to legitimate reporters might help prevent arrests and prevent police from beating reporters, as happened to two journalists for the conservative Daily Caller on Thursday, and that the lack of spots until January seemed odd, and Sarubbi got angry.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job and I won’t tell you how to do yours,” she said.

Sarubbi then hung up without even a goodbye.

[To read the rest of Ryan Singel's article, follow this link]