WATCH: Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters Storm 3 Major Manhattan Banks

By Simone Wilson (Patch Staff)

MURRAY HILL, NY — Dozens of protesters stormed three major bank branches on Madison and Park avenues just south of Midtown Manhattan on Thursday afternoon. Once inside, they reprimanded the banks — Chase, TD Bank and Wells Fargo — for investing in the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline project in North Dakota, and asked customers in line to personally divest by canceling their bank accounts.

"Your money is supporting the corporate genocide of indigenous people," one protester with a megaphone told customers at the Wells Fargo on Madison Avenue. (Video footage below.)

A short while later, a Native American drum circle broke out in the Wells Fargo lobby.

The NYPD deployed a troop of police officers to keep an eye on the protesters around 3:30 p.m., a police spokesman told Patch.

A couple hours later, reports came in that one of the officers had injured his leg at the TD Bank at 475 Park Avenue South, the spokesman said — but it wasn't clear "whether it was due to the protest at the location." Whatever the cause, though, the officer seemed to be doing OK, the spokesman said.

By 5:30 p.m., the NYPD was "slowly pulling officers off the protest," police said.

A female employee at the Chase Bank at 2 Park Avenue, who would not give her name but sounded very exasperated, said she repeatedly tried to kick protesters out of the bank Thursday afternoon.

"They left 20 minutes ago," she said around 5:50 p.m. "There were a whole bunch of them. They tried to take pictures and video of me. I tried to kick them out but they wouldn't go."

Here's a photo one activist took inside Chase:

And here's a photo from TD Bank:

The Chase employee who spoke to Patch complained that the NYPD did nothing to intervene.

"There were 60 of them — they all came in at one time," she said. "It was so crowded. The police, they didn't care."

For months now, the Dakota Access Pipeline (or #NoDAPL) protest movement has been attempting to block a massive, under-construction oil pipeline from crossing through the Standing Rock Native American Reservation in North Dakota and dirtying its water supply.

And in recent weeks, the movement has singled out 17 banks dispersing loans to Energy Transfer Partners, the oil company building the pipeline.

An online petition to the banks says, in part: "Continuing to finance DAPL signals your approval of the use of militarized force against those asserting their First Amendment rights and traditional spiritual beliefs and practices, and disregard for Indigenous responsibilities to protect people, lands and water."

Lead photo by lil_seltz/Twitter