Tim Schreier, one of The Local’s community contributors, was among a group of journalists who were rounded up at Duarte Square and thrown in jail on Tuesday. He was released yesterday morning.

Now the photographer, who was shooting a group of religious leaders staging a prayer vigil at the park among the protesters, is going to take his charge of criminal trespassing in the third degree to trial.

Tim Schreier The crowd at Duarte Square on Tuesday.

“Basically, it’s the N.Y.P.D. gone crazy and based on fear,” Mr. Schreier said yesterday, shortly after getting his first bit of rest since around noon on Tuesday. “This was an interfaith service that the cops came and disrupted.”

The photographer, who has contributed a bounty of photographs to The Local, has been spending a lot of time shooting the Occupy Wall Street movement and posting his pictures online for any outlet to use. On Tuesday he was hired to photograph a prayer vigil including Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist religious leaders.

Tim Schreier A photo by Mr. Schreier before he was arrested.

Mr. Schreier said the fiasco began when he was asked to leave the park. As he was being escorted, he said, he was handed off to another group of officers, who threw him in handcuffs and into a paddy wagon that included other reporters for The Daily News, the Associated Press, Vanity Fair, and DNA Info. According to an Associated Press report, they were among several journalists detained while covering this week’s Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, including The Local’s own Jared Malsin, whovideotaped his own arrest.

By the time Mr. Schreier arrived at 1 Police Plaza, he said that his arresting officer was nowhere to be found.

“I’m seeing everyone going up to see the judge, but I’m being delayed and delayed,” Mr. Schreier recalled. “I’m convinced that has to do with the [mess]-up with the arresting officer — they couldn’t come up with a name. They had no idea who it was.”

So for over 36 hours Mr. Schreier was locked up, declining unappetizing glasses of milk and peanut butter sandwiches. He said he didn’t sleep a wink.

It wasn’t until around 2 a.m. on Thursday that Mr. Schreier was finally released — but not before pulling a prank on a guard. As a corrections officer approached his cell to release him, Mr. Schreier told him to not touch the door and did an “abracadarbra movement.” He then pushed the door open. “It was like ‘Keystone Kops’; they forgot to lock the door after they cleaned the cell,” Mr. Schreier said.

Tim Schreier Another photo moments before the police arrested Mr. Schreier.

He went before a judge and, according to him, declined the offer of carte blanche from the district attorney. “They could not produce a witness from the police department that was in the park,” he said. “They couldn’t produce the arresting officer. They couldn’t produce a criminal trespassing complaint from the church.” (Trinity Church issued a press release on Tuesday saying that the protesters were not given permission to gather at the park).

Mr. Schreier, who doesn’t consider himself a part of Occupy Wall Street so much as a documenter of it, still hadn’t retrieved his camera from the police late yesterday. After spending so much time caught up in the wheels of justice, he said he still supports the protests.

“If Occupy Wall Street does nothing more, it has opened up a dialogue that this country has needed for a long, long time,” he said. “Just opening the dialogue in itself is the gift of Occupy Wall Street.”