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Occupy Oakland: Footage Shows Police Beating 'Peaceful' Iraq War Veteran
Oakland police investigating after ex-marine Kayvan Sabehgi suffered a ruptured spleen in apparently unprovoked incident
Facebook photo of veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, 32, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Video footage has emerged of a police officer beating an Iraq war veteran so hard that he suffered a ruptured spleen in an apparently unprovoked incident at a recent Occupy protest in California.
The footage, which has been shared with the Guardian, shows Kayvan Sabehgi standing in front of a police line on the night of Occupy Oakland's general strike on 2 November, when he is set upon by an officer.
He does not appear to be posing any threat, nor does he attempt to resist, yet he is hit numerous times by an officer clad in riot gear who appears determined to beat him to the ground.
Sabehgi, 32, an Oakland resident and former marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has since undergone surgery on his spleen. He says it took hours for him to be taken to hospital, despite complaining of severe pain. Police have told the Guardian they are investigating the incident.
The footage was recorded by artist and photographer Neil Rivas, who said Sabehgi was "completely peaceful" before he was beaten. "It was uncalled for," said Rivas. "There were no curse words. He was telling them he was a war vet, a resident of Oakland, a business owner."
Sabehgi has previously said he was talking to officers in a non-violent manner prior to his arrest, which the footage appears to confirm.
The 32-year-old can be seen standing in front of a line of police officers, all of whom are in riot gear. The officers walk forward, chanting and thrusting their batons, and Sabehgi starts to walk backwards.
Although the video is dark, an officer can clearly be seen beginning to hit Sabehgi around the legs with a baton, then starting to strike him higher up.
Sabehgi then appears to be bundled to the ground. He was later arrested.
Rivas said the footage was shot around midnight on 3 November, as police approached Occupy Oakland following the 2 November general strike.
Police deployed teargas and non-lethal projectiles that night, after some protesters entered a disused building north of Frank H Ogawa Plaza, but Rivas said there did not appear to be an immediate threat to police at the time of the video.
"It was pretty much just Kayvan and myself right there at that moment when he got beat," Rivas said.
"I couldn't help but start yelling out for them to stop. He was not fighting back; he was moving away from the officer. It did not feel good.
"I saw him being taken down to the ground and I tried to keep my camera focused on that as well, but they were pretty quick at setting up a barricade between myself and Kayvan at that point. I was shoved out of the way, and I had several guns pointed my way.
"I remember specifically one officer right in front of me having his gun pointed point blank at me."
Rivas said he realized the man in his video was Sabehgi after reading that a second Iraq war veteran had been injured, and seeing television footage.
Oakland television station KTVU TV-2 has previously shown footage of Sabehgi in handcuffs just after he was arrested, but Rivas believes this is the only video of him being beaten.
Sabehgi has previously told the Guardian he was walking away from the main area of police clashes – at 16th Street and Telegraph, just north of the Occupy base at Frank H Ogawa Plaza – when he was beaten and arrested.
Several police agencies were involved in the operation on 2 and 3 November, but Rivas said the officers who appear in front of Sabehgi at the beginning of the video were from Oakland police department.
A spokeswoman for Oakland police said: "The Oakland Police Department is currently investigating the incident."
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67 Comments so far
Show AllI hope the city of Oakland is prepared for a hefty award fo Sabehgi. Keep those cameras at the ready folks. It's your best and one of your only defenses.
His name looks Central-Asian to me, Iranian possibly. Which if so would justify their treatment of him, of course.
Ultimately, the payout, if it happens, would come from taxpayers. And so city officials never get penalized for permitting a militarized police force to run rampant. In the case of Oakland, the Mayor actually invited them into the fray. Unfortunately, the courts have had virtually no deterrent effect in checking the violence, which comes from the top. We will need to get our hands on governance and make profound systemic changes.
different time/different names, same principle.... crush dissent.
unfortunately the clowns who engage in these intentional acts of violence, perpetrated on unarmed citizens, are usually exonerated in our corrupt municipal/state/federal courts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
1931 Hitler reviews his Brownshirts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1oGB-BKdZg
...peace...
I keep being very appalled and disturbed by the actions of the various police in response to the Occupy Movement protests/demonstrations.
I'm old enough to remember Kent State. I was draft age at the time, so the issues then are very similar to and feel familiar from that era.
Although before my time, in the Nuremberg trials, following WWII, there was the pervasive argument by defendants that they were simply following orders from their superiors.
And then there is Abu Ghraib prison example of how low our government has stooped in the realm of human rights.
I'm not in any way making excuses for the street cops, but someone orders them to put on their 'riot gear', get out their weapons and do the job. We haven't seen any Quans or Bloombergs face-to-face with the Occupy participants.
In the end my biggest concern is how militarized our police departments have become, so quick and eager to 'suit up', as we would say in the military (yep, I'm a Vet) and 'take it to the ... enemy?' We're not the enemy. There is no enemy in all of this. There is a need for change, and that is a dynamic, not a confrontation.
Although I don't believe it's necessarily the case any longer, the old British police patrol officers, the famous 'Bobbies', never carried weapons. Their approach was to be less threatening to individuals they encountered in the course of their patrol of the streets, doing their job. They preferred to engage and enter into dialogue instead. And from what I know it was more successful than the model we now have in most police departments.
Maybe what I'm asking is if you spend a lot of money on G.I. Joe gear and weapons, and you train to be aggressive, to take it to whoever you're up against out there . . . in a psychological environment of fear that there are elements all around who pose some sort of threat . . . what do we really expect the outcome to be?
There is this running theme of those who don't get the Occupy Movement about how it doesn't have clear, specified expectations, no demands, or platform, if you will, in political terms. Perhaps this, the way we police our communities could be added to that list . . . when we get there.
And we will get there.
We are all appalled and disturbed by the actions of the police and how militarized they have become -- but there is an enemy in all of this -- and the occupy group may not have clear specified expectations - no demands or platform but they express what we all know to be true. Something is wrong.
The enemy are the greedy bastards in the top 1% in wealth in our nation. These people are morally lacking and suffering a weird sort of mental illness. For them there is never enough---that is never enough to ease their psychopathic hunger for more, more and more. Never can they be satisfied. Never can they have enough.
These mentally ill people are vastly wealthy and honored and respected in our society. They dress very nicely and are very well mannered. They use their great wealth to buy and corrupt other people who want to be wealthy themselves and will do what ever they are instructed to do in order to get a nice piece of the pie. The most corrupt members of our society are elected members of our government.
It is clear that the top 1% will do anything to maintain the status quo. They like things just the way they are. With their wealth they have killed our democracy and because they also control the major media we, the citizens, have been badly informed as to what is really going on. When we fail to get and keep a job that pays enough to care for a family, when we can't afford good health care, when we lose our homes and savings we have been told that it is our own fault. We are not quite good enough and careful enough. Families break up. We lose any sence of dignity.
The protests in the streets by the occupy movement allow us to stand up and take a more realistic look at what has been going on in our nation. We learn to realize that it is not our fault. We are good people but on hard times through no fault of our own. We see others in our same situation that are awakening. Apathy, which has been the main mental state of our citizens in regard to our government, is changing into anger. This is what is now frightening the very wealthy. And they will fight back to prevent the common people from having a fair share of the wealth they help create.
Now we are learning by talking to one another how we have been cheated and abused. At this point we are angry but do not yet know what we can do, I suggest that we focus on the corruption in our Congress. Our so called 'representatives' don't heed their constituents, but are servants of the wealthy contributors. You know this is true. SOMETHING IS WRONG.
Realizing that our Congress is not really ours at all, we must make a clean sweep of those halls of government. We need to vote out ALL THE INCUMBENTS in the Senate and the House of Representatives. We have to find people in our district that we think are honest and have a sense of morality to represent us. Look for people that you can trust to fairly work for the benefit of the people and to protect the environment and all life on earth.
We are the richest nation on earth. There is great wealth in our nation but it is all at the top. Instead of a war on poverty we now have a war on the poor. We must stop these wars and tax the rich and provide for the needs of our people and protect our environment.
The "top 1% in wealth in our nation. These people are morally lacking and suffering a weird sort of mental illness..."
That 'weird mental illness' is psychopathy, pure and simple.
It's no small coincidence that 4% of the general population are diagnosed psychopaths, and that 4% is the percentage of population who are politicians and CEOs. Psychopaths gravitate to positions of power and influence BECAUSE they can exercise their desire for control and infliction of suffering on others from an unassailable bastion of perceived superiority we grant politicians and business types. We are told that they achieve these positions through hard work and sacrifice, never really realizing that these positions ATTRACT psychopaths.
Ask yourself how many people have been arrested in this latest round of now criminalized dissent, and then compare it to the number of Politicians and CEOs who have been arrested, let alone convicted of their documented crimes that resulted in the continuing collapse of the world economy.
The answer should make you puke in revulsion.
Then it should dawn on you WHY the Police, the paid thugs of the Elite, are cheerfully following orders to brutalize and intimidate the people DARING to exercise their rights.
"We must stop these wars and tax the rich and provide for the needs of our people and protect our environment."
I was in agreement until your last sentence. Not that I don't agree with the sentiments, just that I don't see a mechanism in your thoughts for bringing this about.
How many times do we have to ask for justice? And who are we asking it of? And who do we expect to bring it about? As if speaking truth to power ever made power cede a thing.
What really needs to happen is that we need to bring power to its knees. How we do that is open for debate. The Occupy "movement" is a start in that it is bringing the plutocratic proto-fascist state more clearly in focus.
This system/state needs something we have. It needs it like our bodies need blood. If we can identify that, we can each start to do what we can to withhold as much blood from the system as possible. And it we form into communities to do that, we will build resilience and strength into the movement and also nourish ourselves in a way that this system cannot/will not do.
And isn't that what Occupy is really about?
He was arrested??? It reminds me of the old joke 'I was arrested for assaulting a police officer: I hit his boot with the back of my head eleven times.'
You are hereby charged with using your chest to break the Officer's fingers.
Cops in this country are the single most COWARDLY group we have. These are NOT public servants, these are VERMIN who we need to eradicate. Every damned one of them that has stood up against their FELLOW CITIZENS who want nothing but a life should be fired, and NEVER given an opportunity for a job carrying a gun again. The violence I've seen instigated by these "peace officers" is enough to make me want to quit this country and LEAVE. The Nazis and the corporatists can have it if they need to steal so badly. But then, it's MY country, damn it, and I shouldn't have to leave due to the mental and moral deficiencies of the WORST in our society.
I sincerely hope that when the powers that be go after the PIGS and THEIR wages and benefits, that they come to US and beg for help. And we will tell them just what they need to hear, "FUCK OFF AND DIE, YOU ASSHOLES! You screwed US when we were fighting for our very lives, and now you want OUR help? EAT OUR SHIT AND ENJOY IT." And they will deserve NOTHING else. May they ALL rot in hell, along with the scum they are protecting.
Like so much other of the corruption in poitics, it works the same way with the police. Politicians support the police morally and financially, and the police support the politicians with votes. As with the military, most of the members do not require a post high school education as their prime duty is to obey and follow orders, and not actually understand the constitution and the laws how they interrelate. As this country becomes more and more a two class society (1% vs 99%) as many others, being a policie officer or joining the military becomes an economic decision and moral decisions are set aside.
I agree with you except for one thing, when they go after the Cop's wages and benefits, and they will (cause those helicopters and paddy wagons are EXPENSIVE), and the cops turn to the rest of us...it won't be for protection or assistance. It will be to take what we have. Or rather, what little we have left. Dying societies throw the strangest bones at their police (and secret police) forces during their death throes, and allowing them to go effin' ape-caca on the angry protesting folks is one of those 'benefits'.
I would have to disagree with you. These are our neighbors, brothers and sisters, who have been trying to make the system work for them - just like many of us until recently. Our task is to disabuse them of the 'workability' of the design that has been handed to them; to witness the realities and speak truth to power so these people can reevaluate and decline participation in dignity and have the capacity to assimilate the truths they have been led to believe are are fearful threats.
The militarization of police forces has stretched the civic envelope in ways that only civic cohesion, unflagging presence in non-violent witness and documentation can present a mirror to the humiliation and destruction paradigm.These forces are based on "pride" - of what has become a solipsistic blob of jelly. The only way to expose the cowardice and outright sociopathology of the set-up is to stand together until the dissent exhausts the sales job these folks have been subjected to in response to the very real economic hardships we are all being subjected to.
I have to disagree with you one at least one point. The cops are NO LONGER our neighbors. They are purposely kept OUT of the neighborhoods they patrol specifically because the power that be don't want them KNOWING who they are dealing with. The cop car was one of the worst things to happen to policing in this country in our history. It removed the cops from the neighborhood, and took them out of the every day knowing the people and the neighborhood. Now they don't even let them live near where they patrol. They don't KNOW who they are dealing with, and so it's far easier to make the for profit jump to just screwing with everyone. That way you don't CARE what the individual circumstances are, it's all for PROFIT.
Then, add on to that the whole issue of the militarization of the cops, and then mix in the idiocy of the patriot act, the paranoia after 9-11 that exists to this day, and you have the perfect storm we are living with right now. Cops don't KNOW who they are screwing with, which makes them even more cowardly and fearful than they need to be. If they KNEW who they were dealing with, they would have SOME clue of when they are going WAY overboard. There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal, and they feel like THEY are the cornered ones, in spite of their being the ones with the freaking weapons.
Cops USED to be part of society, they are no longer. As such, they are nothing but the gang the rich use to keep the rest of us in line. We do NOT have a justice system anymore, we have a national extortion racket for the benefit of the pockets of the very rich. We have allowed things to go from a "we" society to the ultimate in "ME" society. And the cops are very much a part of the "ME" crowd.
The cops are part of the problem, and it's not going to get any better until the money is NOT the thing that calls the shots, but the actual good of society. We are firmly in big money influence and it HAS to stop or we are all screwed. And the cops will be the enforcers of that screwing. I hold NO sympathy for them or their job.
As someone who has been arrested twice for non-violent "sundry" crimes (those of you with legal minds will recognize that word pretty quick) I would have to say that you are 1000% correct about the profit motive driving our "law" enforcement agencies. They don't care why you are doing something, they just want the money. They want the money, the money, the godd*mned money. Lost your job? F**k you, gimme the money. Mom got sick? Too f**king bad, where's the money this month? Broke your arm and needed the cash for medical care? Bend over b*tch. I noticed there's been no talk whatsoever about getting these arrests thrown out, so it looks like a couple more thousand people will have the fun of going through what I went through. Welcome to Hell, folks. Maybe "amnesty" isn't such a dirty word anymore, eh?
"We do NOT have a justice system anymore" Bring back the Guillotine! That's the "Justice" these Fascist/Nazis deserve.
Bingo.
re:"They are purposely kept OUT of the neighborhoods they patrol specifically because the power that be don't want them KNOWING who they are dealing with."
That explains this odd episode: I was once stopped for speeding. I admitted to the cop that I was, in fact, speeding. ("Why lie? I'll pay the goddamned fine and get on with my life. He caught me fair and square," I thought.) The cop said, as he handed my driver's license back to me, and before I received my ticket: "I live on your street. Have a nice day." Then he walked away.
Somehow bending the rules on the basis of tribal loyalty isn't exactly comforting.
Yeah. On the one hand, I liked not having to pay the ticket, but on the other hand, what a >>bogus<< reason to let me off the hook.
I would like to "disabuse" these jerks of first their consciousness, followed by their jobs, if possible.
Sorry, they aren;t MY brothers and if they were MY neighbors, I'd publish their names and ADDRESSES. Justice/Karma will catch up with them. Off with their heads (metaphorical, NO threat)
"I would have to disagree with you. These are our neighbors, brothers and sisters,"
Some of us have really crappy neighbors and relatives.
"I sincerely hope that when the powers that be go after the PIGS and THEIR wages and benefits, that they come to US and beg for help. And we will tell them just what they need to hear, "FUCK OFF AND DIE, YOU ASSHOLES! You screwed US when we were fighting for our very lives, and now you want OUR help? EAT OUR SHIT AND ENJOY IT." And they will deserve NOTHING else. May they ALL rot in hell, along with the scum they are protecting." Thank you for the post. I only wish Huffington would not censor such truth and passion.. Oh I forgot, they are a Fascist TOOL!
Well said.
I have made similar comments, and have been soundly criticized for it.
Refusing to be a victim these days is held by many in 'progressive' and 'liberal' circles as being tantamount to heresy. Time to remind those in power that they are badly outnumbered.
Shhhhhhh. You'll scare the Pacifists(tm).
This with this veteran means for the one per cent still on the wrong side of this "world revolution":
No Freikorps for you/
When you want some/
Vets to be your private/
Armies to stomp the people/
To kill in cold blood
It's the new mother nature/
Taking over/
It's getting us all/
Getting us all
Special thanks to those good old Canadian boys in Winnipeg, the Guess Who.
This with this veteran means for the one per cent still on the wrong side of this "world revolution":
No Freikorps for you/
When you want some/
Vets to be your private/
Armies to stomp the people/
To kill in cold blood
It's the new mother nature/
Taking over/
It's getting us all/
Getting us all
Special thanks to those good old Canadian boys in Winnipeg, the Guess Who.
La plus que ca change, le plus que c'est le maim chose...
TOMMY
by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.
"A spokeswoman for Oakland police said: "The Oakland Police Department is currently investigating the incident.""
What kind of an investigation do you need? Any idiot can view this video of a police assault on an American citizen and see who was the instigator. It certainly wasn't the victim--a military veteran who was doing everything the police requested of him.
This ploy of "investigating the incident" is the one the police always use in the hope that they can make it disappear within the police state bureaucracy.
Come on, Oakland police chief, go ahead and start your investigation. But have the guts to view this video and declare the obvious: this was an unprovoked, brutal assault on an American citizen/ military veteran.
Then go ahead and have your damn "investigation." But first, please state the obvious.
"investigating" = waiting to blow over
You have a point about cops not being in the 99%. But if that's the case, how many really ARE in the 99%? Probably not the Tea Partiers, or the folks who think it's wonderful whenever another damned hippy gets the whuppin' he deserves. Nor the people who are sympathetic to OWS ideas but are unprepared to take any counter-cultural steps that might rock the boat and put their careers at risk. Nor those of us who aren't really well-to-do, but we work fairly directly for members of the 1%, etc. etc.
Maybe we all need to go to jail. Fill it up and over-flowing. Put half the population in jail. If there are any retired people, with not enough pension and wanting to do something useful in old age....considering getting arrested for exercising your rights, and go to jail. There you will meet Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus Christ.
The shame of Oakland is its police force. Force being the lead word on them. They forced and wounded many demonstrators in the 1960s and they are still doing it. They shoot to kill people in the back, they have never stopped doing illegal law enforcement. They just keep getting away with it. The name "Pigs" probably came from their behavior. An insult to pigs. Oakland's mayor is a joke. She has no control over these police terrorists.
Apparently nobody remembers the KBR no-bid concentration camps that der Bush had built. They haven't been dismantled, just maintained. Think about it.
NorthCom has been training returning combat brigades in the "suppression of civil dissent" since 2006. Think about it.
The scientists have been working on ever more powerful, compact, devices such as the "pain ray," the sound cannon, and various chemical weapons. Plus, of course lots of practice in the truncheon and the rubber hose. Think about it.
Google FEMA concentration camps and executive orders. The Oligarchy has been preparing for this for years. When we are strong enough to be a real threat to the 1%, martial law will be declared, the streets will fill with armed troops and tanks, the skies will be filled with drones and the camps will begin to fill. Think about it.
We are on the verge of becoming Nazi Germany on steroids. Think about it.
Well, from the video, Sabehgi obviously assaulted this police officer.
I counted no fewer than nine times that Sabehgi hit the officer's baton with his body.
As an "investigation" will no doubt show, it's all a matter of perspective.
It ought to be clear to any thoughtful person that repressive police tactics, from Cairo to New York to Davis, and on to Syria, stimulate and provoke the kinds of acts that they are trying to suppress. It should also be clear that most of the threats to public health and safety come from the police.
If the police were to support and protect "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (US Constitution, the First Amendment), the outcome would much more likely be positive and at far smaller public expense. It would take a much smaller police presence to deal with the few provocateurs or nut jobs in a protest and to help channel the protests in reasonable directions than to suppress the whole. In New York, for example, we saw HUNDREDS of police standing around Occupy Wall Street on a totally quiet day drawing overtime pay. If sanitation is an issue, some porta potties would be more effective than bulldozers.
Like all milt ops its just another means of transferring wealth from the people to the econ elite. and considering how long ago smedley butler wrote "war is a racket" it appears that thugs just never learn that tools are just as disposable as the commodity of labor.
It ought to be clear to any thoughtful person that repressive police tactics, from Cairo to New York to Davis, and on to Syria, stimulate and provoke the kinds of acts that they are trying to suppress. It should also be clear that most of the threats to public health and safety come from the police.
If the police were to support and protect "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (US Constitution, the First Amendment), the outcome would much more likely be positive and at far smaller public expense. It would take a much smaller police presence to deal with the few provocateurs or nut jobs in a protest and to help channel the protests in reasonable directions than to suppress the whole. In New York, for example, we saw HUNDREDS of police standing around Occupy Wall Street on a totally quiet day drawing overtime pay. If sanitation is an issue, some porta potties would be more effective than bulldozers.
The problem with generally considering the police as part of the 99% is the culture that has been carefully created over generations of what is essentially brainwashing. Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and numerous others have created a climate of hate targeted at anyone who protests the current power structure. More than half of the guys who have most of the guns in this country have no clue what OWS is about--they think it's all dirty druggies, commies, socialists, minorities, traitors to the good old USA. And they are all ready to go shoot some of these people if they get half an excuse.
The only effective counter strategy has got to include lots more flag waving and highlighting of vets, police supporters mixed in with the 99% message.
After watching this video, yes, I was appalled, but something profound occurred to me. While these fully protected, cowardly, sadistic thugs who beat up on innocent people are pretty evil, they could be WORSE! They're not openly firing weapons into the crowds, right? So rally 'round 'em, friends. After all, they may be the lesser of evils! .... if you get my drift.
Not sure if I made myself clear. Those who serve a ruthless, cruel empire take part in evil acts against others. We should never get caught up in making excuses for supporting someone, some entity, because they're considered "lesser of evils." All that does is create conditions that are even more evil, making anything less appear better. It forces the system to ratchet up. This is exactly why Republicans seem so deranged and dangerous compared to Democrats. The empire needs a "bad cop" in order to foster acceptability for the "good cop."
A lot of good points made here, as usual....and minitrue tells it like I also see it.
Years ago, during relatively stable, peaceful and, for me, economically much more secure times than is presently the case, one of my bandmates, a guitarist who happened to also be a Viet Nam vet, wanted desperately to hang-up his guitar and don the uniform of a State Cop. This man was a terrifically unstable, girlfriend abusing, audience insulting bomb seemingly in constant need of reasons to go off. He proudly recalled his service as a special forces Army sniper...a trained assassin. He had an alcohol problem and he openly hated most minorities, especially minority women, and pretty much anyone who was 'different' from his skewed perception of 'model citizen' and potential buddy.
He had been rejected, so the story went, due to results of psych exams the two or three times he applied for a cop job....everyone in his home area can be thankful of that!
I don't know what happened to Benny, who was a really excellent guitarist and singer, along the way...if he was ever able to slip under the psych wire and is now legally wielding a gun and lots of authority. But one has to wonder how many ex-soldiers or ex-snipers and trained assassins ripe for something to make them 'snap'...or simply troubled control-freaks who love uniforms, getting to carry a gun and being in charge have sought out police or private security positions....and gotten them.
Not to say that there aren't some really good and well-intentioned police officers doing exemplary jobs within their communities, but even those have probably been adversely effected as they've been re-clothed in Blackwater type military uniforms and weaponry, trained to see danger and threat from even the least threatening sources along with being given greater latitude in enforcement methods...unofficially encouraged to be aggressive when responding to anything or anybody they have been instructed to perceive as terrorists or potential trouble-makers.
I think we can all be sure that our present day (particularly post-9/11) police and security forces have been and are being trained (with the latest, greatest instruments and methods of influencing thought)...and that it's likely anyone deemed 'unpatriotic' or 'too free-thinking', particularly dissenters and the OWS protesters, will be or already are painted as the primary domestic threat that must be contained and extinguished.
I wonder what percentage of the police around the country became policemen because they wanted a chance to dress up in those Nazi storm-trooper/riot gear uniforms? What ever happened to the "Officer McFriendly" 's of my youth in the 1950's?
"Officer McFriendly" was busy beating up on "n*****s."
You're right. Sigh.
I know a police officer. She is a childhood friend. She's a good person, and an excellent officer of the police. What "the force" does is almost entirely politically driven: don't blame the cops. Hold them responsible for their actions, of course, but the blame should be pointed upstairs.
Yeah? how often has she ratted on a malfeasing colleague?
I know a cop too. My kids go to school with theirs. And the guy, a member of the VPD ERT (Emergency Response Team) has a wife who is simultaneously a good mom and a stuck-up, holier than thou, Neo-Cons walk on water, spit on the poor bitch.
I have known another cop who worked at YVR (the local international airport) who saw his co-workers commit all kinds of sexual abuse and harassment on OTHER COPS, as well as planting evidence on minorities to boost their arrest rate. The cop I knew QUIT to become a furniture importer.
Recently, we have a had the former spokesperson for the Lower Mainland RCMP detachment come forward to expose the twenty years of career sexual harassment she suffered, becoming an alcoholic and drug addict in the process. She made her complaints known to the higher ups, who did... .nothing... and who are now going out of their way to completely discredit her and others who have come forward recently.
So don't say 'Oh, the cops are just like us, they are our neighbors.' I don't know about you, but a lot of my neighbors suck.