That’s what you’ll hear one cop say on the video at 2:33 after the cops violently grab a man from his car, throw him on the ground, one puts his knee in the man’s ribs, another kicks his face. Except the driver was not in any medical condition to hurt anyone.
Of course, there is always the possibility that one cop could have sprained his ankle or pulled a hamstring when he kicked a defenseless man. Or perhaps the other cop could have twisted his knee while planting it into a defenseless man’s ribs. It could happen, ya know.
Adam Greene is on his stomach as a pack of police officers pile on him, driving their knees into his back and wrenching his arms and legs. One officer knees him in the ribs; another kicks him in the face.
“Stop resisting,” officers on the video yell, but Greene, his face pushed into the pavement, hasn’t resisted. He doesn’t even move — maybe can’t move — because he’s gone into diabetic shock caused by low blood sugar.
My administration has been closely monitoring the situation… and I know that we will be learning more tomorrow when day breaks.
As the situation continues to unfold, our first concern is preventing injury or loss of life. So I want to be very clear in calling upon the… authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters.
The people… have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny.
These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.
The only problem with those words is that they are a very clever edit by a poster at Antemedius of the speech President Obama gave on January 11 28, 2011 in support of the people’s uprising in Egypt. In that speech, he called upon Egyptian authorities to “refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters.” Apparently the ideals he espoused in that speech did not apply to the Occupy movement that has spread across this country protesting the economic disparity of 99% of this country’s citizens. His silence on incidents like the ones in these videos speaks volumes as to whom Barack Obama really supports.
Warning: the contents of these videos are graphic and disturbing.
Kayvan Sabehgi in intensive care with a lacerated spleen after protests in Oakland, a week after Scott Olsen was hurt. He says police beat him with batons
Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later. [..]
Sabehgi, a small business owner in the Oakland area, was alone and trying to leave the area when he was confronted by a phalanx of the police in riot gear wielding batons. From the video he was hardly a threat, yet he he was beaten unmercifully, left in excruciating pain that was ignored by a nurse, who should lode his/her license. He under went surgery the next day to repair the tear using a surgical patch that stopped the bleeding and spared Sabehgi the lose of his spleen.
Then yesterday during peaceful demonstrations protesting tuition increases and on the campus of University of California – Davis, campus police saying they “feared for their lives” pepper sprayed a group of students who were sitting with their arms locked together. There are now calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi thinks this is the appropriate response to a peaceful sit-in.
2.24pm: I’ve just spoken to Keith Shannon, roommate of Scott Olsen, the Iraq veteran who is in hospital after apparently having been hit in the head by a police projectile.
Shannon said doctors told him Olsen has a “skull fracture and swelling of the brain”. A neurosurgeon will assess Olsen later today to determine whether he needs surgery, Shannon said.
Olsen, 24, was in 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, before leaving the military last year. He had been opposed to the Iraq war even before his first tour to the country, Shannon said. Shannon and Olsen met in November or December 2005, and share an apartment in Daly City, south of San Francisco.
Rubber bullets and shotgun propelled bean bags can maim and kill, if the person is hit in the head, chest or abdomen. This is over-reaction by the Oakland Police on the orders of Oaklands Chinese-American mayor Jean Quan
While President Obama was telling the small crowd at a $7500-a-plate fundraiser in San Francisco that “Change is possible,” Pooda Miller was across the bay trying to get her plate back from the Oakland Police Department. “They came, pulled out rifles, shot us up with tear gas and took all our stuff,” said Miller, at an afternoon rally condemning the violent evacuation of more than 170 peaceful, unarmed Occupy Oaklanders by 500 heavily-armed members of the Oakland Police Department and other local departments yesterday morning.
Miller and others are calling for the recall of Jean Quan, who made history as Oakland’s first Asian-American mayor (full disclosure: Quan’s daughter is my Facebook friend); and they are complaining about the use of excessive police violence authorized by Interim Chief Howard Jordan, an African American. Such conflicts between former minorities are becoming the norm in what more conservative commentators call the “post-racial” era ushered in by the election of Obama.
Quan and Jordan are in the throes of dealing with a police department plagued by officer-involved shootings and killings, corruption and other crimes-crimes that have forced a federal consent decree to reform the department, after officers were convicted of planting evidence and beating suspects in West Oakland. Taking her cue from the Obama campaign of 2008, Quan announced Jordan’s appointment at a public safety forum titled “Creating Hope in the Community.”
Many like Miller and other Occupy Oaklanders are having second thoughts about what feels like the affirmative actioning of policing and state violence. Others, like Ofelia Cuevas of the University of California’s Center for New Racial Studies, see the workings of a not-so-21st-century pattern of policing and power.
Yes, but only in war. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention doesn’t apply to domestic law enforcement. (The United States was a major proponent of the exemption, fearing that the convention might be interpreted to prohibit lethal injection.)
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In enclosed spaces, however, the chemical agent can have much more serious effects. When police plan to use tear gas grenades to flush suspects out of a house, they start by comparing the dose of CS with the volume of the building and calculating a “lethal concentration time.” That’s the number of minutes it will take before most people inside would die from exposure. If the lethal concentration time is nearing, and the suspects haven’t yet emerged, the police start breaking windows for ventilation.
It’s not entirely clear how many people have been killed by CS. Amnesty International said 50 Palestinians died from inhalation in the late 1980s-prompting a brief suspension of tear gas sales to Israel-but those conclusions are disputed. The FBI used CS in its raid on the Branch Davidian compound (PDF) in Waco, but the ensuing fire left it unclear how, exactly, the cult members were killed. Such incidents have prompted a search for less toxic crowd-dispersing chemicals such as malodorants, but none has proven as effective as tear gas. Russia appears to be moving in the other direction, using the powerful opiate fentanyl to incapacitate rebels during a 2002 hostage crisis. That approach ended up killing more than 100 innocent people.
The United States is so enthusiastic about riot-control agents that it has a standing Executive Order reserving the right to use them on the battlefield, in spite of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s prohibition, to protect convoys or prevent the use of civilian shields. While the U.S. hasn’t invoked the order since ratifying the Convention in 1997, Donald Rumsfeld made news in 2003 when he raised the possibility.
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