collaterlysisters:

occupyallstreets:

Judge Threatens OPD Sanctions For ‘Military-Type Response’ To Occupy Protests

Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Oakland’s police department to submit a plan to address numerous unresolved complaints regarding their handling of the Occupy Oakland protests, warning that failure to comply within a week could lead to sanctions. District Judge Thelton Henderson’s mandate comes just a day after the release of a report by an outside monitor that concluded Oakland police used “an overwhelming military-type response” to Occupy’s demonstrations — the first official report to confirm Occupy Oakland’s struggles against police brutality.

The Oakland police department has received more than 1,000 misconduct complaints since the Occupy protests began, most have which have become backlogged. The department has been under court-ordered external monitoring and review since 2003, after four officers were accused of planting evidence, fabricating police reports and using excessive force. Henderson’s mandate sets strict deadlines for the department to clean up its act while continuing to comply with the reforms that stemmed from that 2003 case:

HENDERSON: It would be problematic enough if, as seems inevitable, [Oakland police’s] compliance levels were to backslide as a result of their failure to address the Occupy Oakland complaints in a timely fashion. Such failures would be further indication that, despite the changed leadership at the City of Oakland and its police department, [Oakland police] might still lack the will, capacity, or both to complete the reforms to which they so long ago agreed. The court will consider appropriate sanctions, including the imposition of daily or weekly monetary sanctions, until compliance is achieved.

On October 25, police attempted to subdue protesters with heavy-handed tactics such as rubber bullets, flash grenades, and smoke bombs — and ended up injuring an Iraq War veteran in the process. The Oakland police department later rejected an ACLU public records request to investigate the October events, and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser resigned in outrage over the city’s treatment of the Occupy protesters.

Source

quelle fucking surprise

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”

“Again?” someone said.

We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.

“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”

Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”

An extremely disturbing report on the emerging police tactic of employing brutal sexual assault against Occupation protesters as an intimidation and provocation tactic.  Police have engaged in rape and sexual assault against civilians since time immemorial, but the use of such tactics against Occupy may finally serve to bring some light to the intrinsic evil, exploitation, and misogyny of the United States law enforcement industrial complex.

Read the full article here.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department)

Call of Duty: Black Ops II will apparently feature Anonymous as enemy terrorists, hinting at as much in two promotional videos released this week.  Kotaku reports:

A series of documentary style clips tackle different elements of technology and warfare; in two of them, the Guy Fawkes mask appears on screen.

In a clip titled “Synopsis”, Oliver North talks about his nightmare scenario, and when he says, “The enemy could be anywhere, and it could be anyone,” an individual wearing a Guy Fawkes appears on screen. I don’t worry about the guy who wants to hijack a plane,” North continues. “I worry about the guy who wants to hijack all the planes.”

In another clip, titled “When the Enemy Steals the Keys,” the Guy Fawkes mask pops up again. The footage is slightly different — it’s tighter, more of a close-up.

“You know, if there are guys out there who are smart enough to hack into our banks and people’s personal information, then certainly, eventually, there’s gonna be someone who’s smart enough to hack into our aircraft,” drone pilot Major Hercules Christopher says in the clip. “If you can hack a bank, you can hack a drone.”

The moment the pilot says “gonna be someone who’s smart enough”, the Guy Fawkes mask once again appears on screen, seeming to insinuate indirectly that Anonymous members are going to be smart enough to hack drones — or even want to. Once again, the Guy Fawkes mask is cast as the enemy.

We assume Vivendi has already anticipated, and adjusted for, the massive drop in sales that may result from so unimaginatively and dully vilifying their player base, and that they have secured their corporate servers from any objections that may arise to such ham-handed misrepresentation.

More troubling than the Fawkes iconography is the blithe use of known war criminal Oliver North as a spokesman for “peace” and “freedom”.  The Kotaku commentors have this one in the bag:

May 2, 2012 at 10:39 PM

Was this the same Oliver North who sold guns to Iran to finance the actions of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua? The ones who regularly killed and tortured civilians?

The enemy could be anywhere, and he could be anyone, he says…

Anon Medics & friend on MayDay.  Full size here. Via this video.