Police Brutality
Let's suppose that the blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng, remains spunky once he's settled in at New York University and gets some time during the summer to join an Occupy demonstration, along with his wife.
Here's what they might reasonably expect by way of treatment from the NYPD, if we are to believe — which I do — a report on new police strategies against protestors by David Graeber, anthropologist and creative force in the Occupy movement.
Graeber begins with a conversation with an old friend:
"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. ... 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 martial-arts move, leaving it not only broken but also 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.'"
"On March 17, several hundred members of Occupy Wall Street celebrated the six month anniversary of their first camp at Zuccotti Park by a peaceful reoccupation of the park — a reoccupation broken up within hours by police with 32 arrests. ... Many of these arrests are carried out in such a way to guarantee physical injury." Graeber's friend Eileen's wrists were broken; others suffered broken fingers, concussions, and broken ribs.
Graeber says, "The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new." 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 Graeber 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, and 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.
"Why is all this not a national story?" Graeber asks.
Back in September, the infamous New York cop Tony Bologna arbitrarily maced several young women engaged in peaceful protest.
The event became a national news story. Now there's nothing. Graeber:
"I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society."
The commander of the first precinct, successor to the disgraced Tony Bologna, is Captain Edward J. Winski, whose officers patrol the Financial District. That is, when those very same officers are not being paid directly by Wall Street firms to provide security, which they regularly do — replete with badges, uniforms, and weapons. Winski often personally directs groups of police attacking protestors: Winski's superior is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, former director of global security of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns.
And Kelly's superior, in turn, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg — the well-known former investment banker and Wall Street magnate. The 11th richest man in America, he has referred to the New York City Police Department as his own personal army.
Graeber added an update to his story: "In comments, a reader asked why I did not go to the media. My response: 'To be honest my first impulse was to call a sympathetic Times reporter. He said he was going to see if he could spin a story out of it. Apparently, his editors told him it wasn't news.'"
It won't be long before the NYPD kills a demonstrator. It will take that to force the issue of methodical police violence back onto the news pages.
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17 comments on "Police Brutality"
May 14, 2012 5:36pm
Whatever happened to "government of the people, by the people and for the people?" Police can be worse than the military. G.I.'s who do wrong get punished more severely than cops.
May 14, 2012 1:26pm
Very simply this is POLICE ABUSE and BRUTALITY.
TO THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK CITY AND THE STATE OF NEW YORK, have you no shame and conscience???
ARE YOU PROUD OF THESE ANIMALS WHO WHERE THE BADGE OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.
As a retired individual who likes to travel and has been to New York City many times, let me tell you that I shall never return. I will also make it a goal of mine to discourage people from traveling through New York City or vacationing there.
May 14, 2012 10:58am
And you thought the police were there to protect you? Ha that's a good one.
May 13, 2012 7:33pm
Remember the police abuses during the civil rights marches, the anti Viet Nam War protests and the Chicago Democratic convention. The police earned the sobriquet "Pigs" during these spectacles and for many years engaged in efforts to recoup public favor. Beat cops in sqauds distributed a lot of baseball cards to try to regain respect. Well thanks to the overeaching of Homeland Security, War on Drugs and draconian anti civil liberties actions and with the help of the unfairness of corrupted legal and judicial systems they are rapidly losing respect and are gaining increasing contempt and disrespect for the Rule of Law.
May 12, 2012 11:46pm
It's amazingly appalling what has happened here; but it is unfair to generalize and stereotype about all police officers in general. There are always going to be the bad in with the good; just as in any walk of life. I know first hand many diligent responsible police officers who go out of their way, on and off duty, to protect innocent women, children, and the elderly from being physically brutalized; they deal with gangs and drugs; and some have even saved a kidnapped dog which was being held for ransom on pain of death. More and more they are seeing many of their fellow officers, both men and women, lose their lives getting shot in the face just making a routine traffic stop. I am an RN. I've seen more than a few sensational stories about nurses who murder their patients. Am I then to think that ALL nurses are murderers? Or how about men? There are an awful lot of men who abuse their wives/girlfriends and there are many men who are sexual perverts. Am I then to think that ALL men do these things? We could go on and on with examples. I hope you see the danger inherent here.
May 13, 2012 12:41pm
If you don't want the police to be stereotyped I suggest that you agree that ANY and ALL police brutality must be condemned in the strongest possible terms in every community where it has taken place. Corrupt police must be rooted out and removed from the force.
Police departments all over the nation have histories of brutality and corruption.
This is why the article was written. We need the support of the entire nation to put a stop to this brutality, this corruption.
May 12, 2012 8:44pm
Just recently the police murdered an African-American veteran who was in his own apartment violating no law...the same police who have been murdering and brutalizing in African American communities for several decades will be attacking demonstrators and yes there will be brutality and quite possibly muder. All strands of our movement must unite to stop police crimes against the people.
May 12, 2012 8:27pm
My understanding is the police - or the military - have the right, actually the duty, to refuse to follow an illegal order. Problem is with the police, this is their chance to do what they have always wanted to do - beat the crap out of people that cannot fight back. They are cowards! The right thing to do, is join in the protest as long as it stays peaceful and within bounds, after all, they ARE part of the 99%.
Its time to bring a class action suit against the police departments all across this nation. ALL these jackasses need to be brought to justice. Those that do the dirty deeds, and those that won't do anything about it. Then sue the cities for everything - THEY are the ones ordering the police to do their dirty deeds.
May 12, 2012 7:52pm
Obama's America is no different from Stalin's gulags.
May 12, 2012 5:17pm
This gets at my disagreement about the police as part of the 99% (and of course the 99% conceptualization is rhetorical to begin with). The police belong to the 1%. Their ultimate job is not community protection, crime prevention, or the like. Their job is to protect the 1% who own and manipulate the system for their own benefit from the 99%. No one should doubt this. In that light it is easy to understand that the police treatment - what I call intentionally random acts of gratuitous violence against anyone and everyone - of Occupiers and any other class of protesters who attack the legitimacy of the system is intended to deter participation, is intended to impose enough pain and damage so as to make people stop and think twice before exercising the basic human rights that the US so hypocritically pretends to defend with its often bloody or, in the case of Chen Guangcheng, two-faced policies abroad.
May 12, 2012 4:25pm
the sad truth is the brutality....the RNC held in NYC produced arrests of lawful demonstrators CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.... and placed them in UN-SANITARY conditions....Is a billionaire mayor concerned about a couple of million dollars that has been paid out to cover for the "police's" illegal actions????
occupy Wall Street...878 billion dollars MISSING.....FORECLOSURES.....“In the wake of the US bank-induced 2008 global financial crisis....WORLD CRISIS OF ALL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS - WORLD WIDE......
BRUTALITY . . . WILL INCREASE . . . . NOT DECREASE...is closing all the mental health facilities a prelude of what's to come . . . as they are shot and killed rather than getting mental help...they need and deserve ????
May 12, 2012 4:04pm
The police were militarized over thirty years ago.
May 12, 2012 3:21pm
Obama militarized the police in this country and then had his Dept. of Homeland Security conduct a telephone conference call with 17 big city mayors instructing them to use violence to quash the Occupy movement and stop the public criticism of Obama's theiving Wall Street "Savvy Businessmen" billionaire buddies.**
**(Oakland, California Mayor Jean Quan let the cat out of the bag and revealled this fact.).
Welcome to Amerika, land of the plutocratic fascists and home of the cowardly rich.
May 13, 2012 3:05am
Jefferey, you need to think outside your own prejudices. I was in Berkeley in the 1960's and in LA and in Phoenix and I assure you that cops have been groping girls, beating old ladies, chasing priests down in patrol cars... a very long time. I recall a young lady I met in Phoenix: a sweet flower child with a pet monkey and petite blond hair. The next time I saw her a few weeks later she was sporting a butch crew cut, had scars on her face and still bleeding wounds on her legs. The LA cops had been breaking up a concert in the park where Pandy and her monkey were enjoying the sun. The cops beat her monkey to death! Then they beat Pandy and then they sprayed mace on her open wounds. Weeks later the wound still could not heal. I watched cops beating an old woman on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley apparently for daring to leave the grocery store while they were chasing "hippies" outside. That day I saw four Oakland pigs beating a 60+ year old priest outside his church apparently for being on the sidewalk in full priest uniform: white collar, silver crucifix, black coat. Four men beat this old man into unconsciousness. My point is never think this crap is new to Amerika. It has always been part and parcel of a nation founded on principles of religious intolerance, genocide and greed. Okay maybe your grandparents didn't own slaves or kill Natives, but I bet they were living on land which used to belong to the Natives. It isn't Obama...the evil black skinned Muslim in the WH... it's the nation itself with blood on it's hands, owned and operated for the wealthy on the backs of the working class. It's been this way since the late 1600's.
May 12, 2012 1:37pm
Egídio L. I fail to see the difference between Egyptian and Chinese violence against demonstrators, and the intentional brutality of American police. Is it only a question of Geography? Shame on us.
May 13, 2012 3:12am
Geography and language. Also I think greed. I think greed is greater among the Ruling Class in Amerika. I suspect the only reason they don't rolls tanks over the bodies of protestors is that the Feds don't trust the local cops with tanks. Otherwise there'd be red smears all over Wall Street. It boils down to this: what is the point of becoming extremely filthy rich if you can't hire thugs to beat and murder the peons for your amusement? I mean, come on! These people have no known skill sets other than cheating on society to steal billions of other people's dollars. They are bored watching cartoons with their whores and crack dealers, so they have some fun watching the protestors getting beat up on the news. It's a game to them! People like me are identical in their minds to the stuffed critters on a whack-a-mole game at a carnival. Face it, when you own billions mere peasants no longer seem quite as human as you.
May 12, 2012 12:49pm
The police should not be allowed to moonlight with their taxpayer funded equipment. That is the perfect storm for corruption. If in fact they happen to kill or maim a demonstrater while off duty and using NYPD issued equipment the city and their cowboy police chief should be held responsible. Cops are such bullies and pigs. There is a reason why they score so low as professionals unlike their counterparts on the NYFD. they were
The true heros on 9/11.