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There are no words to capture the hubris and flagrant disregard for the Constitution, and decency that this represents. But we’ll try…
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More evidence of the militarization of our police.
Posted: 11/17/11 04:51 PM ET
The NYPD are up to something a little more vile and tricky than ordering baton-wielding police goons to charge recklessly up Manhattan streets, beating every man, woman and child in their path. ‘Snatch and Grab’ operations are currently being employed against Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park.
“They keep pushing into the crowd in formations, grabbing people, and then withdrawing,” said Eric, a college student who wished not to share his last name, from Zuccotti Park over the phone. “They’ve done it three more times since you left.”
During the police operations he spoke of, Eric was struck in the groin, pushed to the ground and cracked across the shin with a nightstick. “I had my open hands in the air the whole time,” he said. ” I wasn’t threatening anyone. They just beat everyone unfortunate enough to be around this one guy until they drug him out.”
These operations do not strike me as random. What the police are engaging in looks like a military crowd control tactic called ‘snatch and grab,’ something I practiced in training on various occasions in the military. It consists of a dual process of intelligence gathering and target extraction. Leaders or agitators within the crowd are identified, after which a line of soldiers, usually in a diamond wedge, push into the crowd so that one or two soldiers in the rear can grab the identified agitators and remove them, thus ripening a crowd for dispersal. Often times, cameras are used to identify potential targets.
As a veteran of street demonstrations in New York, I’m no stranger to police surveillance at protests. However, this morning was the first time I felt these cameras were part of a real-time tactical strategy.
| — | Ayesha Kazmi, blogger,who recently wrote to Occupy movement participants ”Tested on Palestinians, Perfected on #OWS Protesters: Introducing the LRAD Sound Cannon” | Al Akhbar English Max Blumenthal - Fri, 2011-11-18 |
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Norm Stamper, chief of the Seattle Police Department during the WTO protests in 1999. “Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street” | The Nation 11/28/11Today’s must-read. |
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, calmly overseeing the eviction of Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park in a suit.
Of everything I’ve seen tonight, this calm indifference is just chilling. The photographer was threatened with arrest for even taking this photo.
Threatened with arrest for taking this photo!?
Internet! You know what to do.
The NYPD is notorious for repression of peaceable assembly (2004 RNC anyone?). Still, that doesn’t make it constitutional. And why is the Tea Party news, exactly?
Saturday, September 24, 2011 Occupy Wall Street march September 24th 2011.
The peaceful Occupy Wall Street protest march turned violent as the NYPD corralled and pepper sprayed the participants. Mass arrests were made and loaded onto a NYC bus further locking traffic. The protest march took a route from Zuccotti Park to Union Square on East 14th Street. The protesters were marching back to Zuccotti Park when the NYPD turned violent. Hitting, arresting and forcing protesters into a small area. At that point a NYPD supervisor yelled shut up to one of the protesters and shot pepper spray into her eyes point blank range and hitting a half dozen protesters (including 3 police officers) when they had nowhere to go. The same supervising officer was seen (photographed) laughing after the arrests while looking at his text messages. The peaceful protest march started as 300 participants but rose to over 1,000 as the event stopped traffic in lower Manhattan. People spontaneously joined the march over a 2 hour period.
