Police Brutality During Occupation Protest in Sproul Today
This is how police treat students on the UC campus. Watch the video and see for yourself that the protestors were standing, with their hands raised and not advancing on the police. Observe the police strike students multiple times with their batons despite no resistance being offered.
Labels: OWS
posted by James at 7:50 PM
76 Comments:
Two words: John Burris.
This is B.S. I carried a badge for nearly 5 years and would have never done anything like this. What’s with California cops?!
Cal cops are, by and large, serious dicks. Generally uneducated, hardly trained, drunk with power, and completely spoiled by their "protect our own at all costs" all-powerful union. And this is coming from a hardcore Republican. That said, who knows what that protestor said or did to provoke that cop. Obviously it was a borderline criminal overreaction, but maybe there is a reason.
Also, let's be honest about what these protests are about: nothing. Marching through Berkeley will accomplish absolutely nothing. There is no hope, no change. The only effect is to create these senseless confrontations with the police. And the protesters know their actions are futile, yet they do it any way. Plenty of blame to go around.
Just out of curiosity, James, why do you mention that the behavior is illegal? Does that matter to you? Why or why not?
As with what 8:31 said, we have no idea what transpired before this video. This is a snapshot into what was clearly a larger event. It is incredibly difficult to draw conclusions as to what happened based on a minute and a half long clip.
I tend to agree that it's hard to draw ultimate conclusions, but I have no difficulty feeling outraged over what I see in the clip. Neither, incidentally, would a jury.
It wouldn't matter if the students were protesting something as trivial as dirty floors at a peanut bar, or if they had insulted the mothers of every officer there, this reaction is completely, jaw-droppingly outrageous.
I hope Dean Edley puts some of those tuition $$ to good use in helping to hire counsel to prosecute the balls off those jerks.
Chris Brown:
I'm curious. If you had orders to clear an area, and if individuals refused to move from the area, what would you do? Should police never use force in such a situation?
Your comment ("I...would have never done anything like this") suggests that force is always uncalled for in such circumstances. Is that really the case?
Where I come from, a police department’s legal function at a demonstration is to protect citizens freedom of speech. That is to protect them from counter protestors and bad elements that may be seeded within the protest itself.
There are times when crowd control devises like tear gas may be used, but they are only used by SERT (Special Emergency Response Team) members and only according to SERT training.
To respond specifically to your question, we would not be ordered to clear an area unless there was an emergency occurring within the area needed to be cleared. Yes, violence is always uncalled for in a peaceful demonstration.
If molotov cocktails are being thrown I may put on a different hat.
I was there when this happened and can fill in a little of what happened before and after the video -- not sure it provides much context though.
Anyhow, the police asked the students to take down the tents that had been set up and gave some sort of warning. I couldn't hear the exact warning though because of all the shouting.
About 5-10 minutes later, the police forced their way in and took down most of the tents. The police then set up a perimeter around where the tents were.
Based on the angle, I think this video clip started shortly after that. That is, the police started hitting the students AFTER the tents had already been taken down. In the video, you can see a second cluster of police to the left, standing apart from the officers hitting the students. Those police, i.e. the ones not hitting the students, were the ones actually engaged in the tent dismantling. So I'm not sure what rationale this set of police had for hitting folks. Maybe they were just trying to force back the crowd in general.
In the back, you can kind of see a single tent still hanging around. This tent was standing apart from the rest though, and there were easier ways to get to it than forcing their way through the mass of students in front of them, so I doubt that's what the police were trying to get to.
Anyhow, what happens after the video ends is the police backed away around the corner of Sproul Hall. I think they had a mea culpa moment and had to regroup. The students then reoccupied the area and set up two new tents.
Wow. There have been videos of supposed police overreaction posted on this site before that I thought were mislabeled. But this is disturbing.
The Chronicle had an article about it this morning: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/BA861LSR8G.DTL
It seems to me (based on the article) that the university issued an order not to erect tents on campus. Any reason why the school can't make such an order? It seems to me that they certainly can, and can direct the UC police to use force to enforce such an order. Batons and bean bags doesn't seem unreasonable to me. The school has an interest in not letting Sproul turn into a fecal pool like some of the other Occupy camps. Could they have done it another way? Perhaps. But that doesn't speak to whether they were permitted to do it this way.
I feel bad for the people who were hit unprovoked. But the guy who keeps approaching the police and egging them on. I hope he got the shit beat out of him. Dick.
For some reason I'm always surprised by the perverse authoritarianism that rears its head anonymously on this blog.
James,
The response today on the blog is pretty measured, so I am not sure what you are talking about. In any event, you should be the last person to complain about knee-jerk responses. I do not see the problem with saying that someone egging on cops is asking for it, even if the police act wrongly as a whole.
Saying "I hope they get the shit beat out of them" is perverse and authoritarian. It's perverse to cheer on violence towards someone who is not being violent simply because you dislike how he or she is behaving and it's authoritarian because it accepts the right of the police to "beat the shit" out of someone without any real reason. In fact, the police never have a reason to "beat the shit" out of someone. They have the legal right to arrest someone and use force to make that arrest if they're faced with forceful resistance, but even that doesn't qualify as a right to "beat the shit" out of someone. That's a perverse response. Taking delight out of violence is perverse.
"As with what 8:31 said, we have no idea what transpired before this video. This is a snapshot into what was clearly a larger event. It is incredibly difficult to draw conclusions as to what happened based on a minute and a half long clip."
What? We know exactly what "transpired before this video." The police walked up to the students. The students kept their arms at their sides. The police began beating the students.
What else do you need to know? Tell me a scenario that would have justified this. Tell me a scenario where unarmed students should be brutally beaten. Tell me a scenario where there is something that could have "transpired before" that would have justified this.
And 9:02, you said: "The school has an interest in not letting Sproul turn into a fecal pool like some of the other Occupy camps. Could they have done it another way? Perhaps. But that doesn't speak to whether they were permitted to do it this way."
I agree that the school has an interest in not letting Sproul turn into an encampment. But it takes a serious error in logic to say that police brutality is a justified means of protecting that interest. If the students were breaking a law, arrest them. It is called due process. We don't just beat people out of places if we don't want them there.
A scenario in which it would be justified? If they had ignored repeated warnings to leave the area. If there was a situation requiring the police to enter the area and the people were preventing them from doing so. If the people were damaging the property of another.
All of those circumstances would justify the police using force to move or remove the protestors.
Were any of those the case? I don't know. A 90 second video doesn't provide that kind of information. So rather than immediately jumping on the police, how about you provide a little more info (like A. Fong did) before you all jump on the police brutality bandwagon.
They obviously aren't trying to move the students because they beat them and then retreat.
I think it is particularly fucked up that we believe violence is the appropriate response to "damaging property of another." This wasn't violence used to arrest someone legitimately, this was police violence for the sake of perpetrating violence. As Chris said, the police should be protecting the demonstrators instead of attacking them.
11:41 - I haven't taken crim pro (and I'm not going to, this is why I pay Barbri), so I invite others to correct me, but I think the problem with your argument is that it strikes me as odd that the police would have a choice between arresting students and beating students. As Corey put it, "If the students were breaking a law, arrest them. It's called due process. We don't just beat people out of places if we don't want them there."
Why didn't UCPD attempt to arrest the students if they were obstructing the area? Presumably those students were prepared to suffer that consequence for their civil disobedience. And if the students resist arrest then some force would be warranted. But UCPD didn't even attempt an arrest and that's what makes their baton use so shocking to me.
I'm not a Section 1983 or crim pro expert, but isn't there pretty consistent case law that you can't beat up non-violent protesters to effect arrest? My quick Google scholar search found this case, but there must be others.
So I feel pretty disturbed by the content of this video. But I feel disempowered to do anything about it. Ideas? Anyone I should contact with a scathingly written email or letter?
The most interesting theme to arise out of Occupy is witnessing the extent those in power - governments, corporations, media, the cops - are going to preserve the status quo: which helps them stay very, very comfortable. The lengths that these entities have gone to in an effort to keep the status quo are amazing:
-Discrediting the protesters as "young, whiny losers" even though the stats say most protesters are about 33 years old and employed.
-Constantly ripping them for "having no message" even though the message has been fairly clear since, approximately, Day 1.
-Excluding them from public spaces.
-Tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, flash grenades, flashlights, and batons.
-Calling almost all forms of exercise of 1st Amendment rights "whining."
Law students have the privilege of learning and knowing the excesses of state action: we read about them in case after case, go to a multitude of free lunches talking about improving life for underrepresented Americans, we deplore the violence of government and law enforcement in countries far, far away. Yet we fall victim to the push for the "status quo" by calling protesters unruly, whiny, and "deserving" what they get.
Future lawyers who champion enterprising lawmakers, attorneys, and activists shouldn't be so afraid of the challenges to the status quo we see on our campus and around the country. We should know better than to give our wholesale trust to the university and its police force, who have a very real interest in keeping things just the way they are, and will – apparently – beat up non-aggressive students to maintain control and keep the status quo.
"A scenario in which it would be justified? If they had ignored repeated warnings to leave the area. If there was a situation requiring the police to enter the area and the people were preventing them from doing so. If the people were damaging the property of another."
...in each of these situations, arrest is an option. Why would this sort of violence be necessary? Why would it be appropriate? More importantly, why would it be lawful? It wouldn't. It wasn't.
As others have said, Corey is right. Corey's basic point being:
"I agree that the school has an interest in not letting Sproul turn into an encampment. But it takes a serious error in logic to say that police brutality is a justified means of protecting that interest. If the students were breaking a law, arrest them. It is called due process. We don't just beat people out of places if we don't want them there."
Particularly in the Bay Area but to some extent nationwide, clashes between police and protestors are becoming a larger part of what we think of when we think of the Occupy movement. That seems pretty unfortunate to me. I have disliked the Occupy movement from the beginning for what I see as its marriage of vague or half-baked thinking with a tone of smug, slogan-chanting certainty. But I also think that bringing mass attention to economic inequality can be really valuable, even when it's done in a naive way. Whereas I see no value whatsoever in adding another entry to the history of cop/protestor battles. And at least in this instance, it seems pretty hard to deny that the cops are almost entirely to blame for this decline.
Quoting from the case that Armen just linked to:
The Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable seizures permits law enforcement officers to use only such force to effect an arrest as is "objectively reasonable" under the circumstances. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989); see also Chew, 27 F.3d at 1440-41. As we have repeatedly said, whether the force used to effect an arrest is reasonable "is ordinarily a question of fact for the jury." Liston v. County of Riverside, 120 F.3d 965, 976 n. 10 (9th Cir.1997) (citing, e.g., Forrester v. City of San Diego, 25 F.3d 804, 806 (9th Cir.1994)); see also Barlow v. Ground, 943 F.2d 1132, 1135 (9th Cir.1991). Although excessive force cases can be decided as a matter of law, they rarely are because the Fourth Amendment test for reasonableness is inherently fact-specific. See Chew, 27 F.3d at 1443 (citing Reed v. Hoy, 909 F.2d 324, 330 (9th Cir.1989)). It is a test that escapes "mechanical application" and "requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case," Graham, 490 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, and thus naturally favors jury resolution.
Again, there is not enough information in this short clip to determine whether this was "excessive force." Could it have been? Sure. Do we know from the video? No.
Also, I (obviously) have not done any research on this, but does anyone know whether the police are entitled to use force in situations other than while making an arrest? I think the answer is most likely yes, but don't know what the constraints on that use is.
There are a bunch. Self-defense, defense of others, defense of others’ property, capturing a fleeing felon on probable cause of felony committed inside or outside the officer’s presence, or of a misdemeanor committed within the officer’s presence. I’m sure there are more. I promise, though, that every one of those situations ends with an arrest.
I found a version of UCPD's Crowd Control Policy online through a quick Google search - not sure whether this is the current version (it's from 2000), but pretty interesting nonetheless: http://administration.berkeley.edu/prb/PRBCrowdPolicy.pdf
Pages 9-10 make it seem like there are lots of non-arrest scenarios where police would use force.
So, based on what L'Alex linked to, "less lethal" force, such as use of batons, can be "deployed to disperse a crowd at the discretion of the Overall Commander." The police are supposed to give notification beforehand.
It sounds, from A. Fong's account that the police informed the crowd to take down the tents. Whether what they said is similar to the examples in the book, I obviously don't know.
Additionally, if you watch the video, right before the police start striking the protestors, one of them appears to be receiving some message on an ear piece. I have no idea who this is, but I imagine they are getting direction or authorization to use "less lethal" force. From whom, I obviously don't know.
I think that, based on the guidelines (if it is still the applicable policy), the account of what A. Fong said, and the case that Armen cited, it is by no means clear that the police committed "police brutality."
Is there some other circumstance that I'm missing? Perhaps the argument, then, is that following the guidelines allows for police brutality, but, after reading them, I would disagree with that statement.
2:23,
Sorry, but A. Fong said this happened after the police took down the tents. Also, they retreat after the brutality, so they clearly weren't trying to disperse anyone.
Can we get over ourselves and our ability to dissect case law and focus on the real issue of this post: It really, really sucks that the cops can just beat the hell out of students - twice.
I know my oversimplification may bother the drafters of the exquisite legal analysis just above. But I'm sick of efforts to bend the language of case law to make police violence against non-violent victims - protesters, perpetrators, the homeless, whatever - ok. Take a second and think about how much power the police have. Stop giving it away for free; they have plenty that they've earned over decades of erosion of civil rights. (Check Miranda on Lexis: 384 U.S. 436. It gets the red-stop-sign Shepard's treatment.)
This is not your father's Berkeley. The cops are more aggressive, the administration less tolerant, the students more cynical and dismissive. I wonder when we'll reach the point when alumni don't want to donate, parents don't want to send their kids here, and when Berkeley ceases to be Berkeley, but just another expensive university that used to care about its students' well-being.
I think the fundamental difference is that I want the police to have the ability to maintain order. I think that dispersing a crowd that is, by it's own self-chosen name, occupying public space, should occur.
This is not a regular protest where they chant and yell in a megaphone. They set up tents. They used property to the exclusion of others. It is public property. The police should be empowered to ensure that public property is available for the use of the public, not "occupied" for protracted periods of time by a small group.
Where is the concern for the rights of the people who were not there; the people who the police are working for?
right or wrong, i really hope none of this affects our usnwr ranking.
3:02 wins.
I wonder if the law students that are protesting would be against the protestors if they realized the increased costs for providing police at these protests will ultimately lead to increased tuition.
I don't see what the problem is here. That girl was clearly mouthing off to the officer.
although there is a good chance 3:09 may be right, the bottom line is that no one will know whether the police's conduct was justified unless we can get someone to report what the girl was saying. Are there no lip readers among the commentariat? I think this could be dispositive.
I think she said, "Vote for Rick Perry."
I think it would be better if we left politics out of this discussion. The question is simple: was she asking for it?
I love the following people: James, Corey, Andrew, Chris Brown (both of them), and probably some others.
The anonymous people scare me. I hope most of you aren't law students, but rather are virgins in your moms' respective basements who troll any forum they can.
3:22, I agree that you shouldn't sidetrack the issue with your snide liberal comments. The problem is not that a presidential candidate cannot name 3 federal agencies. Neither can I. The problem is that there are people that can name ALL the federal agencies. And those people corrupt the political process to benefit the 1%. Also, obviously the girl said more than that. I do hope a lip reader chimes in soon though.
Dan #2, surely you can't deny Chris Brown would empathize with the police response.
Yes yes, of course one of the Chris Brown's would. But he gets a pass for being the voice of a generation
2:55, you fail to acknowledge that the whoopin' was delivered after the tents were taken down. These people were just standing around. In a public place. They weren't preventing others from standing there too.
After the police removed the tents, a few of them started beating on protesters who were just standing there. Mouthing off or not, whenever an officer has the option to arrest someone or beat on someone, as long as nothing impedes the officers' ability to make an arrest, and the officer chooses to beat someone, that's brutality.
It doesn't matter if their policy allows it. Dispersing a crowd? Are you kidding me? What if it was a bunch of third-graders protesting the price of cupcakes? In your view, could the police have beat them with batons without provocation and be justified in doing so?
I suppose this goes back to why police brutality is a question of fact that takes in all the circumstances of an event. Using a baton on a third grader is obviously different than using a baton on a full grown person.
Would the police be able to disperse a crowd of third graders? If the situation warranted it, absolutely. The question is whether what they do is over the top.
Here, the police jabbed protestors in the stomach with batons. On the spectrum of what is available to them, that seems fairly low. They did not appear to strike anyone in the head, nor do I see any swings of the baton like a bat (though it may have happened and I missed it). They don't use tear gas. They don't use pepper spray. They don't use tasers.
I guess the question for me is: what other non-deadly force could the police use other than jabs to the fatty mid section?
Could they have arrested them? I think if they wanted to, they could have. But I don't think they are required to arrest them.
"I guess the question for me is: what other non-deadly force could the police use other than jabs to the fatty mid section?"
At least we agree that these same attacks on skinny, fit people with great abs would be totally unwarranted.
I knew there was some common ground between us!
I'd encourage people to ignore the trolls.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164535/penn-state-and-berkeley-tale-two-protests
I hate cops and liberals. This is pretty awesome.
Now on ATL ("The Berkeley Beatings"): http://abovethelaw.com/2011/11/the-berkeley-beatings/
everyone's always hating on anonymous posters here, saying to ignore us and stuff. we deserve a voice too, dammit. we are the 99%.
I always dreaded the rise of the Occupy N&B movement.
From the Chancellor:
"It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience."
Actually, bro, it is. You know how you can tell? Because it was NOT VIOLENT.
Anyone who uses the word "bro" should be beaten by the police too.
5:32 - you know how I know you're a bro?...
Anyway, Chancellor Bigelow just sent an email to campus basically trying to cover his ass since his police force seems to have made national news overnight. It's too long to post in full but the first section is about why UC has a policy of no encampments and that it's not a political choice, but a pragmatic one in that UC can't regulate all those stinky people. He also talks about how UC gave some warning about the policy, that the protesters knew about the policy and voted to disregard it. That part of the email is pretty reasonable in my mind. But then he says this:
"It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers' efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them."
I think the key fact we're missing is whether the officers attempted to arrest the kids in the video and they "resisted", or if the police made no attempt to arrest them and just started jabbing.
Occupiers have started shooting gang members. How can this be non-violent?
Also, I'm pretty sure most of us stay anonymous because of all the rampant viewpoint suppression the named posters engage in all the time.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-occupy-oakland-shooting,0,1851371.story
Viewpoint suppression? Hardly. Unlike the anons, any of the named commenters would say any of this in public.
And, of course, the shooting hasn't been shown to be anyway connected to OWS.
this type of vigilante justice makes me sick. it's one thing to gather to express your frustration. it's quite another to act as judge, jury, and executioner of people who are "undesirable" to your squatter camp. let's just hope this violence wasn't racially motivated. chances are, though, it was. what's next, le guillotine?
@10:51
Sh*t happens in Oakland. Don't be a race troll.
is this really trolling? the protesters surrounded the victim to block the media from covering what was going on. why would they do this otherwise? and, does "sh*t" really "happen[]" right in front of hundreds of camped spectators? that doesn't seem typical. this is not your run-of-the-mill, gang-related random act of violence.
cutting back on police forces and closing prisons will disproportionately affect inner cities and minorities. absent delusional calls for a bigger pie, you have to recognize that there will be competing interests even within this basically anarchical movement. i predict these incidents will increase, and mayor quan will be lambasted for not taking more decisive action to control this sooner.
agreed, but not 100%. Occupy US is the only slightly prettier sister of the Tea Party movement. This does not in any way resemble the Civil Rights Movement, or the valid and meaningful Arab Spring. At base, this is a collection of riffraff and opportunistic troublemakers mixed in with a thin layer of directionless dreamers. as boalties, we should be smart enough not to cater to this noise, as it's unproductive.
i do agree, however, that @10:51 is just race trolling. likely the protestors banded together so that no video or photo could mar their "movement," or detract from their claims of being non-violent. whether occupiers did it or not, the public would assume they did if they had video footage. the trolling needs to stop. N&B should maintain itself as a forum for meaningful intercourse amongst the student body.
So you white folk get to decide what's "meaningful"?
That sounds really fair...
That's funny, I thought a BLF after-party was the correct "forum for meaningful intercourse amongst the student body."
Also, white folks don't get to decide what's "meaningful." They get to decide what's "trolling."
Remember that time a bunch of students (including law students) got beat by UCPD in 2009, and Prof. Brazil wrote some 100 page Police Review Board report, and everybody said we wouldn't get beat up again? Yeah, that was awesome.
For law students who are interested in accountability --- as in, anything actually happening to the cops who beat up our friends, and the Administrators who ordered it --- let's shut down the University on Tuesday. Everybody out!
Reading some of these comments makes me really hope you aren't Boalties (i.e. "But the guy who keeps approaching the police and egging them on. I hope he got the shit beat out of him.") Otherwise, I've never been more ashamed of our law school.
"Occupy US is the only slightly prettier sister of the Tea Party movement."
Tea Party had a specific focus, went to town meetings, got out the vote, and elected the most GOP-heavy House of Representatives in over half a century. And, oh by the way, they famously picked up their trash after their protests. Let's see how the "prettier sister" does on all those scores.
@11:39 and 11:59
"Also, white folks don't get to decide what's "meaningful." They get to decide what's "trolling.""
-I'm not white.
At any rate, I wish this Occupy Earth movement was more like the tea party (with perhaps a touch of Arab Spring). I’m happy that people are coming together to air their grievances, but without that lemming like fear of HIM and taxes that the Republican’s have, this is just a waste of time and money.
Hey 11:20, way to spit out the repeated (and entirely incorrect) factoids from O'Reilly & Beck:
"At base, this is a collection of riffraff and opportunistic troublemakers mixed in with a thin layer of directionless dreamers."
http://theweek.com/article/index/220529/the-demographics-of-occupy-wall-street-by-the-numbers
46% are over 35.
20% over 45.
13% make over $75k/year.
How about looking at some things that the Right often opts to not consult when making broad declarations about, well, everything. These interesting things are called "FACTS".
9:48 - lots of folks on the left have been saying essentially the same thing about Occupy: it's a varied crew, it doesn't have a focused message, it includes a sprinkling of anarchist types, violent types, and plain old lost souls. and it's really, really white. some of the early polling showed a skew toward more educated people. there's a healthy does of young elites who didn't make it onto the gravy train and who are anxious about their loss of participation in the prestige sectors of society.
i have lots of sympathy for people who are hurting, but if we're going to be honest about it, that's who's doing Occupy as of today.
I'd really just ignore the ATL trolls who are only interested in spreading misinformation.
Why is everyone who disagrees with J@mes a troll? Sorry if more people are participating in this post than the usual monologue you have going on with yourself in your other lame-a$s posts.
Everyone, on whatever side of the issue (but especially those hiding behind anonymity and falling over themselves to apologize for institutional and individual police violence), should note that "the protestors," "kids," and "collection of riffraff and opportunistic troublemakers mixed in with a thin layer of directionless dreamers" referred to in earlier comments includes, e.g., former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass (at 1:13 in this KTVU news video: http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/berkeley-tension-mount-at-occupy-berkeley-uc/vD77f/), and tenured faculty (watch UCPD drag Assoc. Prof. Celeste Langan of the English Dept. and Townsend Center to the ground by her hair 13 seconds into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHXuf6qJas&feature=player_embedded).
Oh, you mean, while arresting her? So... are you arguing that she was wrongfully arrested? Because I haven't heard that from anyone... in fact, it seems to be the opposite: people are saying if the police are going to use this force, they should be arresting people.
Why was my last comment deleted?
I'm the 99% and you are silencing me!
Hurry up and post le dean's e-mail so we can get feedback!
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