Police State Update

posted by The Vidiot @ 4:40 PM Permalink

I'm just going to rip this in it's entirety from the Bartcop E! website because it's updated daily and will be lost tomorrow. Here goes:

Journalists Demand Probe
MacArthur Park
Police Chief William J. Bratton said Wednesday that some of the police tactics used to clear immigration protesters from a park were inappropriate, as news videos showed officers striking people with batons and firing rubber bullets into crowds that included children.

Images showed police hitting a television cameraman to the ground and shoving people who were walking away from officers at Tuesday's demonstration. Some injured people were seen in the videos, including a Hispanic man with a bleeding welt on his stomach and back.

Spanish-language TV station Telemundo said one of its reporters and three camera operators were injured and taken to the hospital by police. Fox 11 aired video of a station camerawoman apparently being struck by a baton-wielding police officer in riot gear.

KPCC radio reporter Patricia Nazario said she was hit in the back and ribs with a baton, then hit her head and twisted her ankle while falling from a blow.

"'Why did you hit me? I'm a reporter,'" Nazario recalled saying Wednesday during an interview on her station. "And he hit me again, harder that time, and I fell; and I fell on the dirt and my phone flew like about 12 feet in front of me."

MacArthur Park

The Radio and Television News Association Demand Probe

Aztlan Electronic News - L.A.P.D. Riots at May 1st Macarthur Park Protest

LiveLeak.com - Telemundo TV Crew Caught In MacArthur Park Clash

LiveLeak.com - LAPD officers moved in to disperse May Day crowds (long version)


I can't believe this story isn't the lede on every station in the city.
One of the reporters, Marc Coogan of KCBS/KCAL, has been on the air here for close to 40 years. He's old school, and always wears a suit. He was batoned and sent sprawling.
KABC's Sid Garcia was hit with a rubber bullet.
The Fox camerawoman ended up in the hospital.
Telemundo is NBC/Universal/GE.
Reporters from all 4 major networks were beaten, and yet their corporate masters remain painfully silent.

I can believe it. The sight of those cops shooting at unarmed civilians brought back unsettling memories I have of Venezuela, pre-Chavez. I was in a crowd of people, minding my own business along with a bunch of others minding their own business, when somebody came running by me yelling "policia, polica" and I turned around and saw a bunch of cops with guns, shooting rubber bullets and aiming right at me. (They looked JUST LIKE the cops in the videos above BTW.) I high-tailed it out of there, along with everybody else. But I remember thinking, "Well, that's what you get for being in a third-world country, silly. Police states don't much like crowds."

Indeed.

Labels: police state