This Just Happened.
by zunguzungu
Twenty minutes ago, I was sitting on the steps of Sproul, listening to a teach-0in on the UC’s relationship with the Los Alamos nuclear facility. About a hundred people were scattered across the steps, in different groups, and maybe 15 police on the edges of things. It is the single most normal thing that ever happens on Sproul Plaza, or it would be if there wasn’t one tent – for a single person, unoccupied– at the very center of the steps.I was sitting right next to it.
Without warning, a UCPD police lieutenant ran across the steps, grabbed the tent and tried to run away with it. Someone else grabbed the tent, two more cops moved in, the tent is breaking into many pieces, and other cops (and many, many cameras converge). We’re shouting; I was shouting “ARE YOU CHILDREN?!! IS THIS RECESS IN KINDERGARTEN?!!” The cops arrest the person who was trying to prevent them from taking the tent, and take him away around the side of Sproul Plaza. A crowd of fifty or so follow behind them, shouting, and three of them create a barricade (batons out) around the entrance where they’ve taken the person they arrested. My friend Richard shouts, “Now the UC is in the business of disappearing people?” My heart is beating very fast.
When faced with a numerically superior force, resort to guerilla warfare? Are the UCB cops taking lessons from Mao and Sun tzu?
@jonathan Dresner, perhaps, or perhaps the Colonists during the American Revolution…
It resembled nothing so much as a very daring piece of capture-the-flag.
No, Zungu, this isn’t kindergarten recess. These particular bullies are highly trained and well armed. I’m glad your heart still pounds when you are exposed to random acts of violence. Hold your heart with care. Next time, the flag could be your body instead of a tent.
Are they police or security for the university? I wonder why they have the power to do that? It’s the death knell of the patriarchy and they can’t stand it… kinda like the Penn State riots- boys being boys.. disgusting. That never ended well.
Mary Lou. Police under 830.1 P.C. and they are unionized too
Would you like to get back at the UCPD without affecting the livelihood of the officer(s)? Go though this channel: FUPOA Their union. Ask the police officers for their union representative. Tell them that you are with Occupy Berkeley and you want to mobilize a group of Occupiers to protect the pension and livelihood of the officers. Have two people: man and woman speak to the union rep while everyone else carrying signs reading: WE SUPPORT THE FUPOA (Federated University Police Officers Association). They may look at you strangely, but by supporting them, the level of violence will decrease. And you may be able to negotiate with them openly too. My suggestion?
March with signs in hand and be vocal. Not noisy, but vocal enough so the officers would look. When they come out. Have the crowd remain 30 feet away, with sign supporting the FUPOA, have both the man and woman discuss their reasons for the occupation and also, have the University campus newspaper involved too. Honestly, what union member: conservative or liberal would want to sacrifice their pension?
None
P.S., I’m TimFromLA
Agreed! Let’s take the discussion to them!
Dear Tim,
The idea that we can appeal to police’s better nature through tactical alliances with them is one of the most pernicious myths to circulate through the Occupy movement. There is zero historical precedent for such alliances bearing fruit, and plenty of evidence that police will kindly talk to you about how they share your concerns and suffer from the same financial pressures that you do but then turn around and break your face with a baton. Let’s get real about what police do. . . These cops get paid close to 100k/year to follow orders. And follow orders they will. See the second piece here:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/11474433084/welcome-to-the-occupations
The cops arrest the person who was trying to prevent them from taking the tent, and take him away around the side of Sproul Plaza. A crowd of fifty or so follow behind them, shouting, and three of them create a barricade (batons out) around the entrance where they’ve taken the person they arrested.
Something I noticed in watching videos (and trying to capture names from badges): when police put someone face down on the ground, they surround that person so that what’s going on is obscured. One of the people taking video of arrests was basically on the ground trying to document what was visible from between one officer’s feet.
Makes it much harder to see officers’ names and faces, and makes it much easier for an officer to get away with stuff that shouldn’t be gotten away with.
On a related note, when someone at the graduate student meeting leading into the GA tonight asked if it would be possible to get the footage the police were recording on Wednesday, it occurred to me that when I glimpsed an officer filming in the afternoon from the steps of Sproul, the camera was directed out at the crowd and (as far as I could tell) away from the area where the violence first erupted (closest to the building and a row of bushes and much of the crowd away from the cop with the camera). Luckily, there were employees in Sproul who were looking out of the windows and recording the violence from there, but that seems to be the only vantage (and a chance one at that) from which one could get a clear shot of what was happening. The footage from CalTV, for example, captured some of it from the ground (especially the unnecessarily forceful arrests), but as Rachel points out, it also caught a lot of, well, feet. I’m not sure how much of the day they had officers filming, but it also struck me as strange that a number of people I talked to who thought that they were at the “front line” when the police started in with batons around 3:30 and 9:30 each were confused and startled to realize that the protesters were actually being attacked from the opposite side, as they were themselves unable to see what was going on.
Which is a lot of speculation to say, I was taken aback by the fact that the UCPD had the foresight (or perhaps it’s standard procedure that I just don’t know about? in which case– great– I’m always happy to be proven just paranoid about things like this) to have one of their own “record” what happened, and I’d be really curious to see what exactly it was that their version of events shows.
Which is a lot of speculation to say, I was taken aback by the fact that the UCPD had the foresight (or perhaps it’s standard procedure that I just don’t know about? in which case– great– I’m always happy to be proven just paranoid about things like this) to have one of their own “record” what happened
IIRC, it is standard procedure for officers on the scene to film a protest. I am somewhat skeptical about what happens when their recording uncovers officer misconduct. For perspective, in the OPD’s “Crowd Control Policies” handbook, the section on video documentation focuses on establishing “criminal activity” within the crowd. The only reference to documentation’s role in managing police behavior looks like this:
I don’t have any real idea how frequent Internal Affairs investigations are (since they’re internal). But I don’t see any real incentive for officers documenting events to focus on instances of police misconduct when they are filming a protest– they’re proceeding from the assumption that everyone else is the problem.