"Battlefield Main Street"
Forced poses that cut off circulation and cause long-lasting nerve damage.
Forced defecation in front of female officers.
Denying food, water, sleep.
Why? Military industrial complex? Shock-doctrine policy making?
We focus on systemic issues on this site, not so much the symptoms. We believe police brutality – turning good people into unrelenting tools – is a symptom. What do you think is the cause?
Here are a few items to ponder, then discuss.
from The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US
…the “1033 Program”… gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.
1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40-year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this year’s staggering take topped the charts, next year’s orders are up 400 percent over the same period.
This upswing coincides with an increasingly military-like style of law enforcement most recently seen in the Occupy Wall Street crackdowns.
And now LA Occupy prisoners are getting treatment with shades of Abu Ghraib.
From first-hand account: http://exiledonline.com/yasha-levine-released-from-jail-exposes-lapds-appalling-treatment-of-detained-occupy-la-protesters/” target=”_blank”>LA Raid Treatment – First Hand Account
The 100 protesters in my detainee group were kept handcuffed with their hands behind their backs for 7 hours, denied food and water and forced to sit/sleep on a concrete floor. Some were so tired they passed out face down on the cold and dirty concrete, hands tied behind their back. As a result of the tight cuffs, I wound up losing sensation in my left palm/thumb and still haven’t recovered it now, a day and a half after they finally took them off.
Where do the dots connect?
UPDATE: 12/7: SF Camp was raided last night-
About OccupyEducated
The Business Insider article you link to is in turn based on the following longer article:
This has to be seen to be believed. In particular, check out all 8 of the photos in their slide show, and ask yourselves whether this looks like equipment that local police forces in a free country ought to have. Carlson’s excellent text then drives home the point in more detail.
Note: the WebCite® link at the end of the Carlson reference is broken; it has somehow absorbed the period at the end of the citation, which isn’t supposed to part of the link. Let’s see if this version (without the period) will work:
“We focus on systemic issues on this site, not so much the symptoms. We believe police brutality – turning good people into unrelenting tools – is a symptom. What do you think is the cause?”
I recommended that Stanley Milgram’s classic book Obedience to Authority (1974) be added to the Primer list, precisely because of the insight it offers on this topic. Please read my Forum post on how Milgram’s book can help us to understand the behavior of the police:
Just like a soldier, the police have to dehumanize their “enemy”. They can’t see us as having a family, a soul or anything human. We are a problem they are, by their duty, there to fix.
Their training consists of how to take someone down, and take control, using billy clubs and handcuffs. They aren’t trained to be peaceful. Like the university experiment long ago (can’t remember the name) responsibility is not on them. When people do not take responsibility for their own actions, they do what they think they are supposed to do.
Lawyers and judges are the same. The power is in the LAW, not in their hands. They aren’t held responsible.
We (people) can justify ANY action. Just takes a bit of thought.
Matthew
Another recent article on police detachment:
http://www.beatitudessociety.org/article/342-occupy-in-seattle-blessed-are-the-peacemakers