Videos Show Police Using Pepper Spray at Protest on the Financial System

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

For a few moments on Saturday, the confrontations between the police and the protesters just south of Union Square in Manhattan seemed fairly typical. People pushed, the police shoved and arrests were made, and in the many videos recording the protest, it was not always clear which of the three had come first.

As the police arrested a protester in the street, an officer wearing a white shirt — indicating a rank of lieutenant or above — walked toward a group of demonstrators nearby and sent a blast of pepper spray that hit four women, the videos show.

Numerous videos and photos captured the aftermath: two women crumpled on the sidewalk in pain, one of them screaming. They were temporarily blinded, one of the women, Chelsea Elliott, said.

Ms. Elliott, 25, who was not arrested, acknowledged that “there were some rough people out there” at the protests. She and the other women were penned in behind police netting meant for crowd control. But, she said, neither she nor the women around her did anything to warrant having pepper spray used on them.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/nyregion/videos-show-police-using-pepper-spray-at-protest.html

[virgogal]

1. Those "rough people out there" will spoil this for everyone.

[tcaudilllg]

12. On which side, the police or the protestors?

[Cherchez la Femme]

41. That may be the point

for them being there :(

[Dawson Leery]

2. Rumor is his last name is Bolonga.

[starroute]

3. See this other thread for the speculation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2001047

The question is whether the officer who appears fuzzily in the mace video is the same as the officer who is shown very clearly in the still photo taken by another protester -- and who definitely appears to be Anthony Bologna.

[Scruffy1]

4. Clearly assault. yes there are some rough people out there.

They are called police.

[tama]

6. His heroism

deserves all the publicity it can get.

[bluestateboomer]

44. Identified!

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/09/26-1

[SoapBox]

5. ...the Police State continues.

[winstars]

7. This Thread has the Goods!!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2001047

Complete with name and photo of this "person"

[Sandrine for you]

8. Call Mr. Bologna and ask him why he pepper sprayed innocent people? [phone] nt

[PADemD]

20. Then he can claim harassment

It would be better to call the Mayor's office.

You may contact me directly by writing, calling, faxing or e-mailing:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
PHONE 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC)

FAX [phone]

E-MAIL:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd08ee7c7c1ffec87c4b36d501c789a0/index.jsp?doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2Fcontact_the_mayor.html

[Sandrine for you]

27. IF you can protest at funeral of gay soldier with heinous picketing...

then I think everyone'S here can call him one time to politely ask him why he behave like an asshole.

[tama]

38. Public servant

needs to listen to the public he serves.

[bengalherder]

49. Don't endanger yourself

He's been fed to the chans by anons. They REALLY know how to make his life miserable with much less risk to themselves.

[romanyshyn]

9. Do not get Violent

We must exert steady daily pressure without violence. That
said we must hold the police accountable if they in any way
violate our constitutional rights, it is essential that they
are recorded and photographed in every way possible and then
charged with crimes, if possible. Always get their badge
numbers but obey the law to the letter. This is a WAR that the
people must win, a movement that is really of the PEOPLE not
the fools of the bought and paid for T Party. We must take our
country back from the Corporate Filth or perish in a Corporate
Dictatorship. We also need to create a movement with all the
strength of the anti-Viet Nam war movement. This is our modern
day Viet-Nam.
I remember the anti-war movement of the 70's, we are now in an
even more devasting war with Wall St., the Koch Bros. Tea
Party and the Bankers. I also remember the role of musicians
and song writers in reving up the masses to the cause. We need
talented people like or similar to Dylan, Joan Baez, Buffy St.
Marie on our side. They need to start singing and writing
songs about what is now destroying America. The power of music
cannot be denied. We need to use this weapon, need to sing
about the injustice, the stupidity of Destructive Republican
Ideas, the ownership of the Tea Party by the Stalinist Koch
Bros. Palin's idiocy, the treachery of the corporations like
Wal-Mart. How can we get the song writers on board?

[tcaudilllg]

13. I disagree. We need more people.

NYSE = Green Square. We take it, we win.

[tclambert]

14. There's video of the pepper spray incident. The women were not violent.

They must have said something that hurt the Deputy Inspector's feelings and he sprayed them, getting a few fellow cops with the overspray as well as a few mouthy women. Then he quick-walked away, like he knew he had done wrong and should be arrested himself.

Video everything!

[formercia]

45. Yelling at the Police doesn't help things at all

Verbal violence is still violence as far as the police are concerned. They were making an arrest and the ladies may have been protesting their actions. Interfering in an arrest will get you in trouble.

I think what the Police Supervisor was wrong and way over the top.

People should document what's going on and take names. Yelling at the Police and calling them names isn't going to make the Police release the person they are arresting. It may get you arrested as well.

How do we not know that the episode wasn't some Street Theater by the Police to provoke the protesters?

[TBF]

15. Yes because that worked so well the first time.

Well your generation changed things alright, they voted in Reagan and we have been in police state hell ever since. I think we'll do this our way.

[Kurmudgeon]

22. Not all of us voted for Reagan, please keep that in mind.

[starroute]

24. It wasn't the Boomers who voted in Reagan -- it was the older folk

I looked up the figures on this a year or two ago and I'm not going to do it again.

But basically, in 1980, the 20-somethings split pretty evenly between Reagan and Carter. It was the older people, and especially those over 50, who went overwhelmingly for Reagan.

Reagan won on the appeal of promising to return things to the good old days, before there were all those nasty hippies messing things up. He was the anti-Boomer president with a vengeance.

[Cherchez la Femme]

42. Non-violent civil disobediance works

[Admiral Loinpresser]

28. +1 n/t

[w0nderer]

10. k&r n/t

[tcaudilllg]

11. The masks are coming off.

I recommend they up the ante. Moore needs to get some big capital behind funding more protestors.

I estimate they will need 5,000 to reach our goal.

[fasttense]

16. I'm proud of these protesters for their non-violent restraint.

Provoked, penned in, guarded, pushed, man-handled, arrested and still no violence from the protesters. This is amazing considering all the hate and anger caused by RepubliCONS and this recession.

[SoDesuKa]

18. Restraint Won't Last

The cops have completely mis-handled the Wall Street protests, over-reacting and actually attracting the rough element they say they're attempting to deal with. I blame Ray Kelly, the Police Commissioner who is just as out of his depth as his predecessor Bernard Kerik. The town is too big for a guy with the kind of chip on his shoulder that Kelly's had for years.

Incidentally, at 1:20 in the video, the macing victim reminded me of the iconic photograph of the Kent State massacre. Are we going to wait until the cops actually open fire?



Kent State Massacre

[latebloomer]

50. I had the same association

Thought of Kent State as soon as I saw the woman screaming in the video.

[windowpilot]

17. Pinkerton all over again.

They did the same, beating down women and children. Unions got a lot of mileage out of that.

[hootinholler]

25. You might want to brush up on Pinkerton at Homestead n/t

[SHRED]

19. It's okay...they are liberals

That is how the so-called Constitution and freedom loving crowd views this.


---

[PotatoChip]

21. The New York Times has been spinning tales for over a week now.

I've been following this protest from day one. I've also been scanning what the Times had to say about it from day one as well.

In the beginning the Times offered up only one of two paragraphs buried deep inside their publication, the gist of which was to basically poo-poo the whole Occupy Wall Street thing.

Then throughout the week, I searched mostly in vain for more. They had one short blurb, again buried deep, at about mid-week. In that "article" the emphasis was mostly about how the protest numbers were dwindling.

Then finally on Sunday, the day after the macing incident, 3 articles more prominently displayed. I was only able to read one since apparently NYT only allows 20 free online articles p/month before they make you 'subscibe'... iow pay.

At any rate, this article was an extremely unflattering view of the OWS people. They picked out and 'interviewed' the biggest kooks and/or flakiest people in the bunch. It was a very condescending peek at this movement. If I hadn't known better, and was going only on that Times article, I would have thought it was a bunch of spoiled white kids w/no real comprehensive goal who were "role playing" at activism.

And now this article... I guess the Times can no longer ignore the OWS people so they've resorted to 'spinning' what actually happened on Saturday. I was watching live streaming of that event from several different camera views. At no time did I see any of the protesters push anyone as the OP's Times article makes it sound. It wasn't some type of mutual aggression between protesters and police. The aggression I saw came from one side only and that was from the cops. Mostly the 'white-shirted' ones.

And yes, there were "Some rough people out there" but I guarantee the woman who was quoted meant some of the cops and ONLY some of the cops.

[malthaussen]

23. Yep, Standard Spin

Seen it time and time again. This is actually a good thing, though. Protests have to go through stages, and one of 'em is ridicule. Contrary to what the media and many analysts would have us believe, however, there is a percentage of people who do not just mindly believe and repeat the last thing they read. So any exposure is good exposure, since as an unintended byproduct it gets the message out that people are protesting, that those who might feel dissent are not wrong, that it is all right to question authority.

Like the man said, they'll keep laughing at us until they join us.

-- Mal

[buckrogers1965]

26. The streets belong to the people.

The people have as much right to stand in the middle of the street and protest as any has the right to drive down the street. If you want to drive, go drive on a different street, the people are using Wall Street as a protest site.

Where do the police get the authority to harass and attack protesters? As far as I can tell the USA treats people as badly as the worst authoritarian regime.

Police attacking and arresting protesters who have broken no laws is all the evidence you need to see that the United States is a police state.

And no, assembling to protest and protesting is your right, guaranteed by the constitution. You do not and should never get a permit to protest.

The first amendment to the constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[go west young man]

29. Occupy Wall Street activists name officer over pepper spray incident

Source: The Guardian UK

Activists connected to the Occupy Wall Street protests have published the name, phone number and family details of a senior New York police officer who they accuse of using pepper spray on peaceful female protesters at a march on Saturday.

The officer was named in Twitter posts and on various activist websites as NYPD deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, of Patrol Borough Manhattan South.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/26/occupy-wall-street-police-named

---

Link to footage of the incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA&feature=player_embedded

[EFerrari]

30. Apparently, he's a repeat offender.

http://cryptome.org/info/bologna-abuser/bologna-abuser.htm

[dana_b]

31. they also gave out his phone number

and according to some, he has already been transferred to a new position.

YourAnonNews Anonymous
@
@DownWithTheBull he was transferred to a new position...
3 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply
Anonymous
YourAnonNews Anonymous
I've been informed from a source onsite at #occupywallstreet that NYPD is aware of Anthony Bologna's data released & have taken him offsite.

[msongs]

32. "activists" who publish others' private personal information are not worthy of the name

[makhno]

35. Why?

I don't see anything wrong with that.

[tama]

36. Oh yes they are

and very good activists. It's nonviolent self-defence and it works, this stupid fuck is now of the street and will not be macing protestors no more and the next white shirt boss will think twice before trying same shit. This white shirt boss is the leader of NYPD mass control unit and he has brought his unit and department nothing but shame. And he deserves all the public shame he gets.

[frylock]

40. your concern is duly noted

[Cherchez la Femme]

43. He is a Public Servant

paid for by our taxes

so bullshit.

[girl gone mad]

48. How typically illiberal of you.

[Cirque du So-What]

33. Tony Baloney?

I bet he took some ribbing for that name as a kid. Could that be why he became a reprehensible prick later in life?

[Ian David]

34. One of the protesters on Twitter said 100 cops refused to go to work today. Not confirmed. n/t

[Fire Walk With Me]

47. Its possible that the lower-ranking police were lied to, told that the protesters were violent:

"When we were exiting, she said that she didn’t like doing this, she had four kids and she didn’t think this was right. She agreed with our sentiment, but she didn’t understand why we had to be violent. I told her we were peaceful, and that I had been maced and arrested while walking on the sidewalk. She was silent. I looked at every officer who had let me through to use the bathroom and said thank you. They were silent."

http://rosinhabela.tumblr.com/post/10676011699/my-name-is-kelly-schomburg-im-the-girl-with-the

[mod mom]

51. Please post if you find comfirmation

:hi:

[lunatica]

37. Under the photo the caption says Anonymous published the information

I hope that makes the bullies think twice before pushing people around. There was no call to spray those women. I wouldn't publish his personal telephone number or his family's names, but Anonymous wants the world to know they play rough and that there are consequences when they decide to hack someone. It's not a benign group that can be ignored.

[tama]

39. Public shame

is a formidable weapon.

[Ian David]

52. Those who make legitimate justice impossible make vigilante justice inevitable.

This is one reason why NYCPD should have been doing a better job of policing their own.

When people lose faith that bad cops will be dealt with appropriately, private citizens will seek alternate means of justice.

[TNLib]

46. I think that officer needs to be arrested for assault.

If the women were doing something wrong or warranted being pepper sprayed shouldn't the officer have taken them into custody. If the cop punched them in the face and then walked away that would be assault. This is the same thing.

[SnakeEyes]

53. You know it's bad

when even Jack Dunphy says it is over on National Review's Corner.