Police Bludgeon Peaceful Occupy UC Berkeley Protesters with Batons

This is just the latest in a series of criminal acts of unprovoked police violence against peaceful Occupy protesters. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

As I noted earlier today, the problem is the militarization of U.S. police forces:

Journalists from across the spectrum have documented the militarization of police forces in the United States, including CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, and the Cato Institute.

***

But the militarization of police started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s.

Comments

[323]

Narc alert!

[Cult of Criminality]

So the police are worried about idle threats from kids ?

And this justifies violence initiated by police to the public?

[DogSlime]

It's those who give the orders to the police who are worried, I think.

[Zer0henge]

Peaceful protesters my ass.  What you don't hear are the death to pigs threats coming out of their pieholes.

[DogSlime]

Peaceful protesters my ass.  What you don't hear are the death to pigs threats coming out of their pieholes.

Indeed - hostile chanting must be met with force.  Can't have hostile chanting...

So much for democracy :(

[GMadScientist]

Sticks (check), stones (well, plastic rounds), broken bones (check).

I expect them to man up to some yelling, if they expect me to keep paying their salary after they stop working. This from the same clowns that let the hippies sit in the oak trees for how many months because of fear of bad PR? Do people in Oakland/Berkeley need more reasons to fear and loathe their local police force?

Perhaps behaving like brownshirts in a cash-strapped state will finally neuter the stranglehold their union has
on funding more cops and more prisons and more benefits for them.

No protection. No service. Duty: FAIL.

[laosuwan]

what, exactly, is democratic about hostile chanting?

[GMadScientist]

"...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

You're Chinese? Maybe you wouldn't understand then; try asking Tank Man.

[tickhound]

Man, I'm gonna miss the old sb... But this guy's good too.  ;)

[bigkahuna]

If you put on that uniform (the blue one) prepare to be unpopular sometimes with some people. The cops already know that. "death to the pigs" may sock a weak man's ego-but it is not an excuse for this use of force.

In reply - this beating violates 1st (this group was peacible and posed no physical threat) and 4th (this beating is an unreasonable siezure/arrest and unreasonable escallation of force) amendments of the Bill of Rights. There are also statutes regarding assault and battery--so there is an indirect link to democracy--but a more direct link to the Republic in that the cops-who are a component in the defense of the republic- actually went against their job firstly, and committed crimes secondly. It is not the first or last time.

[JW n FL]

just wait until the crowd starts hitting back.. rut roe!

[forexskin]

Regarding military and police: “One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people.  When the military becomes both then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

[Al Gorerhythm]

These thugs should be wearing brown.

[sumo]

Next step: the police buy predator drones with weapons systems from the military for use against enemies of the State. DHS provides free introductory training.

If you are not FOR the State, you are AGAINST the State, and therefore a Target.

[Chuck Walla]

Next step: the police buy predator drones with weapons systems from the military for use against enemies of the State. DHS provides free introductory training.

If you are not FOR the State, you are AGAINST the State, and therefore a Target.

And like Stalin, they will have to kill the producers, genuine stake holders, to get at the wealth to hand out to the unqualified and undeserving. Then, everyone wonders why they are starving.

Reminds of Castro's order to the state farms to increase production. When they failed, he terrorized them as obstructionists when they failed to "obey' his mere orders, which, in his mind solved everything. Woe to the saboteurs of the state, the revolution.  Mao knew what to do...

[Leopold B. Scotch]

The 99% has always been Bullshit. But you're on to something.  Only its more divided into two primary categories, with the second very wide / diverse, and hardly unified. 

There are the producers of real wealth and honestly in-demand service (those goods and services people would actually voluntarily buy without the govt gun pointed at their heads). 

Then there are hose who depend on producers for their survivability. 

In the latter group, they are widely diverse, and hardly in agreement, thieves always forced to fight politically over the  extracted spoils / loot.  They are:

1. Those who use force to enforce the state
   • the military
   • the local police
   • Intelligence agencies
   • Various Federal forms of police (FBI, DEA, BATF, Dept. of Treas, IRS, etc)
2. Those who work for the state
   • Politicians
   • Primary service providers
   • those who work directly for upkeep the state and it's authority. (tax collectors, all the other "Department of" types.)
3. Those who are wards of the State
   • direct welfare recipients
     1. arguably Includes jobs invented by the government simply to take people off the direct welfare rolls
   • Ph.D. welfarists who think of themselves as successful business people, but who are just the opposite side of the coin to direct welfare recipients since their careers depend on state regulation to force the population to buy product or service from them.   This includes:
     1. CPAs
     2. Attorneys (tax, etc.)
     3. Bankers / financiers who rely on the inherent fraud of fractional reserve credit creation (from thin air) and what amounts the ability to legally counterfeit.  (e.g. Goldman, etc.)
     4. Estate Planners at all levels (Insurance, especially)
     5. Beneficiaries of subsidized products (such as the mortgage industry)
     6. regulatory compliance experts
     7. etc.
   • Unionistas, whose wages and benefits are entirely detached from the free market, and whatever extra they are awarded above the free market wage is extracted directly out (through the use of force) of the rest of the rest of the economy.

This paras tic apparatus is now collapsing under its own weight.  The Occupy WS types are mostly part of it in some form or another.  Their ignroance has them lumping many in their own broader camp in with actual creators of wealth.   Rightfully they are angry, but convoluted as things are, and brainwashed as they are with Marx.... here we are.

[323]

Wha?