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'Occupiers' accused of violent actions against NY police
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
October 29th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
October 29th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
A union representing 5,000 New York City Police Department sergeants has denounced Occupy Wall Street protesters and has threatened a lawsuit should they injure police. The protesters are accused of playing cat-and-mouse games with police, although incidents of serious violence directed against the NYPD by protesters in New York has been extremely rare.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "New York's police officers are working around the clock as the already overburdened economy in New York is being drained by 'occupiers' who intentionally and maliciously instigate needless and violent confrontations with the police," Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association says. While sergeants are higher in rank than patrol officers, they do not wear the white shirts of some of the more senior officers.Mullins is vowing to pursue the "harshest possible civil sanctions" against violent individuals. He made particular reference to "recent events in Oakland" as a trigger for his warning.
Witnesses to the events in Oakland, California reported that protesters threw bottles at the police. Law enforcement responded with a barrage of tear gas canisters, bean bags and other projectiles. One such projectile struck a 24-year-old Iraq War veteran in the head, fracturing his skull.
"The fact that the SBA would cite the violence of Oakland, in which the police viciously shot an Iraq war veteran in the head with a tear gas canister, sending him to the hospital in critical condition, and then shot at those trying to give aid to the wounded, says it all," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the National Lawyers Guild says.
The former Marine in question, 24-year-old Scott Olsen had since been upgraded from critical to fair condition overnight.
Olsen's injury has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide, and Oakland organizers said they would stage a general strike over what a spokeswoman called the "brutal and vicious" treatment of protesters, including the young Iraq war veteran.
At the downtown plaza where he was hurt, several hundred supporters turned out Thursday night for a candlelight vigil in which fellow activists from a group called Iraq War Veterans for Peace addressed the crowd. One drew loud cheers when he said the police chief or mayor should resign.
"This is an old tried-and-true trick to make the criminal look like the victim and the victim look like the criminal," Verheyden-Hilliard added. "NYPD officers have carried out illegal, felonious assaults on demonstrators for weeks. Who has the power and the will to arrest and prosecute them?"
Mullins claims that "over twenty police officers have been injured in 'Occupy Wall Street' related incidents," but he did not provide details.
Protesters say that aggressive police tactics, such as the pepper-spraying of two women caught on tape on September 24 have won them popular support for their movement. In Oakland, authorities have all but admitted that their forceful crackdown on protesters was a mistake.
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