More videos surfaced online on Sunday of the LAPD violence at Thursday’s Downtown LA Art Walk. Many helicopters hover above the streets. Full riot gear was worn by some officers during the ordeal. Rubber bullets and other projectiles were
July 17, 2012

More videos surfaced online on Sunday of the LAPD violence at Thursday’s Downtown LA Art Walk.

Many helicopters hover above the streets. Full riot gear was worn by some officers during the ordeal. Rubber bullets and other projectiles were in use. The police were very aggressive. All this over chalk painting on the sidewalk?

In the video above at 4:49, you can see a man in a white t-shirt shot at very close range with a projectile weapon. He falls to the ground and is clearly incapacitated. After the man stumbles to the ground, two Occupiers come to his aid but police move in, chase the occupiers off, 14 officers surround the man, while one officers kicks the man in the face, then other officers smash his face into the pavement, and violently arrested him.

This next video shows the incident from ground level:

According to Occupy LA:

One young man admitted himself to the hospital Friday after complaining of pain and numbness in his face where he said a bean bag hit him as he was walking into a 7/11 store. Pictures from the Thursday night show his face swollen, bruised, and bleeding.

Reportedly, occupiers took him to a safer place further from the police and called the ambulance for him but the paramedics told him it would cost over $1,000.00 to take him to the hospital and if he could not afford it he could walk or take the bus (which were mostly likely not running because of the police violence downtown).

Allegedly, after this young man got out of the ambulance, the police arrive, hand cuff him tightly, stick him in the back of a squad car and interrogate him.

The above video shows LAPD officers shooting three shots into the crowd in three different directions within seconds of each other. Also shown is one of the victim’s bleeding wound.

Here you see police wrestling a small woman to the ground and body slamming her boyfriend.

This video shows parts of three different arrests including a female that two LAPD officers pushed repeated before slamming her to the ground and arresting her.

Members of Occupy LA say that 100% of the people that the LAPD injured with ‘less-than-lethal’ weapons are not active members of their group and nearly 90% of the people arrested by LAPD Thursday night were non-occupiers.

Occupiers claim that only two of the 17 or more arrests made by LAPD were of occupiers and the rest were downtown artwalkers. In addition, members of Occupy LA say that at least 7 of the 9 vandalism arrests were made before 9pm, long before police in riot gear made it to the scene.

The Occupiers further claim LAPD provoked the crowd, so they could escalate their force against them.

One occupy arrestee wrote “I love the world” and then LAPD promptly arrested him.

“There’s nothing malicious about chalk on a sidewalk,” he said, “and besides, sprinkles of light rain had washed away most of what had been written before riot police showed up.”

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