This is the press release from the Metropolitan Police in DC:

November 7, 2011
Statement from Chief Lanier Regarding Occupy DC

While the Occupy DC movement has been here since October 6, 2011 and the Metropolitan Police Department supports an individual’s right to assemble, we do not condone nor will we tolerate violence or aggression. Prior demonstrations had been peaceful. However, the aggressive nature of Friday’s demonstration prompted the Metropolitan Police Department to adjust tactics as needed to ensure safety.

MPD will continue to protect life (residents, visitors, protestors --everyone) and property as warranted. The administration will do what’s necessary to maintain order in the city and to ensure that everyone is safe.

Five people that we are aware of were injured. That is no longer a peaceful protest. Demonstrators have become increasingly confrontational and violent toward uninvolved bystanders and motorists. Demonstrators have also jeopardized the safety of their own children by using them in blockades. The following videos highlight such actions by demonstrators:

Intentionally Blocking Traffic/putting little children in the street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpDsogOy2IU

IUsing little children to blockade the door
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CguFPFJAqlA

IDemonstrators blockade doors and injure attendees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prgkEAuSQT0

IBlockading people from leaving the Convention Center
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXXf56JhTbs

Regarding the traffic incident and allegations of hit and run, MPD is investigating and is seeking any evidence and witness statements. Anyone with information should contact police by calling (202) 727-9099 or 1-888-919-CRIME (1-888-919-2746).

Cathy L. Lanier,
Police Chief

If you click on the links to the videos - they are shocking - shocking because they are heavily edited and released by conservative groups. Why is this a big deal? Well, because the protest was of John Birch Society scions the Koch brothers at their Americans for Prosperity powwow. Yes. Oil money. Billionaires who fund candidates like Herman Cain who was at the conference and said he was a Koch brother from another mother. So for the police to cite FOUR videos that are all pro what was being protested - is twisted. Especially since being deemed "no longer a peaceful protest" has translated into (from the reports I'm getting) more cops at McPherson Square with their batons out.

Here's the Daily Caller video the police cite:

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Hm. Wonder how long before this planned domestic-terrorism attack on a police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, is labeled "just another isolated incident":

A man apparently bent on destroying the police headquarters in McKinney was shot and killed this morning after spraying the building with bullets.

Police say 29-year-old Patrick Gray Sharp drove a Ford F150 pickup pulling a trailer to the station and set it on fire in an apparent attempt to draw people out of the building. Inside the trailer, police said, were wood chips, roadside flares, gasoline, and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the type used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

"He had a plan. He was executing his plan," McKinney Police Chief Doug Kowalski said at an afternoon news conference at which he confirmed Sharp's identity and talked about the unusual nature of the attack.

Kowalski said more than 100 shell casings were found in the area, and 23 windows were broken in the building. Officers returned fire, and Sharp was killed 50 to 200 yards south of the police station. It was unclear whether he was shot by police or died from a self-inflicted wound.

No one else was injured in the incident, which began about 9 a.m. and according to Kowalski lasted less than five minutes.

"We know the who, what, when, where. "We don't know the why," Kowalski said.

He said Sharp, who lived in Anna, did not have a criminal record.

"We're delving more into his background," the chief said.

CBS-11 has more details:

Police say Sharp may have been trying to draw people out of the building and blow up a trailer loaded with explosives. Kowalski says Sharp fired more than 100 rounds before he died.

During a morning news conference McKinney Police Deputy Chief Scott Brewer confirmed that around 9 a.m. a man driving a Ford F-150 truck drove up on south side of the Public Safety Building, pulling a trailer. The building houses both the McKinney Police and Fire Departments.

Immediately after Sharp exited the vehicle it became engulfed in flames. Police believed there was ammunition inside the pickup. "Subsequently the fire itself set off that ammunition, causing rounds to be dispersed in immediate area," explained Brewer.

Sharp began yelling something toward the building and opened fire. Officers in and outside the building began searching for the shooter. The suspect was located and there was an exchange of gunfire.

The Dallas Morning News went out and talked to his neighbors. Apparently Sharp had a roomie named Eric McClellan who was nowhere near the scene:

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Bill O'Reilly followed up his interview with Mark Potok about the Oath Keepers with a one-on-one interview with Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers' president and founder.

And give O'Reilly credit: He asked good questions and didn't let Rhodes get away with his usual justifications for their armed-to-the-teeth-and-paranoid worldview:

O'Reilly: OK, so full members in the Oath Keepers have to have a military or police background. Or firefighters. Now, I'm gonna read you something from your website. "We will not obey unconstitutional and thus illegal and immoral orders, such as orders to disarm the American people or place them under martial law."

Well, who's gonna try to disarm people and place them under martial law. I mean, why would that even be something you would be discussing?

Rhodes: Well, it happened as recently as Katrina. You probably have seen the videos there of the old lady being tackled in her kitchen, and disarmed of her revolver, and there was house-to-house searches for firearms. And you had the police chief declaring that no one would be allowed to have weapons, or he'd take all the guns. And he did.

So they disarmed Americans over some bad weather, as though the bad weather suspended the Second Amendment. So, that's the most recent example.

Sure, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were just "bad weather" -- such bad weather, in fact, that the levees around New Orleans broke, flooding 80 percent of the city and killing 1,464 people. Some 90 percent of the population of southeast Louisiana was evacuated. Describing this as mere "bad weather" is like describing the Haiti earthquake as "a little shaker."

This pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Oath Keepers and their grip on reality: They're unable to distinguish between "bad weather" and a devastating natural disaster and subsequent state of emergency.

O'Reilly, to his credit, pointed out that government has long been empowered to declare such emergencies in order to preserve lives and protect public safety in dire circumstances. It seems that for Rhodes and the Oath Keepers in general, no circumstances are ever dire enough to warrant such declarations.

What Rhodes didn't say, but which the Oath Keepers have made abundantly clear elsewhere, is that they believe President Obama is planning to declare a national state of emergency after the economy collapses, which they consider a sure thing.

Rhodes -- who is on the planning committee for the big Tea Party rally planned for September 11, an event his outfit is cosponsoring -- was at least forthcoming about his group's close relationship with the Tea Party movement:

Well, I've been to a lot of Tea Party events, we've spoken at quite a few of them, and I'm on the planning committee for the one on 9/11, this next September. So, the MarchOnDC.org. But, uh, we like the Tea Party movement a lot, we think it's great. It's a revitalization of our core Americanism and core constitutionalism.

In general, O'Reilly did reasonably well making clear that the Oath Keepers are a disturbing phenomenon, particularly in their emphasis on recruiting members of the military and police officers -- a fact which should ring some bells among the people who loudly denounced that DHS report for its observation that far-right extremists are working hard to recruit people with military and police backgrounds. (Ahem.)

Too bad he didn't have time to explore the matter of Charles Dyer, the onetime Oath Keepers figure arrested on charges of child rape, and the Oath Keepers's eagerness to disavow him -- in spite of the fact that Dyer had represented the Oath Keepers -- with Rhodes' blessing -- at a Tea Party on July 4 in Oklahoma. Dyer was also active in forming militias in Oklahoma.

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This is so sad:

A Yelm man was arrested Sunday for allegedly beating and torturing his daughter. Police said they found the child covered with bruises.

Officers were dispatched around 2 a.m. to Umptanum Road behind Safeway for a report of a disturbance.

Joshua R. Tabor, 27, was allegedly walking up and down the street with a helmet, saying he was going to bust windows, said Yelm Police Chief Todd Stancil. He appeared to be intoxicated.

When police arrived they discovered Tabor’s 4-year-old daughter had locked herself in a bathroom. Tabor’s girlfriend allegedly told police that Tabor has an anger problem and beats his daughter, Stancil said.

The child was interviewed and photographs were taken of the bruises that covered her body.

During the investigation it was also discovered Tabor may have held the girl’s head, backward, in a sink of water because she wouldn’t say her ABCs, Stancil said.

Tabor allegedly admitted to police that he did it because he knew she was terrified of water.

Stancil said Tabor admitted to using this means of punishment three to four times.

The world is full of horrors.

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Already we can be thankful that we finally passed a federal hate-crime law this summer -- because it's helping bring about justice in the case of a Latino man killed by white thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crime charges, as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy, authorities said in a written statement. A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday.

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky are charged with a hate crime for beating Luis Ramirez in July 2008 while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department. Ramirez died two days later.

"Following the beating, Donchak, Piekarsky and others, including members of the Shenandoah Police Department, participated in a scheme to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault," the Justice Department said. As a result, Donchak faces three additional counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses, officials said.

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and two other officers are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Nestor and a fourth police officer are named in a third indictment and charged with extortion and civil rights violations related to police corruption, the Justice Department said.

It's genuinely disturbing to discover that local law-enforcement officers were involved in covering this matter up and obstructing justice. It adds just another twist to an already shocking case.

The Ramirez case was a classic example of why we needed to pass a federal bias-crime law -- especially considering the outrageous circumstances in which the local jury slapped the young thugs on the wrist:

[T]his was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."

... Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she said.

That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: "You're next." The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.

This is why Latino advocates demanded the Justice Department step in and deliver justice. It looks like they have.

Larry Keeler at HateWatch has more.

(photo courtesy of KOAT)

C&L has chronicled many instances of law enforcement officers misusing tasers in the past (some with deadly consequences) and this latest incident is as bad as most any I've seen yet.

A 14-year-old Tucumcari girl is recovering at an Albuquerque hospital after being shot in the head with a Taser dart by Tucucmari Police Chief Roger Hatcher.

Now, her parents say they want the police department to review its policies for using the Taser.

Her mother, Stacy Akin, said her daughter underwent surgery Friday morning at University of New Mexico hospital in Albuquerque. “One of the darts entered her skull,” said Akin, interviewed by telephone.

After a CAT scan, a hospital resident told her the dart was “in her brain a little bit, but not much,” Akin said.

Hatcher is on administrative leave at the moment, but claims he had no choice because she was running away from him toward traffic. I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who says that they HAD to use a taser on a 14 year old girl who posed absolutely no threat to them. Of course, Hatcher had no way of knowing that the girl had any kind of medical condition, but that once again proves the inherent dangers of using tasers.

Akin also said her daughter has epilepsy. The girl’s father, Donny Martinez of Amarillo, said his daughter takes medication for the condition. Read on...

BY THEIR WORKS, YE SHALL KNOW THEM

Change the channel. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops

I wish I could be my usual smartass self, but when I read things like this and this, I just want to cry - or scream. Juan Cole:

Az-Zaman reports that telephone calls with residents of Mosul reveal that the guerrillas who took control of the city's streets the day before yesterday have burned all the police stations in the city and have released from jails all the criminals that had been incarcerated in them. In the center of Mosul, eyewitnesses said, the offices of government service agencies and economic targets had been set ablaze. A number of shops were attacked and/or looted.

Armed men roamed the streets and manned checkpoints between city quarters. Mosque preachers called on Mosul residents to flood into the streets to protect their quarters and government offices and shops. The main streets seemed deserted. American troops had withdrawn from the center of the city, but maintained control of bridges.

All signs of Iraqi national guardsmen and police had disappeared. The police chief of Ninevah province resigned (other reports say he was fired by the Allawi government).

US military spokesmen denied that guerrillas were in control of the city, and maintained that US troops and Iraqi national guardsmen continued to advance into it. US warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected safe houses of the guerrillas. Guerrillas had killed one American serviceman in Mosul on Thursday.

MF

Charges against Sheehan dropped

It's nice to see that I beat the AP today...

"The officers made a good faith, but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,” Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement late Wednesday."

Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans — trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city — the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move-- New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Thursday that Gretna officials "will have to live" with their decision. "We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center," Nagin said. "We made a decision to protect people…. They made a decision to protect property."...read on"

Is this what you would call compassionate conservatism?

4/28 transcripts

GRACE: Well, look, I don`t have a degree in being a police chief. But I can tell you this much: This is not cold feet, all right? This is not cold feet. I know that much.

4/29 Transcripts

GRACE: Another question. Could you tell me, Jonathan, what was the fiance doing at the time she was jogging? Was he there in the home? Does he have an alibi?