More on the Wednesday night raid at Occupy Oakland: Adam Katz (@GeekEasy) films himself being arrested as he backs away from police who refuse to say where exactly they want him to go.
He notes on the video above - that he filmed himself - the following:
I heard on twitter that the Occupy Oakland vigil was being raided by riot cops. I headed down there with a camera and FlipCam to document this event.
When I arrived I saw most everything had been cleared, so I walked toward a group of cops, stopped 25 feet from them and snapped a picture.
One call tells me to step back. I said "okay, but where should I step back to".
The video continues from there....
I had been in the plaza for 2 minutes and had taken one photo when I was arrested for absolutely no valid reason.
Also, the National Lawyer's Guild is demanding that the Oakland Police Department stop harassing the Occupy Oakland protesters.
Via:
“We have already had to sue the Oakland Police twice in the past year for violating their own Crowd Control Policy, but the violations continue,” explained attorney Mike Flynn, president of NLGSF. “We have ongoing litigation in federal court to stop the unconstitutional arrests, violence against, and illegal prolonged detention of demonstrators in the Alameda County Jails. Yet, OPD has continued to assault Occupy Oakland protesters, confiscate their food and belongings, and hold them under cruel conditions in jail for days at a time, only to release most with no charges or with only very minor violations.”
California law requires that persons arrested for minor offenses be released with a citation, and not held in custody, with certain specific exceptions. Yet, the Occupy protesters have routinely been held handcuffed for hours in police vehicles and detained under unconscionable conditions in jail. The 12 people arrested last night are currently being held on $5,000 and $10,000 bail, even though it is unlikely they will be charged with any crime. The same practices were directed against Oscar Grant demonstrators in 2010, resulting in a pending NLG class action civil rights lawsuit, Spalding et al. v. Oakland and Alameda County. In that case, NLGSF is asking U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to enforce the Crowd Control Policy the court ordered in previous NLG - ACLU litigation arising from OPD violence against protesters, and to stop the pre-charging detention. A second NLG - ACLU lawsuit filed in November, 2011, Campbell et al. v. Oakland, also seeks to stop OPD from violating the Crowd Control Policy by shooting protesters with less lethal projectiles and requests compensation for those who were injured, some quite seriously.
“It’s unbelievable the amount of resources the City is expending in these lean times for the sole goal of squelching political protest,” declared NLGSF Director Carlos Villarreal. “In the midst of the biggest social protest movement in decades, the City of Oakland and the OPD must decide whether they are going to be 1%-ers, using violence and propaganda to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement, or whether they will support the 99% and devote their resources to actually solving problems.”
