Berkeley: police riot, beat demonstrators

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; ABC; AP/mail.com

(Emily Trapatoni) Mainstream media outlet ABC News (Bay Area) spins police version of events to maintain the status quo and condemn peaceful Berkeley demonstrators seeking change.

Peaceful demonstrators in Berkeley on Dec. 7. 2014 sit down and face off police brutality and nationwide injustice. Police sent in provocateurs to have pretexts to attack in usual police state tactics such as corraling then arresting civilians for "failure to disperse" (AP).

Peaceful demonstrators lie in the street in Berkeley, CA on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014. Many were injured by police abusers, and two abusers were injured Saturday night as a demonstration over police killings was provoked to violence with provocateurs breaking windows and allegedly throwing things at police, which means all bets are off and police can beat, shoot, arrest, corral, and brutalize demonstrators with impunity. Police attacked firing tear gas, authorities said. Demonstrators were responding to the grand jury verdicts in the fatal execution-style shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the chokehold killing of Eric Garner in New York City by police (AP).

  

[Police] violence erupts in Berkeley

Demonstrators are hot. Wear a T.

BERKELEY, California (AP) - A second night of protest against police [street executions] in Missouri and New York turned violent again in Berkeley as [police attacked, instigated, and committed acts of random violence and blatant injustice to provoke peaceful demonstrators and even bewildered bystanders claiming that] some [possible "agent provocateurs" sent in by police as a pretext to attack, corral, give impossible orders, then arrest] demonstrators threw rocks and bottles at officers, assaulted each other [shoved a demonstrator trying to prevent looting], and shut down a freeway, police said. [And the AP has a vested interest in presenting and promoting the point of view most favorable to violent police state agents.]

 

Police state cartoon (rall.com/latimes.com)

Sunday's protest began peacefully on the University of California, Berkeley campus.

But as [peaceful demonstrators] marched through downtown Berkeley toward the neighboring city of Oakland, the unrest resumed as someone smashed the window of a Radio Shack.

When a protester tried to stop the growing vandalism, he was hit with a hammer, Officer Jennifer Coats [claims].

 

Will grad students join?

Some of the [demonstrators] made their way to a freeway in Oakland and blocked traffic. The California Highway Patrol [claim] some tried to light a patrol vehicle on fire and threw rocks and bottles [paper and empty plastic bottles]. Police also said explosives [well, we heard loud bangs, what else could that have been, it's not like we're detonating explosives, tear gas, rubber missiles/projectiles/boom cannons...oh, wait, we are, never mind] were thrown at officers, but there was no information immediately available on how potent they were. Highway patrol officers responded with tear gas.

There was Berkeley in the 60s and Cal now.

The highway patrol said it was making arrests, but [conveniently] no figures were available. [Why is that convenient? There is a new police state tactic to mass arrest innocent bystanders, legally assembled peaceful demonstrators, and anyone police target then simply release them after bouts of what can legally be defined as "false imprisonment" and unlawful detainment, but most will complain because they are so glad that no charges are eventually brought.]

Late Sunday night, police said protesters returned to Berkeley streets, throwing trash cans, scattering garbage, and sparking small blazes. Police said several businesses were damaged and looted, and they were checking reports of vandalism at City Hall.

 

This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow)

The demonstrations were the latest of several in the Bay Area -- including in [neighboring] Oakland, where activism is strong -- in recent days to protest grand jury decisions in [Ferguson] Missouri and New York not to indict [white] police officers in the [murders] of two [unarmed] black men.

On Saturday night, three officers and a technician were hurt and six people were arrested when a similar protest turned unruly [after police provoked any activity it could use as a pretext to crackdown, terminate civil rights, institute martial law, and deploy their militarized weaponry, spies, illegal provocateurs, and mass arrests and incarcerations, particularly targeting non-white demonstrators].

Mainstream media has an informal ban on Berkeley coverage until it can't be ignored (ST).

 
The most serious injury was a dislocated shoulder, Berkeley police said. [Whose shoulder? A brutalized demonstrator? Or a repetitive injury suffered by an officer with carpal baton shoulder (an upper arm version of carpal tunnel syndrome some police claim for monetary benefits as a perk of beating innocent people indiscriminately) from all that swinging at heads, like the Unitarian Universalist minister whom police struck in the head after she bent down to help a demonstrator who had fallen when police rushed people exercising their civil rights?]

NYPD = KKK. Justice for Eric Garner (AP)

Seven people were arrested in Seattle Saturday night after protesters threw rocks at police and attempted to block a highway. 

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been calling for calm while activists push for police reforms. NAACP president Cornell William Brooks, appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," called for outfitting police with body-worn cameras and changing law enforcement policy [as if that would solve the problems based on anecdotal evidence of better behavior when being filmed and recorded, when the fact of the matter is that police mistreated, murdered, and further mistreated -- making no effort to resuscitate -- Eric Garner while knowingly being filmed, but then set up, arrested, and charged the man using his phone to film the abuse].

"We have to change the model of policing," Brooks said. Ohio's Republican governor said the unrest underscores the need for political leaders to be inclusive and to unite, not divide. Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on ABC's "This Week" that a "significant percentage" of the country believes the system's not working for them and can be working against them.

 

"They need to be listened to and they need to be responded to," Kasich said. "In our country today, there's too much division, too much polarization -- black, white; rich, poor; Democrat, Republican [as if these last two were in anyway opposites when, in fact, they are two wings of the same corporate-money party]. America does best when we're united."

 

Police attack Occupy Berkeley (AP/CBS)

The unrest in Berkeley follows violent disruptions of [massive peaceful] demonstrations [that get much less coverage because if "it does not bleed, it does not lead" the news broadcast] in San Francisco and Oakland in recent days. Five San Francisco police officers sought medical treatment after sustaining [minor but potentially profitable workplace] injuries during a protest in downtown San Francisco on Black Friday [when a capitalist-spawned frenzy led crowds to push and shove and get the best bargains they could]. More