OOPS!
Having publicly praised the ‘work’ of the Oakland Police Department et al. for vandalizing the Occupy Oakland encampment, Think Progress carries the report that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan Says She Will Minimize Police Presence And That She Supports The Movement.
It is too late for her 180° turn. She is toast as a politician. She should have reviewed the videos before issuing her ‘Heck of job, Brownie!’ statement to the media. She has lost all credibility with her base.
I have seen people saying that flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets were used on the Oakland demonstrators, and I didn’t see any more evidence of that, than evidence of protestors throwing rocks and bottles at the police.
I did see a lot of tear gas canisters thrown, and the obvious results of using 12 gauge ‘bean bag’ rounds. The tear gas produces a flash and a bang when it ignites, and this is a typical “bean bag” injury.
They have reduced the powder load on the ‘bean bag’ rounds, and no longer fill them with #9 shot, but the procedure is no closer that 20 feet, and go for the abdomen. The picture shows someone who was probably closer, and was hit in the head. The rounds can break bones, which is why you don’t fire at the head or the chest where there is little tissue to cushion the shock to the bone. That said, someone hit in the abdomen at up to 30 feet can have internal injuries. and bleeding. These weapons are ‘non-lethal’, not ‘non-wounding’.
Frankly, the claims of demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles would have been more believable if the police were carrying the plastic shields to protect themselves from that threat. They apparently didn’t think they were necessary.
4 comments
Everybody knows that those OWS protesters are just unemployed slacker DFH’s, like, uhm,… 24-year-old Lance Corporal Scott Olsen, USMC 2005-2009, 7 medals in Iraq, network administrator in San Francisco by day, and paid *very* well for doing so (believe me, I know in general what he’s getting paid, I have a keen eye on what local salaries are doing and for someone with his skill set and general job description they’re sky high). Yeah, what a slacker.
Meanwhile, comment of the day from a commenter at the SF Chronicle site: “Uh, excuse me, could we use those 18 different agencies [that responded to this OWS protest] to do something about the nightly gunfire out in the neighborhoods in Oakland. Hmmm, seems like the powers that be think the daily murders are far less an issue than people being angry at banks.”
Priorities, I guess.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Oh, I know who next mayor of San Francisco will be. State Senator Leland Yee was the frontrunner until Mayor Ed Lee, who was vice-mayor when Gavin Newsom was elected to Lt. Governor, decided he was going to run after all. Last night close to 1/4th of the SFPD was photographed boarding buses and leaving the Portello Hill police station a bit before midnight, and then… nothing. Street party down at OccupySF, if the live streams were correct.
Leland Yee was down there at that street party, pressing the meat and beaming for the assembled media. Asked today whether he thought it was his presence as their likely future boss that kept the SFPD from swooping in, he said: “Nope, pretty sure it was because the SFPD used SF Muni.”
Bwhahaha! (In case you don’t know, Muni is both lauded and cursed in the same breath by San Francisco-ites… you never have to walk more than three blocks to find a bus, and there will likely be a bus coming by within ten minutes that will get you to Market from whence you can board the bus or subway going to where you want to go, but the official schedules are complete and utter science fiction and planning on being anywhere at any specific time is a lost cause… one of Yee’s campaign planks is reforming Muni to make it a bit more, uhm, predictable 🙂 ).
Yep, just like NYC. Plenty of resources for theatrics to prove they need all of the crap they have been buying with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, but no interest in doing the real job.
Had a ‘cats need attention’ assault during the response. It’s a matter of priorities.
Yeah, I have Russian acquaintances in SF, and a cousin used to live in the city, and none of them had cars, so I know about ‘if you absolutely, positively have to be there on time – walk’.
Hopefully the word has gone out to the mayors that a police riot is not a good thing, and tolerating camping is a much saner idea.
Olsen could have been hit by a bean bag, or tear gas canister the was thrown on a high arch, those things aren’t light. These morons have all of this equipment, but they don’t seem to know how to use it properly and safely. Maybe the fact that my department almost never saw a public defender in court, but dealt with people who could afford their own attorneys, made us so insistent on procedures to avoid liability, but we were very careful when we bought new equipment.
I’m waiting for the dogs and cattle prods to show up.