I've been trying to avoid writing about this for the last week, but it keeps coming up, but not in the news headlines. And that kind of scares me, because these stories keep popping up, and they're all consistent with one another. And they're all consistently about what appears to be unlawful imprisonment, the trashing of civil liberties and government abuse of power.
I mentioned the bicyclists before. And then I read about this on dailyKos:
Jeff estimated that more than half of these detainees were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time... shopping... studying... being a tourist. The arrests were completely indiscriminate, unless you're a delegate, in which case it cleared some human waste out of your path. If you were within a city block of the entrance to the NYC Library on Tuesday at about 5:30 pm, you were one of the estimated 1,200 people that ended up in a cage on a pier in Manhattan, waiting 12 hours before being given access to a phone, and more than 24 hours before being charged with anything. In most cases, this has amounted to being detained for 36+ hours (at least 12 hours longer that allowed by law here) and written a f***ing ticket.
And then I hit this report from a completely different source:
After taking some pictures of Critical Mass riders getting arrested, I turned to walk away and suddenly was in cuffs, one of the 264 cyclists and random passers-by arrested Friday night. Rather than writing us summonses for the offenses we were charged with, which were violations (on par with a traffic ticket or an open container), not even misdemeanors, the cops decided to teach us a lesson by hauling us over to a bus depot-turned-holding cell where we got to sleep in cages on diesel-sludge-covered concrete. (Many people reported chemical burns from contact with the floor.) I got to spend 16 hours there, then ride a corrections bus downtown to Central Booking for the full handcuff/search/mugshot/prints treatment, in shackles all the way, and spent another 14 hours there while the cops, who were either intentionally stalling on Bloomberg's orders or staggeringly incompetent, took 14 more hours to write us all the same desk-appearance tickets they could have given out at the scene. There were still at least 50 people in there when I got out at 2:30 a.m. Sunday (and spent another hour waiting on line to get my keys, phone, camera, and pen from the property clerk; I don't get my bike back until the trial).
And today I read this on This Modern World:
... After a few hours of sightseeing, we thought, before dinner let's see if we can find this rally again. It was almost 7pm and the rally was scheduled from 5-7pm. We again saw no signs of an organized rally, but after a few minutes a band started playing and swaying and then walked away from the park. People followed them and we followed to see where they were going. It never occurred to us that we were participating in anything illegal.
We crossed Union Square East and then turned into 16th St. There were people walking in the streets, but I made a point of always staying on the sidewalk. We were following a bunch of people. A line of police closed off the intersection at Union Square East and 16th St. Some people took off running for Irving St to get out of that block, but we stayed on the sidewalk and didn't run. We didn't want to look like we might be doing something wrong. It never occurred to us that we were participating in anything illegal.
Soon a line of police closed off the other intersection at Irving and 16th, trapping us on 16th St. We didn't get on the street, we didn't climb onto anything to see what was happening, we didn't yell, we didn't attempt to run, we didn't appear violent in any way. There were probably 100 of us together there on the south side of 16th St, I think that the police had trapped other bubbles of people on the north side and farther up and down the sidewalk. We saw the police roll out a yellow net, a mesh bolt of fabric that they unrolled and used to push us into a tight group. At one point a policeman yelled at us violently and angrily that we had brought this upon ourselves. He was walking past us on the sidewalk and he yelled and screamed; and this was the moment when I became seriously afraid. I was standing closer to the street, not pressed against the walls of the buildings, and I was afraid that he would grab me and hurt me: I was very scared. The police never gave us an opportunity to move, to disperse, they never told us that we were about to be arrested, and they never said a word, besides this one officer who scared the shit out of me. It never occurred to me that this would happen. I didn't know that we had participated in anything illegal.
Eventually the police pressed us tightly together into a group. And then they kept pressing. They grabbed instruments from the band members and threw them into the road. Then they grabbed the band members, the group held onto them, but the police pulled these individuals away and tossed them into the road. The police were pressing us and pulling individuals who were on the perimeter away. People were shouting to the police: "Tell us what to do and we'll do it" and instructing us to hold onto the individuals the police were grabbing: "Don't let them take them away." I was on the perimeter of the group and I was scared that they would grab me next. I was standing right next to a street sign, there was a bicycle tied to the sign and it had fallen, and I was standing on the bicycle; every time the police pressed us I grabbed on to the sign and Sarah grabbed on to me, and I prayed that I wouldn't fall and break an ankle on the bicycle. I was scared like I have never been before....
I don't have anything witty to say about this.
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