Posted on 08/20/2005 2:16:54 PM PDT by finnman69
PITTSBURGH - Police charged four people protesting the war in Iraq, two of whom suffered minor injuries from the police response, when 60 people disrupted traffic by marching the wrong way down a busy one-way street toward an Army recruiting station.
The Pittsburgh Organizing Group planned the Saturday morning demonstration. A spokesman for that group, David Meieran, accused police of responding with "inappropriate and excessive force."
Meieran claimed some protesters were pepper sprayed and Tasered; he said a 68-year-old woman who was not resisting was bitten by a police dog.
Police spokeswoman Tammy Ewin initially said no pepper spray was used on protesters, but Sgt. Clint Winkler, a supervisor on duty, told The Associated Press he tried to use pepper spray on one woman who would not leave, but it hit her glasses. She was then subdued with a Taser, Winkler said.
The Taser victim and the dog bite victim were being treated at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. Winkler confirmed that the older woman was bitten in the leg by a police dog when she refused a police order to disperse.
The names of those charged were not immediately available because they were being readied for arraignment in City Court Saturday afternoon, Winkler said.
Winkler said one teenage female was handcuffed but not arrested when she screamed at and shoved officers. She was cited for disorderly conduct and released.
The recruiting station was not open for business when police responded to reports of the non-permitted march down Forbes Avenue, where the University of Pittsburgh main campus is located.
Winkler said campus police tried to quell the march, and at one point protesters grabbed the camera of a freelance media photographer and broke it. City police tried to help and said some protesters fought the effort to break up the march.
"That's when they were told, due to the violence, that this was no longer a lawful protest," Winkler said. "They were told to disperse, peacefully disperse, and failed to do so we started down the sidewalk - officers in front, K-9's behind us, and started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk."
In addition to the injured women, a man was also arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and failure to disperse.
Winkler said the protest broke up without further incident after the arrests, but Meieran disagreed with the police version of the events.
"The response was way over the top," Meieran said. "Why in the (expletive) were they using Tasers on these nonviolent protesters in the first place? I heard no dispersal order. What they're saying is total (expletive)."
Meieran said the same recruiting station was targeted by marchers two weeks ago, and the office announced beforehand that it would be closed. Meieran said the marchers didn't know if the station would be open when they arrived; it was not.
"Our goal for today was to shut down military recruitment for that station, and to the extent that they may have shut down preemptively, we achieved our goal," Meieran said.
Army officials could not immediately be reached for comment about the march or why that recruiting station was closed.
I'm interested in seeing the addresses of those arrested - or of any of the participants. I wonder how many are city residents and how many are rent-a-mob members?
Oh this is classic, he's against "non-lethal weapons" also, especialy TAZERS! Cant have anything to break up these goons when the protest you know.
http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=04/11/19/1525206
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about less lethal weapons. It seems to be what you have focusing most of your efforts on right now. We only have a few minutes, but one of the stories that has not gotten very much attention in the last month, which in one odd way involved baseball, was a young woman who died in Boston the night that people in Boston were celebrating the Red Sox victory. You can talk about that, and what that has to do with less lethal weapons.
DAVID MEIERAN: Sure. The weapon that actually killed the student in question, Victoria Snelgrove was an FN303 Launcher. It was the same weapon that we saw in Miami, when they fired at us at the Free Trade Area of the Americas protest in November. The weapon was actually purchased by the Boston Police Department for use against protesters at the Democratic National Convention. In the end, they didn't use it there, although they wielded it as a way to intimidate protesters and subdue them, but this was the first time that that particular weapon, as far as we know, actually resulted in a fatality. It's interesting that the officer who actually fired that weapon, which fires this pepperball projectile, was a trained instructor in the use of that weapon, yet he fired it in defiance of the manufacturer's specifications which say: “You don’t fire it at head level,” and basic common sense. So what happened is that the weapon imploded in her eye and ended up killing her. In the aftermath of that, another group that I'm involved with, the Save Our Civil Liberties Campaign together with Massachusetts National Lawyers' Guild launched a campaign to curb the use of less lethal weapons until there's more independent research and testing done on them. But the FN303, the launcher that killed Victoria Snelgrove is just the tip of the iceberg. From tazers to sonic devices called long range acoustic devices, there's this new cornucopia of less lethal weapons that are being used, both in Iraq and at the war on home on our own populations.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned tazers quickly. We have 60 seconds. We have heard in the last week about tazers used on the six child in Miami and a 12-year-old girl. The six-year-old child, because he was about to hurt himself. What was -- what was the tazer that was shot at him? What did it do?
DAVID MEIERAN: Well, the tazer is actually part of this -- is being manufactured by Tazer International, which is one of the fastest growing companies in the stock market. I think either today or Monday, its stock is actually splitting. And what you don't hear about the tazer is that it is used for compliance in prisons, and that it has resulted in numerous fatalities, just two alone in the last few weeks. So Amnesty International, for example, has called for a ban or a moratorium on the use of tazers, pending further investigation, and what again we see with those examples of the 6-year-old boy and the 12-year-old girl is that rather than curtail or limit the effects of violence that they're supposedly supposed to do, and as opposed to using regular firearms, they actually increase the threat of violence, because officers are more likely to resort to something that they believe to be less lethal, you know, rather than using conflict resolution or negotiation and other forms of…
AMY GOODMAN: David Meieran, your website.
DAVID MEIERAN: I encourage people to visit, www.nolesslethal.org where they can find out less lethal weapons and how to challenge their use in cities across the country.
Oh my!! What language! Its no wonder these people are not taken very seriously. I would also like to point out that if they were peaceful, then why use expletives (which are inherently confrontational) to describe what went on. I have absolutely no pity for these clueless lou's!
One day he'll get his comeuppance.
this appears to be the indymedia email address of the organizer
David Meieran < david@indypgh.org >
DAVID MEIERAN: I encourage people to visit, www.nolesslethal.org where they can find out less lethal weapons and how to challenge their use in cities across the country.
I know what that means.
are we supposed to feel sorry for this 68 year old woman? guarandamntee ya she was doing the same thing 35 years ago.. probably reliving her glory days.
Bail money, no doubt.
 |
It's a 'Burgh
|
 |
|
| Send FReepmail if yunz want on/off BPT list, 'n'at | |
| Learn Pittsburghese! Free Streaming 'Burgh Radio |
|
| The List of Ping Lists | |
Get Those Hippies !!!!! GOOO PD!!!!! WOO-HOOOO!!!!!
Turns out this guy is 42.
I agree with you
They are anti Klan/anti mask laws on the books,the laws need to be enforced
Found this at one of the sites that came up on google. The Thomas Merton Group was involved with this demonstration. This was evidently a protest against Clear Channel and the media.
Also located the Thomas Merton website which has an Anti-War committee that he is heavily involved with. In addition the T.M. group was involved at protesting at the Republican Convention in NYC. It goes on and on--yes a professional protester.
These nuts piss me off,will send a pizza to our local Army recruiters tomorrow with a note of support.
tazered hippies make me giggle.
For a city the size of Pittsburgh that's a poor showing.Not even a rent-a-mob,more like a rent-a-dozen.
The freekin' morons start arogantly marching up - the wrong way - a busy one way street; then they have the gall to say, "Boo-hoo, you guys played to rough!" Man am I sick of these freaks.
I'd like to shake that police dog's paw!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
