The New School for bureaucracy and inefficiency
So my student body decided they wanted to be activists again... while I support everything they're fighting for, a lot of these kids are acting in the same way that gives PETA a bad name (irrational, unorganized, and overzealous)... In any case that is NO EXCUSE for New York's finest swine to beat the shit out of a bunch of unarmed kids...
honestly, what's the wost a bunch of Lang kids could do? Read Nietzsche at them? anyhow, things escelated, people were injured, pigs acted like pigs and the newspapers got a wind it all... behold:
Taken from the New York Times:
Scores of police officers wearing helmets and carrying batons, plastic shields and pepper spray entered a New School building at 65 Fifth Avenue around 11 a.m. on Friday, arresting 19 protesters who had occupied it as part of a determined protest aimed at the university’s president, Bob Kerrey. The 19 protesters - 16 men and 3 women - were charged with third-degree burglary; one was charged with assault and grand larceny for stealing a radio from a building employee. Three other protesters, who authorities said were part of a group of about 8 people who tried to escape the building as the police surrounded it, were charged with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
The protest followed a similar occupation of a cafeteria in the same building nearly four months earlier. That protest ended peacefully. This time, the university’s response was more confrontational, and the outcome violent. “The Police Department was asked to arrest individuals trespassing on the property,” said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, who said the operation “was done in a very organized, orderly fashion.”
But students at the scene described a tumultuous situation in which protesters were pepper-sprayed before being placed in handcuffs and loaded by police officers into the back of a white van, around 11:30 a.m.
Mr. Browne said it was “untrue that pepper spray or mace was used in effectuating the arrests” - a claim he later backed away from.
Witnesses said that the protesters had sought to leave the building by a side door, but were pushed back and pepper-sprayed. The witnesses said that several students pushed open a door that exited onto 14th Street, and that police officers stationed outside that door used pepper spray on the students in the corridor and slammed the door shut.
“The students tried to open the door,” said Kristina Monllos, a sophomore at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School, and a reporter covering the scene for the New School Free Press. “When the students pushed the door open, the police sprayed pepper spray inside and pushed the door closed.”
Mr. Browne, however, said that if some students believed they were unable to leave, it might have been because they had used a chain to lock themselves inside, which officers then had to cut through.
Mr. Browne said in a statement:
At some point, as police were entering the building on Fifth Avenue, a group of 30 to 40 individuals advanced on a side entrance of the same building on East 14th Street. While an individual or individuals pushed against the side door from inside, others from the advancing group began to throw metal barriers at the officers. Additional officers were summoned. They pursued fleeing members of the group, and affected three arrests for charges that included: assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
Footage recorded by a videographer, identified by the New School Free Press as Chris McCallion, and shown on the Free Press Web site, shows a turbulent scene in which demonstrators briefly scuffle with police and heave a metal barricade. At one point, a protester appeared to try to wrest a woman away from an officer who was trying to arrest her.
A video, above, shot by a freelance journalist, Brandon Jourdan of Brooklyn, showed about a half-dozen police officers standing near the door on 14th Street when it was pushed open from inside. Then it shows officers shaking cans of pepper spray as they hold the door back, spraying inside the corridor, and forcing the door shut. It shows an officer, a few moments later, lunging toward Mr. Jourdan’s camera, before swerving toward a young man standing on the street shouting. In the video, the officer pushes the man’s face and knockes him to the ground before arresting him. (Be advised, the video includes some profanity.)
As senior police officials, firefighters and emergency medical technicians looked on, the police officers surged into the building around 11 a.m., carrying bunches of white plastic handcuffs attached to their belts. Moments later, several were seen leaning over the parapet; the banners that the three dozen or so students occupying the building had hung were removed.
Officers from the Emergency Service Unit cut the chains and then officers from the Manhattan South Task Force entered the building around 11 a.m., and “began to make arrests in an orderly fashion,” Mr. Browne said.
Neither Mr. Browne nor the university could immediately say whether or how many of the 19 people arrested were New School students. The university said that the three people arrested on assault charges after leaving the building were students: one from the New School, one from Brooklyn College and one from New York University.
Police Reaction to Video
After Mr. Jourdan’s video was posted on the City Room blog, Mr. Browne viewed it and spoke simultaneously with a reporter by phone. He took issue with an earlier account on City Room that described officers as having “stormed” the building. “There was no storming,” he said. He said the officers wore helmets and had standard-issue batons and pepper spray, but no riot gear, as some descriptions from witnesses had it.
As he watched the video, Mr. Browne explained why the officers held the door shut. “What happens is, we are making arrests inside, and we are trying to prevent people from escaping,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re giving up.’”
He said that some people were trying to get out of the building and that others were trying to get in, so keeping the doorway closed served two purposes.
“There was a group we thought might be trying to get in,” he said.
It was the activity on the street outside that led to arrests there, Mr. Browne said, and those arrests are on the videotape.
Regarding the use of pepper spray, Mr. Browne said the video made it clear that the spray was, indeed, used. (The department does not use Mace or tear gas, he noted.)
“We apparently used pepper spray for people who were either trying to let more people in or were trying avoid arrests,” Mr. Browne said. “Now, once I see it, I know what is going on.”
He continued to insist that the spray was not used in “effectuating the arrests” inside the building, and that he had not been aware earlier of the incidents at the side door.
Mr. Browne reviewed several times the segment of the video showing a protester getting knocked to the ground.
When asked about the tactics used, he said, “He pushed him and he fell down.”
He added: “My comment - the officer pushed into him and he fell down. There were individuals interfering with an arrest being made, and he was one of them, and they pushed into him and he fell down.”
Mr. Browne also questioned the source of the video, which came from a man who was shooting for the liberal news organization Democracy Now and said it was more notable for what was not included in the footage.
“If they want to question the validity of it, the proof is in the pudding,” Mr. Jourdan, 29, said in response. “The video speaks for itself and not only that, there were plenty of witnesses there who believed the police overreacted and lost their cool.” He said he planned on filing a complaint against the officer who, he said, also “shoved me to the ground.”
Donna Lieberman, the executive director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, viewed the videotape - twice, she said - and pointed out that while it is unknown what occurred prior to the yelling, the portions of video that are seen raise “serious concerns.”
“What appears on the video is someone yelling at the cops and getting punched in the face for it and thrown to the ground and arrested,” said Ms. Lieberman. “The Police Department has no authority to use physical force on somebody in this situation and they have no authority to arrest people for yelling at them; that is a violation of civil rights plain and simple.”
In other much more alarming news, there is a mouse in the room across the hall.
honestly, what's the wost a bunch of Lang kids could do? Read Nietzsche at them? anyhow, things escelated, people were injured, pigs acted like pigs and the newspapers got a wind it all... behold:
Taken from the New York Times:
Scores of police officers wearing helmets and carrying batons, plastic shields and pepper spray entered a New School building at 65 Fifth Avenue around 11 a.m. on Friday, arresting 19 protesters who had occupied it as part of a determined protest aimed at the university’s president, Bob Kerrey. The 19 protesters - 16 men and 3 women - were charged with third-degree burglary; one was charged with assault and grand larceny for stealing a radio from a building employee. Three other protesters, who authorities said were part of a group of about 8 people who tried to escape the building as the police surrounded it, were charged with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
The protest followed a similar occupation of a cafeteria in the same building nearly four months earlier. That protest ended peacefully. This time, the university’s response was more confrontational, and the outcome violent. “The Police Department was asked to arrest individuals trespassing on the property,” said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, who said the operation “was done in a very organized, orderly fashion.”
But students at the scene described a tumultuous situation in which protesters were pepper-sprayed before being placed in handcuffs and loaded by police officers into the back of a white van, around 11:30 a.m.
Mr. Browne said it was “untrue that pepper spray or mace was used in effectuating the arrests” - a claim he later backed away from.
Witnesses said that the protesters had sought to leave the building by a side door, but were pushed back and pepper-sprayed. The witnesses said that several students pushed open a door that exited onto 14th Street, and that police officers stationed outside that door used pepper spray on the students in the corridor and slammed the door shut.
“The students tried to open the door,” said Kristina Monllos, a sophomore at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School, and a reporter covering the scene for the New School Free Press. “When the students pushed the door open, the police sprayed pepper spray inside and pushed the door closed.”
Mr. Browne, however, said that if some students believed they were unable to leave, it might have been because they had used a chain to lock themselves inside, which officers then had to cut through.
Mr. Browne said in a statement:
At some point, as police were entering the building on Fifth Avenue, a group of 30 to 40 individuals advanced on a side entrance of the same building on East 14th Street. While an individual or individuals pushed against the side door from inside, others from the advancing group began to throw metal barriers at the officers. Additional officers were summoned. They pursued fleeing members of the group, and affected three arrests for charges that included: assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
Footage recorded by a videographer, identified by the New School Free Press as Chris McCallion, and shown on the Free Press Web site, shows a turbulent scene in which demonstrators briefly scuffle with police and heave a metal barricade. At one point, a protester appeared to try to wrest a woman away from an officer who was trying to arrest her.
A video, above, shot by a freelance journalist, Brandon Jourdan of Brooklyn, showed about a half-dozen police officers standing near the door on 14th Street when it was pushed open from inside. Then it shows officers shaking cans of pepper spray as they hold the door back, spraying inside the corridor, and forcing the door shut. It shows an officer, a few moments later, lunging toward Mr. Jourdan’s camera, before swerving toward a young man standing on the street shouting. In the video, the officer pushes the man’s face and knockes him to the ground before arresting him. (Be advised, the video includes some profanity.)
As senior police officials, firefighters and emergency medical technicians looked on, the police officers surged into the building around 11 a.m., carrying bunches of white plastic handcuffs attached to their belts. Moments later, several were seen leaning over the parapet; the banners that the three dozen or so students occupying the building had hung were removed.
Officers from the Emergency Service Unit cut the chains and then officers from the Manhattan South Task Force entered the building around 11 a.m., and “began to make arrests in an orderly fashion,” Mr. Browne said.
Neither Mr. Browne nor the university could immediately say whether or how many of the 19 people arrested were New School students. The university said that the three people arrested on assault charges after leaving the building were students: one from the New School, one from Brooklyn College and one from New York University.
Police Reaction to Video
After Mr. Jourdan’s video was posted on the City Room blog, Mr. Browne viewed it and spoke simultaneously with a reporter by phone. He took issue with an earlier account on City Room that described officers as having “stormed” the building. “There was no storming,” he said. He said the officers wore helmets and had standard-issue batons and pepper spray, but no riot gear, as some descriptions from witnesses had it.
As he watched the video, Mr. Browne explained why the officers held the door shut. “What happens is, we are making arrests inside, and we are trying to prevent people from escaping,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re giving up.’”
He said that some people were trying to get out of the building and that others were trying to get in, so keeping the doorway closed served two purposes.
“There was a group we thought might be trying to get in,” he said.
It was the activity on the street outside that led to arrests there, Mr. Browne said, and those arrests are on the videotape.
Regarding the use of pepper spray, Mr. Browne said the video made it clear that the spray was, indeed, used. (The department does not use Mace or tear gas, he noted.)
“We apparently used pepper spray for people who were either trying to let more people in or were trying avoid arrests,” Mr. Browne said. “Now, once I see it, I know what is going on.”
He continued to insist that the spray was not used in “effectuating the arrests” inside the building, and that he had not been aware earlier of the incidents at the side door.
Mr. Browne reviewed several times the segment of the video showing a protester getting knocked to the ground.
When asked about the tactics used, he said, “He pushed him and he fell down.”
He added: “My comment - the officer pushed into him and he fell down. There were individuals interfering with an arrest being made, and he was one of them, and they pushed into him and he fell down.”
Mr. Browne also questioned the source of the video, which came from a man who was shooting for the liberal news organization Democracy Now and said it was more notable for what was not included in the footage.
“If they want to question the validity of it, the proof is in the pudding,” Mr. Jourdan, 29, said in response. “The video speaks for itself and not only that, there were plenty of witnesses there who believed the police overreacted and lost their cool.” He said he planned on filing a complaint against the officer who, he said, also “shoved me to the ground.”
Donna Lieberman, the executive director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, viewed the videotape - twice, she said - and pointed out that while it is unknown what occurred prior to the yelling, the portions of video that are seen raise “serious concerns.”
“What appears on the video is someone yelling at the cops and getting punched in the face for it and thrown to the ground and arrested,” said Ms. Lieberman. “The Police Department has no authority to use physical force on somebody in this situation and they have no authority to arrest people for yelling at them; that is a violation of civil rights plain and simple.”
In other much more alarming news, there is a mouse in the room across the hall.