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tazzygirl -> RE: USMC joins #OWS after OPD takes a headshot at Marine... (10/28/2011 6:53:19 AM)
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~FR
The Mayor is stating she didnt make this call.
quote:
Oakland -- Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who is being criticized from all sides for a police sweep of the Occupy Oakland encampment, said Wednesday that she was not involved in the planning and did not even know when the action was going to take place.
The decision to raid the camp outside City Hall was made by City Administrator Deanna Santana on Oct. 19 with consultation from interim Police Chief Howard Jordan after campers repeatedly blocked paramedics and police from entering the camp despite reports of violence and injuries.
She was in Washington at the time.
quote:
The mayor said "I don't know everything" when asked by reporters if she was satisfied with how police conducted the sweep. She said she spent Wednesday meeting with community groups.
She also defended "99 percent" of police officers "who took a lot of abuse" and who "have really been trying to re-establish that connection with the community." But she said she asked Jordan to investigate reports of excessive force and wants a community police review board to look into the police actions.
I agree with her assessment of the "99%"
quote:
Seventeen law enforcement agencies and hundreds of officers cleared out a squatter city at City Hall's main plaza in the predawn hours. Santana said campers' unwillingness to address reports of violence, sexual assault, defecation and open flames prompted the sweep.
How big was this encampment at 3 am that it required so many to come make them leave?
quote:
Even though the morning raid involved no reported injuries, the evening was different. Protesters gathered to retake the plaza but were blocked by police. Protesters hurled paint, bottles, rocks and chemicals at officers, who responded with tear gas.
On Wednesday, protesters showed wounds that seemed to indicate police use of nonlethal projectiles, like rubber bullets and bean bags.
Santana said she and Jordan decided on the 3 a.m. Tuesday morning time because that's when they anticipated the fewest campers.
"We wanted the minimum impact," Santana said in an interview.
Quan, however, said she did not know that Santana and Jordan had planned the raid for Tuesday morning and, in fact, "I didn't think it was going to be last night."
Its her city but she dose not know what was being planned?
quote:
On Wednesday, De La Fuente said of overnight camping in the plaza, "the mayor should have put a stop from the beginning" and forced a police action that would have been less severe had it occurred earlier.
Among Quan's supporters, there is palpable sense of anger given her long activist history. Dan Siegel, Quan's unpaid legal adviser, became friends with her and her husband in 1969, when all three were fighting to create an ethnic studies program at UC Berkeley. Students boycotted classes for weeks.
So we now come to the political grandstanding. Typical. But the Mayor was part of her own protest not too long ago against the Police there.
quote:
Then and now
"I oppose the takeover of the plaza" by police, said Siegel, who took part in Tuesday night's protest. He said he may resign because of the disagreement.
When Quan was running for mayor, she took part in a July 2010 protest regarding the killing of Oscar Grant, an unarmed passenger, by a BART officer. Quan locked arms with fellow Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan and others near City Hall to form a barrier between police and people protesting the verdict.
Whether Quan and Kaplan acted as peacemakers or obstructers of police is contested. But it's a scene Occupy Oakland supporters haven't forgotten.
And the real crux of the "attitude" of the mayor now....
quote:
At that demonstration, "she was in the front line between cops and protesters," said Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, 28, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate in economics who voted for Quan. "It makes such a difference being in the seat of power. Now she's dispatching cops to beat people up. ... She's turned on the people."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/26/BAMD1LMMA0.DTL#ixzz1c5GCRzWd
She fucked up. The city fucked up. 17 agencies???? 100's of cops???? and they couldnt control the crowd?
quote:
OAKLAND -- Oakland Mayor Jean Quan shifted into damage control Thursday, asking hospitalized protester Scott Olsen and other Occupy Oakland demonstrators to cooperate with police investigating Olsen's head injury.
Quan visited Olsen, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran, on Thursday morning at Highland Hospital. She shook his hand, and apologized for what happened to him. She also encouraged him and fellow demonstrators to speak with police, a hospital spokesman said. Olsen was knocked down -- apparently by a tear-gas canister or other police projectile -- Tuesday night as authorities tried to keep protesters away from Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, in front of Oakland City Hall.
The protest group had been dislodged from their tents on the plaza by police earlier in the day.
Oakland police have promised a thorough investigation of the incident, which left Olsen with a brain injury that has impeded his speech. Alameda County prosecutors and federal investigators also planned to look into the violent clash.
The city has tried this week to recover from the confrontation, which attracted an avalanche of criticism from pundits, politicians and protesters. Television host Keith Olbermann called for Quan's resignation, and White House press secretary Jay Carney called on U.S. cities to preserve "a long and noble tradition in the United States of free expression and free speech."
Apologies wont take away the brain damage this man has suffered. Political finger-pointing wont heal these scars of many who were injured. They are trying to play "damage control". I dont think there is any way to minimize the damage this one night has caused. People have been calling for violence to get rid of the protesters from the start. Well, they had their violence. Now they have their investigations... and they now have the Feds looking into it as well. And most know the outcome will come to little too late.
I dont care if the officer who shot the canister meant to hit Scott or not. Simple fact is, he got hurt, in what was supposed to be a peaceful removal of protesters.... in a city that promised not to use items such as rubber bullets, they were found all over the place.
Amazing how everyone wants OWS to "follow the rules" when no one else does.... and thats sorta the point.
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