Trigger warning. The video footage and news report include both video and a verbal description of a male cop shouting misogynistic curses and using sudden physical violence against a woman trying to find out why another protester had been arrested.
This special edition of Cops are here to protect you
is brought to you from the streets of Occupied Denver, during the recent police riots against people protesting the Democratic National Convention.
Government cops protect you by yanking random dark-skinned men out of the park for no clear reason. Then, if you should walk up and try to take some photographs of what’s happening, or ask them why they’re arresting a dark-skinned man who, as far as anyone could tell, was standing around not doing anything wrong, they’ll protect you by jabbing you with a stick. Then, if you should dare to verbally demand that your public servants
stop jabbing you with a stick for asking questions, they’ll make sure you’re good and protected by screaming Back up, bitch!
in your face and slamming you to the ground with a body check from the same stick.
Oh, and then grabbing you and hauling you away to jail when you try to talk to reporters about what just happened.
The woman shown on video being shoved to the ground by a Denver police officer says the officer hit her four times with his baton in an incident she describes as unprovoked.
CodePink protester Alicia Forrest, 24, was released on $500 bail Tuesday night and has a court date for late September, she said Wednesday at an anti-war protest march through the middle of Denver.
I’m a little sore,
she said, but I’ll make it.
Forrest is a former fashion designer from Los Angeles.
She and others were asking officers why they were arresting another protester Tuesday afternoon outside Civic Center Park when the officer poked her twice with his baton. He then pushed her with the long side of the stick once, Forrest said, before yelling, Back up, b—-
and shoving her hard to the ground.
The final shove was captured by a Rocky videographer.
. . . I was taking photos (and) he kept hitting me with his baton,
she said. I was so shocked that he did that.
Forrest and CodePink said the officer was reassigned and can no longer interact with demonstrators, but that could not be immediately confirmed Wednesday.
Forrest was in jail about five hours, then spent another two hours talking with the Denver Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, she said.
— Paul A. Anthony, Rocky Mountain News (2008-08-28):
I suppose it’s for the best that he can’t get all interactive on demonstrators’ asses anymore. But if it is true that he acted improperly enough to yank him from protest control duty, then isn’t also the case that he violated the rights of an innocent woman with his use of force? And, if so, why is this dangerous thug — who feels perfectly free to beat an unarmed woman with a stick, while screaming misogynistic curses at her, apparently for nothing more than daring to give him lip — why, I say, is he not in jail on charges of assault and battery?
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