Re: Critical Mass mass arrests.

On 28 Aug 2004 20:00:57 -0700, Corvus Corvax <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Phil Squire said:

Good to see the NYPD have the resources to clamp down on this kind of

threat

Quoted message said:

to society...

Just greasing up the machine to deal with the _real_ influx if liberals
and hippies next week.

CC

Just wait till the idiots whip this out, if they haven't already...

http://www.atcsd.com/pdf/LRAD_SellSht-0728.pdf
--
Slacker

Slacker said:

On 28 Aug 2004 20:00:57 -0700, Corvus Corvax <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Phil Squire said:

Good to see the NYPD have the resources to clamp down on this kind of

threat

Quoted message said:

to society...

Just greasing up the machine to deal with the _real_ influx if liberals
and hippies next week.

CC

Just wait till the idiots whip this out, if they haven't already...

http://www.atcsd.com/pdf/LRAD_SellSht-0728.pdf

Dude, where can I get one for my car? Behavior mod Kewl! Does it work
on chicks?
;-)

Shawn

"Corvus Corvax" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Phil Squire said:

Good to see the NYPD have the resources to clamp down on this kind of

threat

Quoted message said:

to society...

Just greasing up the machine to deal with the _real_ influx if liberals
and hippies next week.
Haven't heard from supabonbon recently... you ride, Gordo?

CC

Yep. It was mostly peaceful, quieter than usual in fact, though
apparently a lot was going on that I didn't know about while riding.
When I found out how many arrests had been made, and how many riders
there had been all together, I was stunned. I saw only 7 arrests or
so. The last few were, from my vantage, carried out by brutal billy
clubbing riot cops FOR NO REASON. I can see no explanation other than
pure bloodlust from a corps of NYPD JACKBOOTED THUGS. Don't get me
wrong, I'm not the type to badmouth cops generally. It's a tough and
thankless job. But the cops who were handling this ride... I'll write
up an RR tomo. Suffice it for now to say that for the most
sophisticated police force in the country, the NYPD was a swaggering,
bullying, confrontational, EMOTIONALLY CHARGED bunch, and in my eyes
totally unprofessional from the top down. The way it was handled...
sickening. Disgusting. On every level.

/s

supabonbon wrote:
Suffice it for now to say that for the most

Quoted message said:

sophisticated police force in the country, the NYPD was a swaggering,
bullying, confrontational, EMOTIONALLY CHARGED bunch, and in my eyes
totally unprofessional from the top down. The way it was handled...
sickening. Disgusting. On every level.

....yeah, and those pigs are a bunch of card
carrying union members who will most likely vote
for Kerry.

Oh wait...

--
petefagerlin.com

everything that is wrong with the internet

<p e t e f a g e r l i n

....yeah, and those pigs are a bunch of card
carrying union members who will most likely vote
for Kerry.

Oh wait...

--
petefagerlin.com>

but under the charge of a republican Mayor and his republican administration... but of course you knew that...

Jimbo(san)

[email hidden] (supabonbon) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

"Corvus Corvax" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Phil Squire said:

Good to see the NYPD have the resources to clamp down on this kind of

threat

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

to society...

Just greasing up the machine to deal with the _real_ influx if liberals
and hippies next week.
Haven't heard from supabonbon recently... you ride, Gordo?

CC

Yep. It was mostly peaceful, quieter than usual in fact, though
apparently a lot was going on that I didn't know about while riding.
When I found out how many arrests had been made, and how many riders
there had been all together, I was stunned. I saw only 7 arrests or
so. The last few were, from my vantage, carried out by brutal billy
clubbing riot cops FOR NO REASON. I can see no explanation other than
pure bloodlust from a corps of NYPD JACKBOOTED THUGS. Don't get me
wrong, I'm not the type to badmouth cops generally. It's a tough and
thankless job. But the cops who were handling this ride... I'll write
up an RR tomo. Suffice it for now to say that for the most
sophisticated police force in the country, the NYPD was a swaggering,
bullying, confrontational, EMOTIONALLY CHARGED bunch, and in my eyes
totally unprofessional from the top down. The way it was handled...
sickening. Disgusting. On every level.

/s

Alright, I don't know anything else about this guy and I haven't read
any of his stuff except this, but if you want to get the general
impression of what it was like inside the ride, this guy did a good
job:

http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/08/touring_manhatt.html

The rides are usually 1,000+ riders, but this time it was estimated at
5,000. Some humorous things Mr. Barlow left out. There are a ton of
stories, these are just what I witnessed directly.

- On rides I've done, there's an NYPD chopper hovering above us. It's
rather humorous, we're riding bicycles and we get our very own
chopper. This time, we were in the shadow of a huge Fugi Film blimp. I
joked with my bicycle conspirators that it would follow us, thinking
it was actually on its way to Shea or something. Nope. The blimp was
for us.
- Among the occasional, half hearted chants of "[censored] Bush" and stuff,
there was a lone rider chanting "Four More Years". That would be me.
Not that I'm a big fan of the current adminsitration, but I'm not too
keen on the Democratic ticket either, and I thought it would be fun to
stir the soup a bit. Nobody said boo about it. Riders were too nice
and genteel for that. Lots of women, there were parents with kids...
really a broad cross section of, you know, idealistic cyclists who
were there for a myriad of reasons. The pics of 'anarchists' you're
seeing on the news? One in three hundred riders, maybe. I was seeing
presentable, college edumacated folk around me.
- I saw 4 people being arrested at 10th and A, heading uptown. I
didn't see what had precipitated it, but I saw people being placed
into cars and bicycles being thrown into a van. The Mass had turned
around and was now heading west along 9th. I figured now that we were
sort of concentrated downtown the cops didn't want us making another
trip north, so they scared everybody off by arresting the leaders. It
worked. I didn't expect to get through the ride without seeing some
zipties, but at the same time I'm glad I wasn't one of the people
being hauled off. Of course, the ride headed back north once the
riders got to the next avenue.
- After 2 hours of meandering around it was past old, and the group I
was with was ready to join my other friends, who had already left for
a bar downtown. I was following the Mass south when I found out we
were reaching our finish, St. Mark's Church. There was a big bicycle
log jam, I was around 50 yards from the very front. There, I saw 7 or
8 riot cops in full regalia -- shields down, chest protection, billy
clubs drawn. Speaking only for myself and the people I know, we were
ready to disperse. I'm guessing that between 70-90% of the other
riders were set to go enjoy their Friday night somewhere else too. I
figure, really, maybe 40 of the people riding were looking for real
confrontation. But the vast majority of riders hadn't done the ride
before and were well satisfied with their act of civil disobedience.
That's when the riot cops started going into strange formations.
They'd back up into a tight cube and then spread out into a line.
Now the had our attention.
Everybody was watching. Nobody was leaving. It was a car-crash, morbid
fascination, what-are-they-doing moment. Riot cops only know how to do
one thing, after all, and that's to beat people down. I didn't hear
what was said at the front, or what transpired in the 2' between the
riot cops and the protestors, what I did see was a flurry of action
and clubs swinging. A friend of mine was at the front taking photos
(which I'll have soon hopefully). He said that a cop barked at a
cyclist at the front to move back. With probably 2000 cyclists behind
him, he was backed against a wall. Because he was unable to do the
impossible, he was clobbered, zip tied, and locked up. When somebody
jumped in to try and help him, same deal. My friend said that one riot
cop started swinging his baton into the crowd to 'make a hole'. A few
people were arrested. Back where I was, everybody was looking at
everybody else, asking what the hell was that all about.

Now, firstly, like I wrote earlier, with as many people on this ride
as there were and with the RNC in town (again, thanks Mayor
Bloomberg!), it's not like I didn't expect arrests, warranted and
otherwise. It's gonna happen. Being in the ride and only witnessing 10
arrests out of 264, I thought 10 was an acceptable number.
Now for the real opinionated stuff:
I'm not a military strategist, or even a sociologist or psychologist.
I don't know the minds of the people around me. I do know that I and
the people I spoke to were relieved that the ride was over and that
they'd done their duty and could go back to booze and sex. It's my
belief that if the cops had stayed in their cars for another 5
minutes, 30% of the riders would have split. After 10 minutes, 70%.
Once they were down to a small number, they could have put 100 regular
cops on the street with a bullhorn saying, "The New York Police
Department appreciates you cooperation. Your peaceful protest is
terriffic yada yada snowjob snowjob...." You know, soften everybody up
with some good old compliments and maybe a bit of humor. Then the
hundred cops just starts walking and moving everybody along.

Whose fault was the violence at the end? Why did it have to be so
confrontational? What was the PD's overall goal for the week? To serve
and protect who? To be confrontational or to keep things peaceful?
With 1800 arrests and 900 in 'holding pens' as of this morning, I
can't wait for all these cowboy douchebags to get the [censored] out of
town. With all due respect, I feel like I now know 1% of what
occupation feels like, and it's not nice.

Okay, fire away.

/s