

Occupy Violence in Los Angeles

There has been plenty of reporting on how the man pictured above was recorded bashing a small, female police officer in the back of the head with a snare drum.

There has been considerably less reporting on this video, which shows how the incident above came about.

Based on the interview at the end of the second video, it seems that the Occupy group was taking over streets for which they did not have protest permits.  The police were allowing them to travel throughout the area, but were requiring them to stay on the sidewalks unless they had permits to be in the street.

The scene presented in video two is one-part coordinated attack, and one part street-theater.  Notice, the first people to get into position are the camera men.  They’re set up behind the group with, for lack of a better term, the “attack-barrier.”  The attack group knocks down the four police officers and immediately retreats right past the camera crew who capture perfect shots of a police officer wildly swinging a billy club in their general direction.

In the ensuing confusion, the rest of the group floods through the police line into the street (where they are not supposed to walk and which they do not have a permit to block).  And of course, the wood-backed barriers have disappeared and an “anti-police brutality” banner has been unfurled in their place.

Read more in Occupy or Video.