An Iraq war veteran critically injured in 2011 Occupy protests in California has won $4.5 million in a legal settlement with local authorities, his lawyers said Friday.
Scott Olsen, who served two tours in Iraq, suffered brain damage when riot police used tear gas to disperse protestors in Oakland on Oct. 25.
Olsen, 26, welcomed the settlement but said it could not compensate for his injuries including a fractured skull.
“It’s certainly not enough to make up for a part of my brain that is dead and will forever be dead,” Olsen told the Democracy Now! video news outlet.
He gave an outdoor press conference not far from where he was injured, saying he had not expected to be disabled due to police action at home, having survived war-torn Iraq.
The Raw Story
Iraq veteran gets $4.5 million settlement for police injuries during Occupy Oakland protestAgence France-Presse
But the main instigator of the crackdown was not the city, but rather "Homeland Security" as well as the big banks - see Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
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It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The big banks should have been included in that case.
4.5 million won't cause government to change. The PTB make that much every second of every day by hijacking the political system
ReplyDeleteIt might have an effect on cities. Unless federal or state governments pick up the tab, that a lot of taxpayer dollars for smaller cities to fork over. That has to come out of the budget or raise taxes. So if it stands on appeal, it could have an effect on future behavior of the Oakland police department.
ReplyDeleteBut I assume that if that became an issue, the government would just come up with some kind of grant to take the burden off the city.
California in general has a bad reputation about police "overreach." I recall being warned about it by friends when I first spent time there in the early Sixties.
Naomi Wolf continues: "The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document — reproduced here in an easily searchable format — shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens."
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Police state. Neoliberalism (neo-feudalism) rules ruthlessly, and "democracy" an "freedom" are sham slogans.
I suppose its too late for law enforcement personnel to learn how to be more gentle...
ReplyDeleteIn a professional organization the potential for individual rogue behavior arising is extremely low. Where there is rogue behavior it is generally traceable to the culture that stems from the top. A whole bunch of police officers involved in brutality, CIA agents involved in torture, and bankers involved in fraud didn't just all of sudden go rogue individually. Not credible. It's the culture.
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