american express business travel: Occupy LA Raid: Los Angeles Police Reportedly Went Undercover At Encampment Prior To Raid To Gather Information [LATEST UPDATES]

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles police used nearly a dozen undercover detectives to infiltrate the Occupy LA encampment before this week's raid to gather information on protesters' intentions, according to media reports Friday.

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None of the officers slept at the camp, but tried to blend in during the weeks leading up to the raid to learn about plans to resist or use weapons against police, a police source told the Los Angeles Times. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

The undercover work yielded information that some protesters were preparing bamboo spears and other potentially dangerous weapons in advance of an expected eviction by the LAPD, none of which were used, according to City News Service which first reported the story.

Police downplayed the significance of the undercover work since Occupy meetings were public and easily tracked.

LAPD Officer Cleon Joseph declined an Associated Press request for comment on the reports.

Occupy L.A. protester Mario Brito told City News Service he was not surprised by the revelation, but said it was "tantamount to 1950s McCarthyism."

Meanwhile, the city attorney's office filed criminal misdemeanor charges Friday against 27 more of the people who were arrested following the police sweep of the camp.

In all, 46 of the 291 people arrested during the raid have been charged with misdemeanor crimes of failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly. Some also were charged with resisting arrest.

The arrests came Wednesday during a pre-dawn raid on City Hall Park, where nearly 500 tents had been erected at the peak of an anti-Wall Street protest, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich said.

Fifty-eight posted bail or were released by police, Criminal Division Chief Earl Thomas told City News Service.

An additional 187 protesters were released without bail and without being charged, because they had no prior criminal records.

Bail amounts ranged from $5,000 for most of the defendants to as high as $20,000.

Latest Updates On HuffPost's Live Blog:

The Associated Press reports:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles police used nearly a dozen undercover detectives to infiltrate the Occupy LA encampment before this week's raid to gather information on protesters' intentions, according to media reports Friday.
None of the officers slept at the camp, but tried to blend in during the weeks leading up to the raid to learn about plans to resist or use weapons against police, a police source told the Los Angeles Times. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

Full story here.

The New York Observer reports:

Diana Taylor, the partner of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and a member of the board at Sotheby?s, confronted locked-out Teamsters Local 814 and Occupy Wall Street members during a December 1st meeting Hudson River Park Trust (for which Ms. Taylor is chairwoman on the board of directors).
She did not react well to their intrusion?in fact, she threatened to resign if Sotheby?s CEO Bill Ruprecht ?accedes to any of your demands.?

Full story here.

Oh, the horror: Advocates with Housing Works sent pizzas to be delivered to Occupy Wall Street protesters, only to find out New York police officers intercepted and ate the pizzas.

A press release from House Works went into detail:

The eight ?Robin Hoods? who were arrested at yesterday?s World AIDS Day civil disobedience action near City Hall, say that that NYPD officers at Manhattan?s 7th Precinct did not give them dinner, as they are required to do. Instead, the cops at the precinct punished them by eating two large pizzas that had been sent by the activists? supporters.
The pizzas were two large cheese pies from the revered pizzeria Mini Munchies, which earned four and half stars on menupages.com
The NYPD malfeasance did not stop there?the Robin Hoods also say that the cops drank the 1 liter bottles of Sprite and Coke that were sent to accompany the pizzas. Moreover, the NYPD did not offer the thirsty Robins water and went so far as to tell them that the vending machines were completely sold out of water and soda.

Occupy Chicago marked another tally in their "win" column after Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled a planned appearance they had planned to protest on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus Friday.

On Thursday, the university announced that Emanuel would not be lecturing as part of their "Future of Chicago" series as previously planned, and Occupy Chicago issued a press release claiming the cancellation as a "victory" over "Mayor 1%."

"'Mayor 1%' is running scared, he's afraid to face taxpayers after pushing to give our hard earned dollars to his buddies in the corporate world," Rachael Perrotta, an Occupy Chicago participant, said in a statement. "Corrupt politicians can run, but they can?t hide from the People's Mic. They can expect their public appearances to be Occupied until they start serving the interests of the people."

Read more here

Ruth Fowler, a protester with Occupy LA, writes:

No bad treatment of protestors[sic] occurred while the mainstream media was watching - it was only at the end that this occurred, when the non pool reporters were separated from the pool media, and the reporters not in the pool were shoved and hit by cops.
At this point I left, but other non-pool media refused to leave and wanted to stay reporting on the scene. Jared Iorio, our photographer, stayed for fifteen minutes after me and was hit repeatedly (twice) in the chest with a baton by a policeman until he left Solidarity Park. He joined a group of about 600 people on 1st and Main. After half an hour of being pushed back, the police called an unlawful assembly over the megaphone, and asked us to move or we would be arrested.

After spending two nights in jail, Yasha Levina recounted her experience to ExiledOnline claiming brutal force was used upon peaceful protesters in Tuesday night's raid.

Levine reports to ExiledOnline:

I heard from two different sources that at least one busload of protesters (around 40 people) was forced to spend seven excruciating hours locked in tiny cages on a Los Angeles County Sheriff?s Dept. prison bus, denied food, water and access to bathroom facilities. Both men and women were forced to urinate in their seats. Meanwhile, the cops in charge of the bus took an extended Starbucks coffee break.
* The bus that I was shoved into didn?t move for at least an hour. The whole time we listened to the screams and crying from a young woman whom the cops locked into a tiny cage at the front of the bus. She was in agony, begging and pleading for one of the policemen to loosen her plastic handcuffs. A police officer sat a couple of feet away the entire time that she screamed?but wouldn?t lift a finger.

Read full account here.

HuffPost's Dan Froomkin reports:

WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.
Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."
"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.
La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."

LA Weekly reports:

Heder's attorney, Joe Singleton, says there's a "big wait" at the detention center, where he's trying to help Heder. "The court is having problems tracking down the right paperwork from the City Attorney's office. They're just trying to figure out what's going on. Nobody's told me anything."
Gene Griffin -- a friend of Heder's who has set up a fund for bail, medical bills, broken cameras and the like, all the way from Texas -- says Singleton sent him a photo of Heder after the arrest.
"It appears that Tyson has a couple black eyes and a bump on his head," says Griffin.

LA Weekly Update:

According to the City Attorney's Office, Tyson Heder (or Header, as the City Attorney spells it), was just arraigned. Of the 20 protesters who have been charged so far, only Heder has charges that extend beyond "failure to disperse." Here they are:
"Tyson Header, during the operation, spit on an Officer and resisted arrest. Defendant Header was charged with three counts: Battery on a Peace Officer, Assault on a Peace Officer, and Resisting Arrest."
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is notoriously harsh on protesters. (And street artists, but that's another story.) We didn't see any spitting in the video, but the mauling was such a blur, it's hard to say.

Arrested occupiers were startled to find out Police had "branded" them with UV ink before releasing them following Friday night's raid of Victoria Square. Protesters were told they were marked with permanent marker, but later found out UV ink was used as well. Protesters are angered by police dishonesty -- and that they are unable to wash it off. According to Salon, UV ink has a history of health risks.

Salon reports:

There are reports of police using invisible ink to mark objects as part of campaigns against burglary and underage drinking. But this seems to be the first time UV ink has been used to mark people during the Occupy movement. Have any experience with this ink?
So what did being marked with the UV ink feel like?
?It felt very similar to some one drawing on you with a nail,? Haigh tells me. ?It really wasn?t a pleasant feeling and I passed a good 24 hours wondering what they had done to me before my friends and I figured it out. I did get a rash from the ink for a few days and my hand was rather sensitive.?
She adds the marking faded after four days, ?but I still feel my body was violated.?

Read the full story here.

Tyson Heder was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department when he attempted to videotape the raid on Occupy LA. A Twitter account and Facebook fan page has since been set up to "Free Tyson Heder." According to the Twitter account, his bail was set at $20,000 and he is still in jail. Watch below:

During a speech where presidential candidate Herman Cain was supposed to avoid talking politics, he brushed off Occupy protesters.

Via the Daily News Journal

MURFREESBORO ? Occupy Murfreesboro protesters disrupted embattled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's speech Thursday night at MTSU, but failed to throw him off track in his address to young entrepreneurs.
Midway through Cain's presentation on his rise through the corporate ranks of Burger King and Godfather's Pizza, four MTSU students stood and yelled, "Mic check. Mic check. We are the 99 percent. We are the 99 percent."
Others shouted them down in the packed State Farm Room of the Business and Aerospace Building, but they still managed to get in a few words such as, "You owe the American people an apology" and "Sexual abuse is not acceptable," in reference to allegations that he sexually harassed women while leading the National Restaurant Association and carried on a 13-year affair with a Georgia woman.

Occupy Tampa witnessed the largest number of arrests at its encampment Tuesday night since its October beginning.

The South Tampa Patch reports:

Police arrested 29 Occupy Tampa protesters Thursday night after they refused to leave a downtown Tampa park.
A group of about 50 demonstrators sat down, locked arms and began chanting around 10 p.m. Thursday at Riverfront Park. "After giving the group multiple warnings, more than 20 of them exited the park," Tampa Police Department spokesperson Laura McElroy said in a news release.

Read the full story here.

Via CNN:

A block away from the New York Stock Exchange, a few dozen Occupy Wall Street organizers show up to work every day at an office building in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District. The movement may have lost its public face ? a handful of protesters appear at Zuccotti Park on any given morning ? but the folks who sit at desks inside the office said Occupy is still very much alive despite the recent evictions of encampments across the country.

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Protesters have been at nearly every University of California campus, complaining of escalating tuition hikes, with students flocking to the four locations the Board of Regents held a meeting last week.

However, this week, the Regents approved salary raises for high ranked administration officials and attorneys, some upwards of 23 percent.

The Los Angeles Times reports new base salaries range from $165,000 for a UC Santa Cruz dean to $553,500 for Vincent L. Johnson, chief operating officer for UC Davis hospital and health system.

"These retention efforts are critical. We don't do them lightly and we do not do them often," Yudof said.

Read more here.

The legendary Beat Generation-era poet and City Lights Bookstore founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about the Occupy movement, which he performed in San Francisco earlier this week.

Full text below:

The first fine dawn of life on earth The first cry of man in the first light The first firefly flickering at night ... The first wagon train westward The first sighting of the Pacific by Lewis and Clark The first desegregation by Huck and Jim on a raft at night The first buffalo head nickel and the last buffalo The first skyscraper in America The first home run at Yankee Stadium The first ball park hotdog with mustard The last bohemian in a beret The last homespun politician and the first stolen election The first plane to hit the first twin tower The birth of vast national paranoia The birth of American corporate fascism The next to last free speech radio The next to last independent newspaper raising hell The next to last independent bookstore with a mind of its own The next to last leftie looking for Obama nirvana
The first day of the Wall Street occupation to set forth upon this land a new revolutionary nation!

Sahara Reporters reports:

A coalition of Civil Society in Abuja said that it would begin a mass protest come January 2012 tagged (Occupy Nigeria) over the controversial fuel subsidy removal.
This revelation was made today by the National Convener of the group ,Jaye Gaskia, at a press briefing. Gaskia said that the group would mobilize all Nigerian and other organized bodies for permanent street protest which would cut across the country if Government go a finally go ahead with the removal of the fuel subsidy.

Read the full story and Occupy Nigeria press release here.

The author records her visit via Occupy Writers:

When I went looking for Occupy Johnson City, Tennessee, the spiky profile of pickets and placards struck my eye first, and then the people underneath them, but it did not look like a global uprising per se, just an orderly crowd in a parking lot. But a crowd, there?s a sight, in a town where people mostly drive-thru or drive on. I saw some American flags and a sign that said ?God Hates Banks? and figured this had to be it. From across the street I heard one person say a few words at a time, repeated by the crowd in the unmistakable ?from this day forward?? cadence of a wedding or a swearing-in, and again I wasn?t sure I was in the right place. As it turned out, the call and response was the people?s microphone, famously re-invented in New York to subvert the ban on amplifiers. Here in Tennessee it sounds like people taking vows. Repeat as one: men in UMW jackets, farmers in their town clothes, college kids, retired schoolteachers, young couples pushing strollers, the wilderness guide in a kilt, the homeless man with the sign in Latin. Really the temptation was to ask any given person, what is the story? Because there is one. This is Appalachia, home of the forested Cumberland and Wildwood Flower and NASCAR and 18% unemployment and bless your heart.

To read the rest of her essay, go here.

@ allisonkilkenny : RT @CaptainShar: I just got out of LAPD Van Nuys jail after being arrested and detained for about 22 hours at #OccupyLA.

HuffPost's Tyler Kingkade reports:

WASHINGTON -- Faculty in the University of California system said this week that the group appointed to lead an investigation into the controversial pepper-spraying incident on the UC Davis campus is far from independent.
On Nov. 18, student protesters at UC Davis werepepper-sprayed at close range by campus police while demonstrating against tuition hikes. Footage of the event went viral and the police chief and two officers involved have since been put on leave. In response to the controversial actions, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi called for an independent investigation.
"Multiple investigations and reviews are underway to learn why police -- despite my explicit instructions that no force be used in removing tents and other equipment from the area -- elected to employ pepper spray. But let me again be clear: it was absolutely wrong and unnecessary," Katehi said in a message sent to students on Nov. 23.
But in an open letter, Robert Meister, head of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, called for University of California president Mark Yudof to swap out Kroll Security Group and its chairman William Bratton as the ones in charge of the investigation.

Read the whole thing here.

L.A. sanitation officials are expecting to remove 30 tons of debris from the Occupy L.A. encampment following the massive Tuesday night raids which left over 200 occupiers arrested.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Andrea Alarcon, president of the city Public Works board, said workers already have removed 25 tons of belongings from the City Hall park, all of it heading straight to a landfill.
Sanitation crews also have vacuumed up about 3,000 gallons of water that had washed into a catch basin in recent days and are testing it for hazardous materials, she said.
Norman Schwartz, 76, a retired attorney from Calabasas, felt differently. He stopped by Wednesday afternoon to snap photos and suggested that the Occupy L.A. scene was a great lesson in democracy. He said he was sad to see the park so empty.
?There was no longer this wonderful thing going on,? he said. ?It was just an empty, dirty park.?

Read the full story here.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/03/occupy-la-raid-undercover-police_n_1126858.html

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Monday, December 5, 2011

Occupy LA Raid: Los Angeles Police Reportedly Went Undercover At Encampment Prior To Raid To Gather Information [LATEST UPDATES]

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