Kudos To Slay and the St. Louis Police for Not Using Militarized Police Force

Obviously I've been pretty critical of aspects of how Slay's administration has engaged with Occupy St. Louis. But one thing that is extremely important and definitely deserves major credit is the fact that they decided not to use an overly-agressive, militarized police group when they decided to arrest protesters. The officers who showed up were not wearing riot gear, and did not have any weapons drawn. And, as such, there weren't really any incidents of confrontation between them and the protesters who were arrested. There is some question about whether the officers used fake name tags (some on took a photo of an officer with a name tag that said "Chupacabra," which doesn't match poilce records), but in general they did not behave aggressively.

Now you might say, "praise them for not being overly aggressive? That's how they're supposed to act!" And that's true, except that what we've seen constantly since 9/11 and the "Battle of Seattle" is police acting waaaay over-the-top in using force to bully non-violent protesters. I was at a protest in New York shortly before the Iraq War started and we were forced into pens and random people doing nothing wrong were tackled by police in riot gear. And at numerous protests since then, I've seen police in full riot gear completely overreacting to the actual circumstances. There's an excellent summary of some of the history over at an article at the Atlantic (though I'm not sure I agree with the premise that Pike is blameless).

Given the coordination among cities on cracking down on the Occupy groups, it seems pretty certain that the City of St. Louis made a conscious choice not to use these overly aggressive tactics. And that's important, and should be acknowledged.

VIDEO: Witnesses of UMSL Campus Beating

Students at the University of Missouri St. Louis gathered today to collect signatures in support of Brian K. Massey, the student who was beaten by UMSL campus police outside the campus radio station on November 17. Several witnesses have come forward saying that Brian did nothing to provoke the arrest and was badly beaten by the police, but so far there has been no indication that the administration or police are taking the allegations seriously. I attended the event today and interviewed three eye-witnesses who all concurred with Brian's story. So far, there have been no witnesses who have come forward supporting the police version of events, and at least 7 who support Brian's version.

The first witness I spoke to was Justin Collins:


The second witness was Kendah Isom (cousin of Police Chief Isom):



A third witness, Manuel Wynn, also agreed with their story but preferred not to be videotaped.

Amanda Millstone, a classmate of Brian's, describes the emotional trauma he's going through:


Stacy Beckenholdt has been leading the efforts on Brian's behalf, and she explains why she got involved:



A couple further notes: Kendah's story closely matches with what Brian said as the police officers seemed agitated primarily based on being angry at the crowd rather than because of anything Brian did. Also, not mentioned by these witnesses here, Brian's ID clearly states that he is disabled and Brain says that he told the police this while they were beating him.

To hear Brian's version of events, tune in to channel 2 or 5 tonight (I'll update when videos are available) or listen to the Activist Hub radio interview with Brian.

More video soon!