(MintPress) – An eight-month study conducted by independent researchers and legal experts at various universities, including Fordham University and New York University (NYU), has confirmed 130 cases of police brutality against the Occupy Wall Street movement across the country.
The report provides evidence of what has long been suspected within the strained relationship between the political uprising and authorities, as brutality claims have surfaced across the nation, from Oakland to Boston.
The evidence was gathered through video footage, media reports and eyewitness accounts. It is the first published report in a series of studies that look into the police handling of the Occupy movement across the country. The first report claimed that police actions limited the right to free speech and peaceful assembly while escalating tensions between the officers and demonstrators.
Since the Occupy movement formed late last summer, police have been seen dispersing peaceful demonstrations with pepper spray, shooting rubber bullets into crowds and assaulting protesters, according to the report. The study cites one example of a woman who was thrown by police and knocked unconscious. An officer then shoved a reinforcement barricade into her chest while she was down.
“These practices violate assembly and expression rights and breach the U.S. government’s international legal obligations to respect those rights,” the report stated. “In New York City, protest policing concerns are extensive and exist against a backdrop of disproportionate and well-documented abusive policing practices in poor and minority communities outside of the protest context.”
Thousands of arrests
Since September 17, 2011, nearly 7,500 protesters affiliated with the Occupy movement have been arrested. New York City and Oakland, both subjects of the study, have made headlines for large-scale arrests of protesters and allegations of violence against them. During the initial crackdowns of Occupy last fall, the New York Police Department (NYPD) was caught on video beating peaceful protesters with batons and spraying the crowds with pepper spray.
Further allegations included a motorcycle-mounted police officer intentionally driving his motorcycle into a protester. A journalist for Mother Jones reported that one police officer said he was hoping his “little nightstick” would get a “workout” later in the evening.
Journalists have also been subjected to violence and arrests during the unlawful Occupy crackdowns. In April, Minneapolis police shoved a cameraman for KSTP-TV, an ABC affiliate, who was filming a confrontation between police and demonstrators. The incident, which resulted in damage to the camera and minor injuries to the cameraman, was caught on camera. The station’s news director, Lindsay Radford, said police set a scary precedent if cameramen standing on public property are being assaulted.
“He’s clearly shooting video of someone getting arrested. My photographer says he had no verbal warning,” she says. “They were standing in the middle of the street, which is public property.”
The suppression of freedom
Violent police crackdowns and arrests of journalists were to blame for the U.S.’ 27-spot tumble in the global freedom of the press rankings, according to Reporters Without Borders.
In the context of mass demonstrations, police are lawfully allowed to use force if it is needed to arrest an individual who is breaking the law or if it is required to disperse a crowd gathered unlawfully. The study, funded solely by the universities conducting it, notes that the confirmed cases of police brutality involve individuals who were protesting within the frame of the law.
The study claimed that those types of police actions suppress the types of legal uprisings that give a democracy its foundation.
“The freedoms to peacefully assemble, to engage in political expression, to march and demonstrate, and to seek socioeconomic reform are not diplomatic sound bites,” the report said.
“They are fundamental rights, vital in all democracies, and U.S. authorities are legally bound to respect and uphold them. These rights must be secured at home.”