NY Fox 5 Crew Pepper Sprayed And Assaulted By NYPD

[meegbear]

During tonight's massive Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York, a local Fox News affiliate reporter and his crew found themselves on the wrong side of the NYPD.

While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer's baton.

The protests on Wall Street continued to grow all day. The rallies and their participants are showing no signs of slowing down.

In the evening, crowds surged past barriers and NYPD officers moved in to contain the protesters. By many accounts, mayhem broke out.

Officers, many wearing white shorts indicating supervisor rank, swatted protesters with batons and sprayed them with mace, video from the scene showed.

Fox 5's Isen and Brennan were there and witnessed the chaos. At one point, Brennan was hit in the abdomen by a police baton and Isen got irritant in his eyes. Both journalists were all right and continued to cover the protests and arrests.

Note what's missing from this story: Violence on the side of the protesters. Crossing a barricade is not violent. It is not threatening. It is simply crossing a barricade. The response of the officers left me feeling pretty shaky. Batons, pepper spray, and yes, done by the white shirts, but not only the white shirts.

Evidently these policemen do not understand that beating and pepper-spraying protesters and hapless reporters in the area will do nothing but increase resolve in every person who watches to join the protests. Do they learn nothing from previous experience? No, evidently not.

<snip>

http://crooksandliars.com

This is the link for the main page. I posted the link for the story, but when I click it, it gives an error. Click on the link above to see a video of it.

[izquierdista]

1. Learn?

Cops can't learn. They just beat with the baton until something gives. Hey look! The gorilla over at the Bronx zoo is getting restless. Go calm him down, Mr. Policeman.

[Scuba]

2. They should know: covering protests is considered worse than protesting by the PTB. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Hold it, most of these guys were supers?

perhaps the rumor that the rank and file is defying orders is true after all.

Oh and boys... and girls, freedom of the press, even if this is fox... remember that?

[NYC_SKP]

4. Yep.

It has been my observation that a disproportionately large number of the abusive behaviors have been committed by supers- white shirts- and I hope you are right about the rank and file.

Though I was especially upset about the beat officer who spoke about his little night stick getting a workout.

He should be out on his fat ass looking for a security guard job at the mall...

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Well the rumor last week was

blue flu...

[NYC_SKP]

9. Turning point...

...if it came to be, an epidemic of blue flu would be the most dramatic change in this effort that one could expect to see.

[DaveJ]

5. "Do they learn..." ROFL

I think my dog is more capable of "learning" than the cops and the people they are serving, who operate based solely on primal mechanisms greed and fear.

[demmiblue]

6. Swatted?!

K&R

:kick:

[malthaussen]

10. Yeah, I caught that too...

At least one of those white shirts was going at it two-handed and taking a pretty good wind-up, too. And aiming for the ribs. That goes a bit beyond "swatting."

-- Mal

[demmiblue]

13. Indeed. Welcome to DU, Mal!

:hi:

[OHdem10]

8. White Shirts??? Commanding officers.

[MurrayDelph]

11. So, what we have here

is a bunch of White shirts acting like Brown Shirts?


(edited for punctuation after first post malfunctioned)

[Erose999]

12. What we got here is...

a failure.... to communicate.

[Jamastiene]

14. K&R

[AsahinaKimi]

15. So what do you call Fox News Reporters behind bars?

Ans: A good start.

[Cali_Democrat]

16. Hannity and O'Reily will have an in depth discussion of the police brutality tonight on their shows

It was a fellow Fox News reporter that was assaulted. They will speak out against the brutality aimed at the OWS folks and the news crews.

Right?

[RagAss]

17. Believe it when I see it.

:think: