After the G20 Summit where global elitist talked about a World Economic Dictatorship, riot police were still patrolling the neighborhood streets at night, harassing non-protesters and the agent provocateur black-bloc group. The thugs slithered into the streets, teargas filled the air and the LRAD sound cannon projected intolerable shreeks causing mass confusion and intimidation throughout the city.
The University of Pittsburgh seemed to be the epicenter of the chaos that night, the thugs of the night literally surrounded the school in a tight formation. This is called ‘kettling’ a police tactic used by officers to create an impenetrable barrier around the area, slowly moving inwards and corralling people like sheep, attacking with full force if need be. Eventually the people in the middle will be met with teargas, pepper-spray or a serious beating, they will be tortured for several hours or detained.
“Kettling, also known as containment or corralling, is a police tactic for the management of large crowds during demonstrations or protests. It involves the formation of large cordons of police officers who then move to contain a crowd within a limited area. Protesters are prevented from leaving the area for several hours; as a result, detainees can be denied access to food, water and toilet facilities for a long period.” -Wikipedia
At 5:34 of this video (below) you can see that the Pittsburgh Police infiltrate the University of Pittsburgh campus, trapping students in stairways so the frightened young students can’t retreat to the safety of their dormitories. It was reported on Reddit that students already inside the dorms were ordered not to leave their rooms, if they did they would be expelled from the University.
Mind you these are just students curious of what was happening on the streets, many innocent non-protesting citizens were gassed, whether you were an elderly priest or a young college girl the police showed absolutely no remorse. Here’s a video of a college couple who were minding their own business, the young girl gets a baton in the back and later tossed to the pavement.:
Jason Bermas an Infowars.com contributor talked about his experience at the University that night, Bermas reported how police broke a bicyclist’s knuckle with a wooden baton (4:31); “they just broke his knuckle, you can hear him in the background saying ‘YOU JUST BROKE MY KNUCKLE!‘ if that’s still not enough the (cop) goes– shoots off the pepper-spray!” “they beat this kid he’s got a peace wrapped around him he’s maybe 120 pounds”. “the end of the video was just another bystander that got so caught up in this by accident that he took the tear gas his whole face is beet red, they had to bring him to the hospital!”.
Most of the ‘protesters’ that night were the anarchist group called black-bloc, this group is funded by the city to cause chaos so the police can restore ‘order’, which in actuality the anarchists give the police the green-light to start smashing in skulls. It’s important to notice that most of these beat-downs are not of Anarchists but people who are caught up in the corralling tactics the police use.
Todays mindless anarchist should know by now that they’re tools, a secret weapon that the police state needs in order to conquer legitimate protesters and their free speech, as the anarchists break and smash public property it demonizes the legitimate protesters against globalism. The rest of the world watches people in black masks running around causing damage and violence, they are provocateurs, they are city funded criminals that victimize the un-involved into getting seriously hurt or fatally injured.
Undercover police have been caught during Pittsburgh University mayhem dressed like anarchists trying to blend into the crowd, but completely failed and were caught by several protesters.
Police have been caught several times doing this, they usually do this during large demonstrations to either start violence or collect information on protesters. This is a very disgusting tactic law enforcement uses dressing up like protesters going into crowds and staging riots so the police can break-up demonstrations and demonize the crowd of legitimate protesters taking away their right to free speech.
This is a dark time in American history, military is being acclimated to be against the American public, we all know police do not serve the American people, this G20 made that much clearer. With the corralling us like a herd of sheep so we don’t escape, from the large wooden batons, to the pepper-spray and teargas, their new form of oppression against us is the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) military sound weapon. LRADs project skull-penetrating sound-waves that cause mass confusion and may cause permanent hearing damage. It seems that every year the police are cranking up the tyranny, this year they unveil the LRADs, will they use the ADS electro-magnetic radiation guns mounted on police hummers to fry us into submission next year? We’ll see.
As military police run internal checkpoints across the nation and America officially sinks deeper into martial law, a security force of nearly 5,000 is deployed on the streets of Pittsburgh to undertake “crowd control” of demonstrations against the G20 summit. Nearly 2,500 National Guard troops including Army and Air Force personnel worked in tangent with over 1,200 state troopers.
As we reported earlier today, uniformed soldiers are being deployed all over the country to fulfill roles normally ascribed to police as Americans are incrementally conditioned that men in cammo with machine guns will now provide “security” in the new Amerika.
Part of that “security” includes dealing with civil unrest and crowd control, a role also being undertaken by the 20,000 battle hardened troops that are being redeployed inside America under Northcom after returning from Iraq. In the meantime, the Pentagon is attempting to station a further 379,000 active duty troops inside the U.S., a plan being fiercely opposed by the National Governors Association.
2,500 Guardsmen have been used for “Operation Steel Kickoff,” the description of which by the DefenseLink website sounds more like a military assault than an act of peacekeeping.
A car and driver are screened at a checkpoint by security personnel in downtown Pittsburgh
“Operation Steel Kickoff started Sept. 20 with a joint reception, staging, onward movement and integration point process led by the Guard’s 213th Area Support Group, which is working out of a hangar at the 171st Air Refueling Wing in Coraopolis, Pa.,” reports DefenseLink.
“We’re the support role, helping the soldiers and airmen get out and do the things they need to do,” said Army 1st Lt. Matthew Springer, the team leader for Operation Steel Kickoff’s JRSOI process. “Our focus is on ensuring the war fighter is getting the things they need to be successful in their mission.”
The Guardsmen’s “mission” as he termed was to work with the Army and Air Force to “help local, state and federal authorities keep Pittsburgh safe as demonstrators take to the streets in protest of the worldwide economic summit”. Troops are trained and performed, “movement techniques, formations and crowd and riot control.”
“We’re working hard right now because we have Army and Air Force members who haven’t trained together before,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Ronald Bittner, a platoon leader from 1/110th, D Company. “We are working to mesh, because we all take a lot of pride in this mission.”
“This is definitely a different mission,” said Air Force Master Sgt. Pauline Gonzalez, a 23-year veteran and personnel specialist with the 211th Engineering Installation Squadron. “It’s very hard and very challenging, but it’s been a rewarding experience.”
The fact that soldiers see it as a “rewarding experience” to completely violate the oath that they swore by undertaking duties totally at odds with Posse Comitatus, the law that bars the military from engaging in law enforcement duties, is a damning indictment of how far the specter of troops on the streets has seeped into everyday life in America.
Since the G20 summit America has never looked more like the streets of Communist China or Nazi Germany as far as the lack of respect of rights of the individual, this is the darkest historical period in America, especially given the fact that during the G20 demonstration a protester was abducted by Military thugs in an unmarked vehicle.
Here is a video showing an unmarked vehicle drive up to a side street near Baum Ave & S Millvale Ave in Pittsburgh during the protests. Men in military fatigues wrestle with the protester as other men in cammo exit the vehicle. The protester is shoved forcefully into the car as the military men follow him in and the car speeds away and disappear into the tear-gas filled sky.
The claims that troops were only there to “make sure the citizens are protected” does not match up with what occurred on the streets, there was very little tolerance for the expression free speech and looked like scenes right out of Red Dawn. After the G20 protest, I assure you what Pittsburgh residents felt was not the feeling of protection but rather pure terror.
One of many LRAD military sound cannons that deafened Pittsburgh residents
A new phenomenon, police using military sound weapons used in battlefields against Somali pirates and insurgents were deployed at the G20 summit protest, this was the very first time LRAD devices were actually used on American people. Just recently San Diego police department felt the need to deploy an LRAD device at town hall meetings but were never used on the Tea Party protesters that are against Obama’s health care reform. LRADs are a torture device used to control Somali pirates or insurgents that can cause serious and lasting health problems. Since G20, LRADs are now officially apart of the police arsenal against all civil disobedience in the country, whether it’s a small local protest or a massive demonstration like the G20 summit.
Under the pretext of “helping” local communities short of police in difficult economic times, as well as preparations for a potential swine flu pandemic, U.S. troops are now occupying America as the country sinks into a state of de facto martial law.
We have been inundated with reports over the last few weeks of uniformed soldiers and National Guardsmen running internal checkpoints all over the country as a frightening “Red Dawn” scenario unfolds not with a bang but with a whimper.
The military are now being called upon to undertake roles normally designated to police as Americans are incrementally acclimated to accept the presence of troops on the streets as an everyday occurrence.
The latest case occurred in Kingman Arizona, where National Guardsmen were filmed “providing security” and directing traffic.
Another similar example occurred in Newport Kentucky earlier this month when military checkpoints suddenly appeared downtown on September 6. Military Police from the U.S. Army National as well as Marines were purportedly conducting “traffic control” because the city was strapped for funds and did not have enough police to do the job.
The excuse that troops are stepping in to help because there is a lack of police doesn’t wash. Crime is down over the last 20 years, there are around three times more police and the state is not calling out the National Guard, they are being put on the streets as a result of the harmonization of police and military, a process that has been ongoing for decades, long before the economic recession hit. Troops also have guns and their primary function is to search people and vehicles, not direct traffic.
Members of the WeAreChange Ohio group interviewed some of the troops, who when asked if they would be prepared to “confiscate guns, shoot resisters in the back of the head, or throw people into ovens to incinerate bodies,” refused to categorically deny that they would follow such orders.
However, this was by no means the first time that troops have been used to fulfil roles normally ascribed to police in Kentucky.
During the Kentucky Derby on May 2 this year, Military Police were on patrol to deal with crowd control. An Associated Press photograph shows armed MP’s detaining a man who ran onto the track following the 135th Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs.
“The military has NO BUSINESS policing the citizens except during extraordinarily exceptional times of national emergency by an executive order. This is very disturbing and completely un-American. Maybe even more disturbing is that no one seems to care how quietly and easily we have accepted the burgeoning police state,” one respondent to the photo stated.
As we reported last year, U.S. troops returning from Iraq are now occupying America, running checkpoints and training to deal with “civil unrest and crowd control” under the auspices of a Northcom program that by 2011 will have no less than 20,000 active duty troops deployed inside America to “help” state and local officials during times of emergency.
Over the course of the last couple of years, we have reported on numerous instances of military involvement with local law enforcement in violation of Posse Comitatus.
Last December, we reported on the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center dispatching troops to work with police on checkpoints in in San Bernardino County, California.
On April 22, we reported the deployment of 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops to “maintain public order” at the Boston Marathon.
Last June, Infowars posted an article by D. H. Williams of the Daily Newscaster reporting the deployment of 2,300 Marines in the city of Indianapolis under the direction of FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
Police Use Intimidation Tactics, Military Weapons To Break Up Peaceful Protests
This is a first time in American history of law enforcement using military sonic weapons on peaceful protesters
Video footage is pouring onto Youtube that clearly shows riot police in Pittsburgh using intimidation tactics and military weapons to disperse peaceful assemblies in the vicinity of the G20 summit.
In the first video an officer appears on the scene where protesters are peacefully gathered and immediately tells them to leave the area, threatening everyone with arrest should they not comply.
The in a scene that looks as if it took place in Communist China, riot officers form a line parallel to the protesters, extending to both ends of the street, and slowly walk towards them, noisily and simultaneously marching and beating their shields with their batons.
This is a clear intimidation tactic to cause fear and psychologically effect the peaceful protesters in an effort to herd them and get them to disperse.
We Are Change and Infowars reporter Luke Rudkowski speaks into a bullhorn throughout, as this complete violation of the First Amendment unfolds. He notes how LRAD sound weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq are now being used against peaceful American citizens on the streets of Pittsburgh by armed military troops.
Chants of “USA, USA” ring out and protesters holding cameras and signs break into applause at Luke’s words as the jackboot police continue to advance. It is hard to believe that this is America.
The LRAD Weapons are then brought to the scene and an announcement blasts out towards the protesters:
“BY ORDER OF THE CITY OF PITTBURGH CHIEF OF POLICE WE HEREBY DECLARE THIS TO BE AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY.”
IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOUR PURPOSE IS, YOU MUST LEAVE. IF YOU DO NOT DISPERSE, YOU MAY BE ARRESTED AND/OR SUBJECT TO OTHER POLICE ACTION. OTHER POLICE ACTION MAY INCLUDE ACTUAL PHYSICAL REMOVAL, THE USE OF RIOT CONTROL AGENTS AND/OR LESS LETHAL MUNITIONS WHICH COULD CAUSE RISK OF INJURY TO THOSE WHO REMAIN.”
G20 Police Randomly Beating Students With Nightsticks
Reddit, I had to create an account to post about what just happened on my campus. I go to the University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh… G20, you know. President Obama’s dinner for the delegates happened just off campus, within eyesight of us — usually. When people grouped up by the street that would lead to the Phipps Conservatory, they were met with armored police.
For a while the students and locals just stood and talked while the police line faced us. Some people sang and had signs. Others just watched. Slowly, the line of locals began to advance. A police officer with a megaphone stepped out several times and told us to leave the area, but as we weren’t doing anything wrong, most people didn’t leave.
That’s when they shot a canister of gas at us. Reddit, sprinting away from armored police who looked like Storm Troopers from Star Wars, hearing that hissing sound while one of my favorite spots on campus filled with smoke… it was terrifying.
When the smoke cleared the crowd was still there.
This standoff lasted several hours. Around 10:30, the atmosphere had changed. The police had advanced far up the road toward students, who were kept back to a grassy area called Schenley Plaza. Students were singing and dancing. It was very peaceful. Someone said something to a cop.
Suddenly the guy was grabbed and thrown on the ground. The crowd AT ONCE surrounded the cops and started chanting LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO!
There was a dumpster lit on fire further up the road, so I went up there to see what I could see, and suddenly there were tons of people sprinting down the sidewalk away from the fire. SWAT vans and six or seven major police cars pulled up to Schenley Plaza.
Reddit, the next two hours were complete chaos. My campus was invaded by armored police officers. They threw actual tear gas into crowds of students. They SHOT students with rubber bullets. They beat slower-moving students with a baton. I saw a group of cyclists being herded down the sidewalk. A cop reached out and pushed a woman on a bike. She turned around and pushed her bike at the cop. Next thing we knew, he grabbed her by the face and slammed her down on the concrete.
They slowly advanced us back down Forbes Avenue, toward the major freshman dorms. Several protesters broke storefront windows. I’d guess 20 protesting, about 1,000 students watching (if that.) The police fired Sound Cannons at us, a new weapon never before used on US citizens, which plays a sonic pulse that gives major headaches. They fired more tear gas at the students.
Then riot squads came running up behind us and forced us into the Litchfield Towers Lobby. People who did not make it into the lobby before the riot squads got to the doors were grabbed, thrown to the ground, beaten, and arrested.
Here is the part where I felt most violated — The riot cops then ENTERED our dormitory and shouted that students needed to return to their rooms immediately. Anyone arrested, they said, would be expelled from the University of Pittsburgh, no questions asked.
Reddit, is that legal? Would police be able to force someone on the sidewalk back in their home and make them barricade themselves in their basement?
Here’s another part that got me — I saw students try to get in the doors closest to their dorm building (there are 3 towers), and the door was LOCKED. These students did not have time to run around the building. And they were grabbed.
We don’t know what to do. We’re shocked. BECAUSE THE DEPUTY POLICE CHIEF RELEASED A STATEMENT CLAIMING THEY WERE SECURING THE AREA FROM ANARCHISTS AND THAT “SOME” STUDENTS “PROBABLY GOT CAUGHT UP” IN WHAT HAPPENED.
So, in the news, you’ll hear that police secured the campus from anarchists. Not that students were attacked by security forces supposedly there to protect them. PLEASE, help me get the word out. I’ll be around all day tomorrow for questions.
WMTW, a television station in Portland, Maine, owned by Hearst, has produced a slick propaganda piece as part of an emerging effort to stampede people into submitting to a toxic and cancer virus flu vaccine this autumn.
On Thursday, Steve Watson reported on a National Guard “riot scenario” exercise conducted at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris, Maine. The school was chosen as a distribution site for the H1N1 flu vaccine by state officials. “The National Guardsmen will take on the roles of panicked citizens and military police and practice what they would do, such as using tear gas, in the case of a riot,” the Sun Journal reported on August 13.
Sgt. Skip Mowatt of the Paris Police Department told WMTW 8 desperate citizens — arriving without proper ID or living outside the designated area — may overwhelm local police and engage in violence in an effort to get their soft kill vaccination. In such a situation, the television station reports, the police in Paris would team up with the National Guard to baton, pepper spray, and tase rioters.
In late July, the Pentagon said it will establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a pandemic. The plan calls for all branches of the military to team up with FEMA. CNN reported on July 29 that the proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart. The Pentagon, however, often announces plans after it has already moved to implement them. “Orders to deploy actual forces would be reviewed later, depending on how much of a health threat the flu poses this fall,” CNN reported.
“Much of the groundwork for the intervention of the military has already been established,” writes Michel Chossudovsky, who notes that “regional teams” have already been established under NORTHCOM, which has been involved in preparedness training and planning in the case of a flu pandemic. “The pandemic is being presented to public opinion as an issue of National Security, with a view to triggering the militarization of civilian institutions in blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act,” Chossudovsky noted in an earlier article (Martial Law and the Avian Flu Pandemic).
As Infowars reported on August 6 and investigative journalist Wayne Madsen confirmed on the Alex Jones Show earlier this week, an international conference on the coming flu pandemic will be held in Washington next week. Breakout sessions detailed in a brochure for the conference include discussions on mass fatality planning, business continuity planning, and COOP or Continuity of Operations and Continuity of Government Planning. Additional sessions cover enforced quarantines, mass vaccinations, and how to “control and diffuse social unrest and public disorder.” In short, how best to implement martial law.
UK: Man Who Fell Off Couch Laughing at TV Show Ends Up Pepper Sprayed, Arrested Fox News June 11, 2008
A British man who was so amused with BBC1’s “Have I Got News for You” that he fell off his couch in a fit of laughter was not so happy when it got him arrested and pepper sprayed.
Christopher Cocker, 36, collapsed on the floor after laughing at a joke on TV, but his neighbor who heard the thud thought something bad had happened and called the police, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
According to police, Cocker initially was cooperative but quickly became “aggressive” when asked his name and personal information. Cocker tried to shut his door on the officers, at which point he was pepper sprayed through a crack in the door.
Cocker then was handcuffed, arrested and taken to court, the Daily Mail reported. An unidentified police spokesman told the Mail that, given Cocker’s aggression, they acted appropriately.
“Within the circumstances, we feel we used reasonable force,” the officer told the Mail.
Cocker, of Blackburn, England, eventually pleaded guilty to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge for six months following the May 20 incident, the Mail reported.
Cocker is shocked at the outcome of what he describes as minding his own business.
“I can’t believe it — I was thrown in the back of a police van before being stripped naked and put in a cell,” Cocker told the Mail. “I was handcuffed behind my back and my ankles bound with plastic ties before six of them carried me to the van.”
Cocker told the Mail he never thought he would end up in court for laughing at his favorite comedian.
’Baghdad-style’ checkpoints in US capital Telegraph June 9, 2008
In a move that critics have compared to the security clampdown in Baghdad, police are stopping motorists travelling through the main thoroughfare of Trinidad, a neighbourhood near the National Arboretum in the city’s northeast section.
Drivers’ identification are checked and those who didn’t have a “legitimate purpose” in the area, such as a church visit or doctor’s appointment, are turned away.
The checkpoints were set up after eight people were killed in the city last weekend.
It should be obvious by now that cops and tasers do not go together. It appears far too many cops use the devices to electrocute people simply because they refuse to cooperate, not because they pose a threat to the officers.
For instance, a woman was tased in a Sheffield Lake, Ohio, police station not because she threatened officers — in fact, she was restrained in handcuffs — but rather because she refused to “cooperate,” as the video at the left demonstrates.
“Last November, [Kristina Fretter] was stunned with a Taser while in handcuffs in the Sheffield Police Department booking room after being picked up for drunken driving. The officer who fired the Taser, Edward Long, resigned, and charges were dropped against Fretter in exchange for her promise not to sue the village,” the Chronicle-Telegram reports.
“Tasers occupy a strange place in the police rulebook,” notes Peter Gorman, writing for the Fort Worth Weekly. “Law enforcement officers learn what is called a ‘use of force continuum’ to determine what means or weapons they may use in different situations. The ‘continuum’ begins with simple police presence, then moves up to issuing commands, then the use of open hands, and after that, pepper or other chemical sprays, closed hands (including elbows and knees and other takedown moves), the use of a hard baton, and finally, the use of lethal force.”
You might think Tasers would fit somewhere near the “lethal force” end of that list, right before a gun. Instead, however, many police agencies place Tasers immediately after the “issuing commands” force level — which suggests to officers that using a Taser is less serious even than a push or pepper spray. Which also means that if an officer asks you to produce your driver’s license and you ask “Why?” rather than immediately complying with the order, there’s a chance, in some jurisdictions, that you could, within their rules, be hit with a Taser for refusing the command. That’s in part how Tasers have begun to be used, not as serious, life-threatening weapons, but as a bully’s tool of compliance, something to get people in line — with sometimes egregious consequences.
One such jurisdiction seems to be Austin, where a man was tased for producing his license too slowly (see video). It appears the cop in the video was looking for somebody to use a taser on, as the man in the vehicle seemed to be following orders, albeit too slowly for the cop. The man’s crime? He was driving 70 miles per hour on a 65 mph road. Please keep this in mind the next time you are in Austin and you are driving five miles per hour over the limit.
As an increasing number of disturbing incidents reveal, far too many cops apparently get off on electrocuting people, thus prompting an obvious question: are police departments hiring sadists who revel in inflicting pain and suffering on others? Sadly, it appears the answer is affirmative.
It’s an inescapable conclusion: cops love their taser guns and they love even more to use them on people not quick enough to respect their authority.
Another shocking example of police brutality has been caught on camera showing a cop nearly breaking a girl’s arm, punching her and then pepper spraying her in the face as she cries after being arrested for violating a city curfew.
Watch the dramatic video of the incident which occurred in Fort Pierce, Florida.
The cop twists the 15-year-old’s arm right up behind her back to almost breaking point before the girl appears to bite the officer, upon which the cop punches the girl and pepper sprays her directly in the face.
Descriptions of the video on mainstream news websites strongly emphasized the fact that the girl bit the officer without even mentioning the fact that he would have probably snapped her arm out of the socket had the brutality continued.
A handcuffed man stopped breathing and died after struggling with Phoenix police officers who were arresting him early Thursday.
Archie R. Poole Jr., 41, is the second person in the last week to die in police custody. Carol Gotbaum, 45, died last Friday after she was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct at Sky Harbor International Airport and placed in a holding room.
Poole, of Tolleson, is the fifth person to die in police custody this year. Last year, six people died in custody.
In-custody deaths occur across the country and have become a hot-button issue in recent years, particularly after officers began using Tasers to subdue suspects who then died. Last year, the U.S. Justice Department launched a review of the deaths of up to 180 people who died after law-enforcement officers used stun guns or other electroshock devices to subdue them.
But experts say just the process of being arrested can trigger physiological responses that could lead to death in people experiencing “excited delirium,” in which a shutdown of bodily function occurs after sensory overload.
Dr. Phillip Keene, the former Maricopa County medical examiner, said drug users and those who are obese or suffering from hypertension are more susceptible to “excited delirium,” although not everybody who is at risk will actually experience it. Excited delirium sets in very quickly and without any warning.
“It’s mostly a roll of the dice,” Keene said.
Police haven’t released details about the struggle that led to Poole’s death, although officials said they did use “physical force” to take him into custody. The officers did not pepper-spray Poole or use a Taser.
Poole was stopped after patrol officers saw the same car parked in front of two known drugs houses in central Phoenix in a short time. Officers chased Poole into a park and fought with him to get him into custody, police said.
Shortly after police handcuffed Poole, he became unresponsive. He was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death.
When a body experiences extreme stress, it produces a “fight or flight” response and chemicals are released that elevate blood pressure and accelerate the heart rate, Keene said. If a person is in this position, further actions that would also release a fight or flight response can cause trouble.
“It can be anything,” Keene said. “It can be handcuffing. It can be yelling at someone. It can be chasing them or tackling them. You don’t have to do anything bad to them to trigger a bad outcome.”
Restraining someone can exacerbate the problem by restricting breathing. When hands are brought behind the back, it also pushes back the shoulders. As a result, the chest can’t expand as much, and a person doesn’t get as much air.
A University of Toronto study published in 1998 found that restraint “may contribute to the death of people in states of excited delirium.” In the study, all 21 cases of unexpected death that were examined were associated with restraint. Eighteen people were lying facedown, and three were subjected to neck pressure.
Gotbaum’s death brought a national spotlight on the Phoenix Police Department because of her connections to a prominent New York family and an assemblage of high-powered lawyers.
But all in-custody deaths should get the same scrutiny, said Dan Pochoda, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.
The organization has begun pushing nationwide to equip patrol cars with videotaping equipment and to require independent investigations of in-custody deaths.
Military Policing the Public at Bush Inauguration Check Point “Dubya” focuses on constitutional violations by security forces and the brutal over use of pepper spray at the 14th & Pennsylvania Ave. inauguration parade route check point. (more)