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Police Action Causes Critical Injury to Occupy Oakland Protester
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Police battled protesters following an Occupy Oakland march to demonstrate against the closing of two occupations in the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. More than 100 people have been arrested in Oakland since police cleared a camp in Frank Ogawa plaza.
Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull and brain swelling after he was allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile during the clashes on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Highland hospital in east Oakland confirmed he was critically ill after being admitted on Tuesday night.
A source at the Oakland citizen's police review board said it had not yet received a formal complaint, but would be "looking into" the circumstances surrounding Olsen's injuries. The board will decide whether to launch an official investigation over the next couple of days.
Jay Finneburgh, an activist photographer who was at the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying bloodied on the ground, while video footage appeared to show police throwing a 'flash bang' explosive close to fellow protesters trying to provide aid.
"[Olsen] stood behind me," Finneburgh told the Guardian. "I looked to my left and he hit the ground, and he hit it hard.
"A woman went to look down at him, and he was bleeding from the head. She started screaming," he said.
Video footage posted to YouTube shows Olsen lying motionless in front of a police line after apparently having been hit. A group of up to 10 protesters gather around him, but a police officer can be seen throwing a device close to the group which then explodes with a bright flash and loud bang, scattering the protesters. The video then cuts to footage of protesters carrying Olsen away as he bleeds from the head.
Olsen was taken to Highland hospital by protesters. Adele Carpenter, who knows Olsen through his involvement with anti-war groups, said she arrived at the hospital at 11pm on Tuesday night.
Carpenter said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Olsen had a skull fracture and was in a "serious but stable" condition. She said he had been sedated and was unconscious.
For more information:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review
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NYPD Sergeants Union Blasts Protesters In Oakland For Violence
NEW YORK -- A union representing 5,000 New York City Police Department sergeants blasted Occupy Wall Street protesters on Thursday and threatened to sue them should they injure police.
"New York's police officers are working around the clock as the already overburdened economy in New York is being drained by 'occupiers' who intentionally and maliciously instigate needless and violent confrontations with the police," said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association. Although sergeants are higher in rank than patrol officers, they do not wear the white shirts of some of the more senior officers.
Protesters have at times played confrontational cat-and-mouse games with the police, but incidents of serious violence directed against the NYPD by protesters in New York have been extremely rare.
Mullins vowed to pursue the "harshest possible civil sanctions" against violent individuals. He made particular reference to "recent events in Oakland" as a trigger for his warning, which inflamed a lawyer working on Occupy Wall Street's legal defense team.
Journalists who witnessed events in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday night did report protesters throwing bottles at the police. Law enforcement responded with a barrage of tear gas canisters, bean bags and other projectiles -- one of which hit a 24-year-old Iraq War veteran in the head, fracturing his skull.
"The fact that the SBA would cite the violence of Oakland, in which the police viciously shot an Iraq war veteran in the head with a tear gas canister, sending him to the hospital in critical condition, and then shot at those trying to give aid to the wounded, says it all," retorted Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the National Lawyers Guild.
For More Information:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/nypd-sergeants-union-oakland-violence_n_1062823.html?ref=mostpopular