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Anonymous vs PERF: Were Occupy raids coordinated?

by Sue Basko
Anonymous says PERF coordinated the Occupy raids that led to abuse. PERF claims innocence. PERF report looks like good police techniques, if followed. Uneducated, untrained police more likely to be violent, as at Occupy UC Davis, Occupy UC Berkeley and Occupy Oakland. Link to PERF report, Oakland PD report.
Anonymous vs PERF
by Sue Basko

Read here or at http://occupypeace.blogspot.com

A few days ago, it came to light that PERF, Police Executive Research Forum, an organization in Washington, D.C., held several conferences calls of 40+ mayors or police chiefs from major cities nationwide, talking about their experiences with the Occupy protests. This was interpreted by many to mean that PERF had coordinated the raids on the encampments. Anonymous, the hacktivist group, has pledged to take remedial action against PERF.

PERF denies coordinating the raids, saying it only held conference calls and that in fact, its publications urge a "best practices" method of nonviolent reaction to nonviolent protest. Yesterday, I tried to download the PERF report on crowd management, but found I would need to be a member, which involved paying $160 or $300 and having a Bachelors Degree and a job in upper-level police management. Today, PERF is BEGGING people to download their report.

Okay, so having read the report -- I have to say -- if followed, it is a good model for police to follow on crowd control.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE PERF REPORT- http://www.policeforum.org/dotAsset/1491727.pdf

To me, it sounds like the police that did the most abusive things in the Occupy raids were those from the most unprofessional groups. For example, in the raids on Occupy Oakland, the Oakland Police Department has said that it was not their officers that did the damage, and that their officers do not even have such weapons. I have read the Oakland Police Department Crowd Control policy (download here- http://occupypeace.blogspot.com/2011/11/oakland-police-department-crowd.html ) and this seems to be the case. Other smaller police departments were brought in to help.

I asked a friend of mine who is a long-time law professor in Civil Rights with much police experience if the other agencies coming in to Oakland would be allowed to bring in weapons not used or allowed by the Oakland Police Department, and he said that police will never take a weapon from another police officer. This seems really odd to me when we are talking about police hurling and shooting projectiles at people many feet away, people who posed no imminent danger to anyone.

The situation at UC Davis involves several officers, including John Pike, who is now infamous on the internet, and deservedly so. Pike is seen on many online videos shooting pepper spray at seated students. He sprays them as if they are cockroaches. Rumor has it that Pike is actually some sort of library security guard. If so, he clearly did not belong in a field position. He reminds me of security guards I used to see at a shopping mall at Hollywood and Western in Los Angeles -- brutish people given a tiny bit of authority and using it to attack citizens.

The abuse at UC Berkeley seems different. From the videos, it looks to me as if the police had a coordinated plan in place to attack the girls and women, perhaps thinking this would cause the young men to fight the police, thus giving the police reason to attack the young men and arrest them. The young men did not fight back, but bravely did their best to protect the females, without raising hands to the police. This sort of technique of attacking the weakest targets, is common among thugs. It is also considered a form of torture to attack people in front of others whose duty and inclination is to protect the innocent victims, but who cannot due to the power differential with attackers -- in this case, the attackers being the police.

This is all food for thought. MY OPINION: The better trained and educated a police force is, the less violent they are. To me, it looks like PERF is an educator on the right track.

Now - as to whether raids were coordinated during those phone calls -- that's a good question. A "conference call" with that many participants seems impracticable. I wonder what was actually the content and format. I have a feeling we will be finding this out in the coming months.
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Comments (Hide Comments)
by John Thielking
I have been on many conference calls with hundreds of participants for various multilevel marketing get togethers. If they have a web based interface it is easy to coordinate the discussion among all of those people. One person facilitates and the others get in a queue by pressing a button to "raise their hand". Even without such an interface, you can still coordinate a discussion within a large group of people.

An order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has revealed the FBI lied to the court about the existence of records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), taking the position that FOIA allows it to withhold information from the court whenever it thinks this is in the interest of national security. Using the strongest possible language, the court disagreed: “The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court.” Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI (“Shura Council I”), No. 07-1088, 3 (C.D. Cal. April 27, 2011) (emphasis added).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/fbi-chastised-court-lying-about-existence
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