Don't Come to Ann Arbor: Scenes from a Cop Riot

But if you want to take a stand against another US/Israeli war crime, don't come to Ann Arbor. Not unless you're prepared for the worst. Unless you're prepared to be brutalized by the cops, thrown in jail, and subjected to improper and punitive medical treatment, you'd better keep your mouth shut. Or so the University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Police, and the Zionist forces in the community would have it.

When I became a doctor I knew I would encounter a lot of human suffering, but I never envisioned a time when my efforts to alleviate it would get me brutalized by the police, then charged with a crime. I never envisioned a time when I would witness another health "professional" brazenly violate the most fundamental principle of medical ethics: first do no harm. But thirty years after graduation, at a political event on the campus of the University of Michigan, those things happened.

The event was a presentation by Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee and former member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. Michigan's chapter of the Zionist organization, the American Movement for Israel (AMI), brought him to town on November 30, 2006 to whip up support for regime change in Iran. The "Islamo-fascist regime" must be overthrown, according to Tanter, before they acquire a nuclear weapon, and one option for stopping them would be nuking them first. Some of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators the US has supplied to Israel would be OK, with Israel doing the deed.

A small group of folks showed up to protest. The room was packed, U of M cops were on hand, and the atmosphere was tense. Tanter fired up the crowd, especially when he declared that Israel will exist forever, triggering the longest and most boisterous of several rounds of cheering and applause from his supporters. But interruptions of dissent were not to be allowed, and the cops were there to make sure of it. One of the protesters, an Iranian woman, became the first target of the political repression in store for the night. At the behest of one of the AIM organizers, a U of M cop proceeded to remove her.

The cop, maybe 6'6 or bigger, grabbed her arm, dragging her to the floor, where he applied pressure point control tactics (PPCT) as she screamed. PPCT is what's called a pain compliance technique, using the infliction of pain to force someone to do what you order. It's used against someone who poses a serious threat of physical harm; someone, say, who's in the cop's grip, clutching a knife and on the verge of stabbing a person. In this case, the cop inflicted pain to force compliance with his order to stand up, while he pinned her to the floor with his knee. She kept screaming.

"Don't hurt her," called out the woman who'd been sitting in the next seat over, also an Iranian woman, a U of M Professor of Iranian History, in fact, and another dissenting voice at the event. One of the other protesters came to the first victim's aid and was hauled away, cuffed and arrested. A second protester came to the victim's aid and followed as she was hauled away. The AMI organizers were calling the shots.

I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same huge cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had the man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back, getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man writhed and cried out in pain.

The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee on his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a person to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back like that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor, and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his nostrils. He was unconscious.

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