[News] Berkeley PD Threaten Protesters with Same Grenade Launcher Used Against Palestinians
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Dec 28 13:06:37 EST 2011
<http://exiledonline.com/berkeley-police-threaten-to-shoot-protesters-with-same-deadly-tear-gas-bazooka-used-against-palestinian-protesters/>War
On OWS: Berkeley Police Threaten To Shoot
Protesters With Same Deadly Tear Gas Grenade
Launcher Used Against Palestinian Protesters
By <http://exiledonline.com/?s=Yasha%20Levine>Yasha Levine
http://exiledonline.com/berkeley-police-threaten-to-shoot-protesters-with-same-deadly-tear-gas-bazooka-used-against-palestinian-protesters/
I’m not going make you wade through three
paragraphs of stuff to find out who won this
year’s Urban Shield: it was the Israeli team.
Oakland Police Department took second place,
while San Francisco Police Department tied with FBI for third.
– PoliceOne.com
<http://www.policeone.com/training/articles/2831943-Everyone-wins-at-Urban-Shield-2010>Senior
Editor Doug Wyllie on Urban Shield 2010
A
<http://bobplain.com/features/occutour/occupy-berkeley-raided-by-police-officer-threatens-to-shoot-videographer/>video
recorded by OccupyNewsandMedia during last week’s
early-morning raid on Occupy Berkeley shows a
burly Berkeley cop strutting around with a
repeat-fire tear gas grenade launcher, menacingly
pointing it at protesters without provocation. At
one point the bloodlusting cop threatens to shoot
pointblank the guy with the camera, telling him
“You back up
you may not understand it til’ I use
this, but you better back up”– before charging
the videographer with his grenade launcher
pointed right at the camera guy’s face.
The weapon– sleek, with a matte black finish that
reflects almost no light–looks like it can do
some serious damage. And it can. That’s because
it’s a military-grade high-velocity, repeat-fire
Penn Arms grenade launcher designed to lob
flash-bang grenades, tear gas canisters, plastic
buckshot, and fat rubber and wooden pellets
called “batons” at high velocity and precision at
human targets as far as a football field away.
This is the same weapon the Oakland Police
Department
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/27/1030750/-UPDATED:-Oakland-Mayor-Quan-Prosecute-This-Cop-or-Resign:-Photo-Evidence,-Scott-Olsen-Shooting>used
to shoot 24-year-old Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen
in the face with a tear gas canister at close
range. The impact of the round, which was fired
by an unidentified riot trooper from no more than
10 feet away, fractured Olsen’s skull and left
him with minor brain damage, including a speech
impediment. Olsen would have died from his wound
had he not received emergency brain surgery in time.
According to Oakland’s interim police chief, the
whole thing was an unfortunate accident: “It’s
unfortunate it happened. I wish that it didn’t
happen. Our goal, obviously, isn’t to cause
injury to anyone,” he told reporters the next day.
But the truth is that
<http://youtu.be/zEj_4fqDbnM?t=15s>Olsen’s injury
was not an accident nor a freak occurrence.
Even though Penn Arms launchers are supposed to
be used for “riot suppression” and “other crowd
control operations,” they have already gained a
reputation for being effective as a deadly
weapon, repeatedly causing “unfortunate
accidents” wherever it’s used–especially when
used against civilians at close range. This side
benefit is something that Combined Systems Inc.,
which owns Penn Arms, doesn’t even try hiding.
The company calls its launcher line “less
lethal,” not “less than lethal”–and even owns the
less-lethal.com domain name, which takes you
straight to its weapons and munitions catalogue.
You have to wonder: Less lethal than what? An
M-16? A shotgun? The .357 magnum I have sitting
in my desk drawer? If it is, then not by much–not
when used at close range, which security forces have a habit of doing.
Penn Arms launchers have been used with deadly
results by repressive, authoritarian regimes all
across the world. Most recently, the grenade
launchers were part of the state arsenal in Egypt
and Bahrain, where they were used both for
launching tear gas, and as blunt force trauma
weapons that maimed and killed peaceful protesters.
Israel in particular has a nasty record of
employing Penn Arms tear gas grenade launchers
for their “off label” use against Palestinian
protesters. That is, as short range weapons that
not only critically injure and kill, but provide
the added PR benefit of plausible deniability
after the unfortunate accident occurs.
That’s exactly what happened earlier this month,
when an IDF solider shot Mustafa Tamimi in the
face with a tear gas grenade at close range,
crushing Tamimi’s skull and forcing a part of his
brain out of a shattered eye socket. Tamimi was
28 and a resident of Nabi Saleh, a Palestianian
town that has had its land and water taken over
by a Jewish-only settlement. Penn Arms’ “less
lethal” action was captured and
<http://972mag.com/nabi-saleh-palestinian-shot-in-head-with-tear-gas-canister/29317/>documented
in gruesome detail by journalists who were there on the scene:
Israeli officials claimed that the whole thing
was an accident, that the soldier “didn’t see”
the Tamimi when he fired the shot. But people
who’ve reported on Palestinian protests insist
that this was no accident, but rather deliberate
policy. According to Israeli journalist Noam
Sheizaf, who served in the IDF for four and a
half years, this practice of
<http://972mag.com/soldier-who-shot-unarmed-protester-to-death-i-didnt-see-him/29591/>shooting
civilians with tear gas canisters at short range is standard IDF m.o.:
Israel Defense Forces officials have told Haaretz
that Tamimi’s death was “an exceptional
incident.” Still, as we have reported
here<http://972mag.com/idf-soldiers-attack-on-photojournalists/19974/>
in the past, firing tear gas canisters at
protesters
<http://972mag.com/in-the-west-bank-everyone-knows-theres-a-culture-of-no-accountability/8203/>from
close range (in violation of army orders) is a
common practice in the West Bank. A couple of
years ago, Palestinian protester Bassam
Abu-Rahmeh of Bil’in died after getting hit in
the chest by a tear gas canister
[<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yM9U2y-op4&>video].
A year later, his sister,
Jawahar,<http://972mag.com/new-army-version-on-bilin-death-contradicts-previous-claims/9034/>collapsed
from the effect of a tear gas and later died in a Ramallah hospital.
I have seen tear gas canisters shot directly at
protesters (including myself) in several
demonstrations in Bil’in, in Hebron and in Nabi Saleh.
Max Blumenthal, who has extensively reported on
Palestinian protests and has had the IDF launch
tear gas grenades at him personally, told me that
the Israeli soldiers always fire tear gas shells
like bullets at Palestinian kids. As he found out
first hand, they even target American citizens
who show up to support or report on the
Palestinian cause. ”An Israeli soldier shot
California resident Tristan Anderson directly in
the head with a high velocity tear gas canister
in a March 2009 protest in Nilin, leaving Tristan
partially handicapped and suffering slight
cognitive damage. New York City college student
Emily Henochowicz lost her left eye when an
Israeli soldier shot her directly in the face
with an aluminum tear gas canister at a May 2010
protest at the Qalandiya checkpoint,” according
to
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/tell-combined-systems-inc-stop-selling-tear-gas-israel/1094#.Ts3taxysWWM>Electronic
Intifada.
Isn’t plausible deniability a wonderful thing?
And now we see the same deadly anti-protester
grenade-launcher brandished in Berkeley,
birthplace of the Free Speech Movement and much
of the Vietnam anti-war movement.
The fact that Berkeley’s police department would
even consider adopting the same deadly weapons
and tactics for “crowd control” against the
town’s own students and citizens that are being
used by Israel against stateless Palestinians in
the occupied territories, and by Egyptian and
Bahraini security forces against pro-democracy
demonstrators, is as alarming as it is appalling.
But it should not come as surprise to anyone
who’s read Max Blumenthal’s
<http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahraini-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-protests/>jaw-dropping
investigative article exposing the
Isrealification of America’s law enforcement.
Published (and re-posted here on The eXiled) just
a few weeks ago, it details the collaboration and
close partnerships that have been emerged over
the past decade between Israeli security forces
and U.S. police departments in towns and counties all across the country.
To quote from
<http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahraini-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-protests/>Blumenthal‘s
article:
In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Alameda
Department turned parts of the campus of the
University of California in Berkeley into an
urban battlefield. The occasion was
<http://www.urbanshield.org/index.php/about/swat>Urban
Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition
organized to promote “mutual response,”
collaboration and competition between heavily
militarized police strike forces representing law
enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.
At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s
Department [Berkeley and Oakland are part of
Alameda County --YL] was preparing for an
imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy”
movement that had set up camp in downtown
Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its
repressive capacity against the demonstrators a
month later when it
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/arms-firm-behind-suppression-occupyoakland-and-palestines-popular-struggle>attacked
the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet
rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/scott-olsen-ed-schultz-occupy-oakland-msnbc_n_1120302.html>critical
condition and dozens injured. According to
<http://www.policemag.com/Blog/SWAT/Story/2011/11/Urban-Shield-2011-Behind-the-Scenes.aspx>Police
Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication,
“Law enforcement agencies responding to
Occupy
protesters in northern California credit Urban
Shield for their effective teamwork.”
Training alongside the American police
departments at Urban Shield was the
<http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=1676>Yamam<http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=1676>,
an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to
specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is
better known for its
<http://www.imemc.org/article/6644>extra-judicial
assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders
and long record of
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRPPN7Kmi1c>repression
and
<http://articles.latimes.com/2004/sep/29/world/fg-mideast29>abuses
in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban
Shield also featured a unit from the military of
Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely
non-violent democratic uprising by
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/bahrain/8329930/Bahrain-riot-police-fire-on-protest-camp.html>opening
fire on protest camps and
<http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2692740.html>arresting
wounded demonstrators when they attempted to
enter hospitals. While the involvement of
Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel
phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military
Israeli police – whose participation in Urban
Shield was not reported anywhere in US media –
reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature
of the post-9/11 American security landscape.
The Israelification of America’s security
apparatus, recently unleashed in full force
against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has
taken place at every level of law enforcement,
and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The
phenomenon has been documented in bits and
pieces, through occasional news reports that
typically highlight Israel’s national security
prowess without examining the problematic nature
of working with a country accused of grave human
rights abuses. But it has never been the subject
of a national discussion. And collaboration
between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.
To repeat: Berkeley cops were training alongside
security forces from Israel, Bahrain, Jordan,
Singapore, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates
right
<http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahraini-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-protests/>on
the UC Berkeley campus, where I went to school,
and just a few blocks away from the same Occupy
Berkeley encampment that they would later test
their new brutal skills on–all of it with support
from corporations like AT&T, Sisco Systems,
Chevron, FedEx, Marriott, Oracle and Prison Health Services, among others.
This is blowback of the worst kind. All that
military-monetary support that went into propping
up friendly totalitarian/apartheid countries by
way of keeping their restive populations under
control is now coming back home, with all the
valuable lessons tested out in countries across
the world now just starting to be applied here
against the first rumblings of post-financial crisis dissent and discontent.
Berkeley and Oakland are not the only police
departments that have benefitted from Urban
Shield’s recent apartheid/authoritarian crowd
control training. Below is a full list of
participants from last year’s Urban Shield. Check
to see if your local cops have been trained up,
too. That way, you won’t be surprised if you
suddenly find yourself looking down the barrel of
a grenade launcher at your local Occupy protest.
Alameda County Alameda County Deputy Sheriff’s
Association (DSA) Alameda County Emergency
Medical Services Alameda County Fire Department
Alameda County General Services Agency Alameda
County Health Care Services Agency Alameda County
Sheriff’s Office Alameda County Sheriff’s Office
Air Squadron Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Dive
Team Alameda County Sheriff’s Office
Communications Alameda County Sheriff’s Office
Search and Rescue-Unit Alameda Reuse and
Redevelopment Authority Alameda-Contra Costa
Transit District Bay Area Urban Area Security
Initiative Belmont – San Carlos Fire Department
Berkeley Fire Department Berkeley Police
Department Brisbane Police Department Central
County Fire Department City of Alameda Fire
Department City and County of San Francisco
Cobalt East Bay Regional Parks Police Department
Emeryville Fire Department Emeryville Police
Department Fremont Fire Department Fremont Police
Department Fort Bragg Fire & Emergency Services
Foster City Fire Department Hayward Fire
Department Hayward Police Department
Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department Livermore
Police Department Marin County Sheriff’s Office
Martinez Police Department Mendocino Fire
Protection District Menlo Park Fire Protection
District Millbrae Fire Department Newark Police
Department Northern California Regional
Intelligence Center Oakland Housing Authority
Oakland International Airport Oakland Fire
Department Oakland Police Department Oakland
Unified School District Palo Alto Fire Department
Pleasanton Police Department Port Board of
Commissioners Port of Oakland Presidio Fire
Department Redwood City Fire Department Redwood
City Police Department Richmond Police Department
Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety
Sacramento Police Department San Bruno Fire
Department San Francisco County Sheriff’s
Department San Francisco Department of Emergency
Management San Francisco Fire Department San
Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency San
Francisco Police Department San Jose Fire
Department San Jose Police Department San Leandro
Police Department San Mateo County San Mateo
County Sheriff’s Office San Mateo Emergency
Services Detail San Mateo Fire Department Santa
Clara County Santa Clara County Fire Department
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office Sonoma County
Sheriff’s Office South San Francisco Fire
Department Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety
Union City Police Department Woodland Fire
Department Woodside Fire Protection District
Cal-Explorer Search and Rescue California Army
National Guard, 95th Civil -Support Team (WMD)
California Disaster Medical Services Association
California Department of Corrections &
Rehabilitation California Emergency Management
Agency (Cal-EMA) California Highway Patrol
California Rescue Dog Association California
State Sheriff’s Association (CSSA) California
National Guard Commission on Peace Officer
Standards and -Training (P.O.S.T.) Disaster
Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Office Los Angeles Police Department
NORCAL Ambulance Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Pulgas Water Temple Sacramento Police Department
University of California-Berkeley University of
California-Berkeley Police Department 95th Civil
Support Team, Weapons of Mass Destruction
***
Want to know more? Read Yasha Levine’s
<http://exiledonline.com/yasha-levine-released-from-jail-exposes-lapds-appalling-treatment-of-detained-occupy-la-protesters/>account
of LAPD’s appalling treatment of detained Occupy
LA protesters
His
<http://exiledonline.com/cat/occupy-wall-street-2/>other
Occupy LA coverage
And
<http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/12/yasha_levine_occupy_la_arrest_koch_brothers_tea_party.php>LA
Weekly’s writeup of his arrest.
Yasha Levine is an
<http://exiledonline.com/yasha-levine/>editor of
The eXiled. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20111228/be46e77e/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list