29 arrested for rioting in downtown olympia last night during a police brutality protest.

Wow, there are a lot of very stupid people out there.... Wait, looking at the picture again, maybe there's just a few stupid people.

Dipshit would-be-anarchists need to find a better spokesman than a fucking cop-killer. Christopher Monfort speaks for no one on the subject of police violence or any other subject. Police violence against Monfort was absolutely justified. This is your teabagger moment, dipshits. Actually, these people make your average senator-threatening teabagger look almost sensible in comparison.

I hope Monfort is in awful pain.

Holding police accountable is absolutely necessary, but a lot of the people attending these events seem to have nothing more than a juvenile anti-authority mentality that isn't exactly productive.

Reading about some of the Portland protests was pretty absurd, the day after a cop killed a guy allegedly coming at him with a knife, there was a protest downtown where people broke a couple windows and damaged an ATM. The circumstances of the shooting are contentious, but immediately going out and breaking things (totally unconnected to the event) without waiting for the facts to come out shows a reflexively hostile attitude with no recognition of the complexities police face every day, much less the issues involved in use of force.

Take that, The Man!

Don't these people have the Internet? Don't they know that once you invoke Hitler, you lose?

I'm all for police accountability (especially in Portland where this has been a serious problem), but Jesus. That argument is leotarded and 100% counterproductive.

Waittaminute. Are the people on horseback...police?

I think they should all just get along.

Has anyone counted the total number of people claiming to be Crass fans via shirts or patches yet?

It's such a pathetic protest, they're walking on the sidewalk.

Whadda buncha maroons.

I sometimes wonder if the entire modern American anarchist movement wasn't the result of a half-joking, drunken dare between some COINTELPRO agents back in the mid-70s that just got WAAAAAY out of hand.

This is one time I will excuse police brutality.

They must be from Portland.

What type of protesters march on the sidewalk? Amateurs.

wow...what a co-winky dink...they just happened to stage their protest outside The Stranger when the police station is around the corner...

at least the douchebags are media savvy...that, or they are lost.

we have about the least brutal po in the country. well, maybe they're mellower in hawaii. please get mad about real problems.

This morning I saw some signs wheat-pasted to a window that said "Less Killer Cops. More Cop Killers" on 11th/Union. Related to this protest perhaps? I agree that there needs to be police accounability but calling for more more cop killers is inexcusable. What a bunch of asshats.

I hope gurldoggie was among the arrested.

"The problem with these people is their cities have never been burned and their mother's have never been told to shut up."

-Hank Chinaski

call me crazy, i love cops. GIVE ME MORE COPS.

On the plus side, Monfort's shithead argument is irresistible to the lowest grade of anarcho-buttheads, and this makes it easy to organize them into little parades like this, which in turn makes it easy to identify them all. Look how easy they are to control.

I just hope this doesn't come back to bite them later when they've all got jobs in daddy's law firm.

Making a murderer your hero is a sure way to lose your argument.

I am somewhat new to the N/W and this by no means is an exclusive club.

Take a quick look @ Chicago, (where I am from) Detroit, Philadelphia. These cities are all in the midst of public outcry for accountability among civil servants. This is something that in my opinion should be expected and demanded by the public at large, not just minorities.

These events do nothing but create awareness to an existing problem that has been going on in this country since the invention of dirt. It's not going to change, ever.

Why isn't it going to change? Exposure to error in the public servant business is high. I call it the human element. People make mistakes, use poor decision making etc... It's what makes us human, error.

Earlier today someone posted about robots not making mistakes er' something to that effect. We are not robots, watch Chopping Mall and see what happens when the human element is replaced with technology. Great 80's hacker film.

I guess my point is, this will never end, it never will. It is just more present in our culture due to media and instant connectivity to current events available to the human element.

I do however like robots, and those half human half horse things, they are kinda neat.

Are those Police horses, or did the protesters bring their own? 0.o

Yup, these are the left's version of teabaggers. Fortunately they do not have a news channel and a former governor who walked off the job to rile them up.

Wait -- did that brochure say Monfort was "calm and articulate"?

But that explodes my whole racist sterotype of brutish negroes who kill police. If my assumption that they are all inarticulate beasts isn't true, then maybe my assumption that they are all cop killers isn't true also!

My eyes are open! Thanks anarchist twats! You've exposed the media lie and set me free! Let's go burn something!

I wonder what real anarchists, like Emma Goldman, would think of these nimrods.

morally repugnant? predictable. we are too sophisticated to be interested in police accountability of course.

I'll gladly eat my words if Kelly's pictures prove otherwise but the "problem with these people" is that they're dumb rich white kids who think that being poor, working class, and/ or brown is somehow romantic and that by dressing up in black carharts they're involved in a struggle of solidarity.
"The problem with these people" is that beyond maybe protesting or being busted smoking the reefer in their dorm most of these "anarchists" have never actually had enough encounters with police to realize that they're people-some good some bad.
I know that racism and brutality are realities, and the Seattle police department like many others has it's problems* but protesting the police is pointless and stupid. If you really care so much then BECOME POLICE OFFICERS people, take over the force and be kinder and gentler. If the only people who become police officers are racist douchebags then well, what do you expect.
Oh, and I heart Emma but anarchy isn't a costume or a game it's a way of life and this shit between anarchy and totalitarianism is a silent war, it's a war of ideas, and when you break shit and advocate violence or act like a moron you lose. Don't like the cops? then work peacefully for a world where everyone is equal and the cops are no longer necessary.
Sorry, long post but I'm sick of these fools making us look bad, COINTEL couldn't do a better job if it was around today.

*Oly police protesters...just stop, please. The war, great- keep it up!, but police? You have no idea how awesome the Oly police force is and you make every other legit protest look stupid.
Here's a tip: tell them you go to evergreen and speak to the cops like they're people instead of being a jerk, the last time I was busted for stupid shit in Oly the Cop and I SHOOK HANDS when it was over, that's the kind of shit that makes that place special, and safe for you.

I'm embarrassed for these idiots.

And anarchy is only a short prelude to the strong brutalizing the weak.

@31 what would great would be if the olympia police department would stop fucking shooting people to death sometime soon.

PHOTOS:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

Prolly not a good idea to cite dumb ideas in a brochure as indicative of the opinion of everyone there.

@35, prolly not a good idea to just insist that this collection of sidewalk boobs is brimming over with brilliant ideas without, you know, offering some of them up. The evidence isn't on your side.

@28 pretty sure its hard to look anything but calm when you are paralyzed. Only way they could have made him look calmer would have been to kill him - its a shame they missed.

@35 I don't think I've taken a side. I'm still at the evidence collection stage.

Fucking wannabe anarchists. I hope the police beat the shit out of the fucks who pushed the dumpster into the street.

@38, how many data points do you need? You've got eighteen photos, a pamphlet, numerous signs, numerous bandanas, a punched horse, and a tipped dumpster. It only takes three points to define a plane.

@33 you're right the cops should, like everyone else stop shooying people. Just because my dealings with the OPD have been abnormally 'nice', shall we say, doesn't make the OPD a team of angels, Officer Bakala in particular seems to pop up repeatedly in cases of power abuse and should probably be removed from the force. But you make it sound like an epidemic when there's been what? two or three shootings and a tazing to death in the last 10 years? The shooting of Jose Ramirez-Jimenez does still leave questions to be answered as far as I know, but he did have a handgun in the back seat of his car and may have been reaching for it and Joseph Burkett brought 3 guns to a hospital and was threatening emergency room nurses with a handgun when he was shot.
I don't think that police are perfect, far from it, I long for the day when they are unnecessary, and I truly wish that no one would be killed by another human ever. But the OPD isn't just shooting people for the fun of it and the shootings are few and far between. It's a group of people and some suck, some are pretty awesome, most are just people.
But yes, people shouldn't shoot each other.
The anti cop protests that have been going on for years in Oly are still stupid though. Agent provocateurs have been documented infiltrating Oly radical groups and yet dumb asses want to play radical and break shit. Never mind the counter-productivity of such actions for the people who face actual police abuse on a regular basis, it'll be a great story in a bourgeios future life when grown trust fund anarchists need the cops to defend their wealth.

Gahh! and in the meantime they have me defending cops, fuck!

Oh yeah, hey "anarchists" who do you think cleans up the mess when you use dumpsters as roadblocks?

@33, I haven't heard about any unjustifiable police shootings in Olympia. A couple of justified ones, sure. That's what cops are for, protecting the public against assholes with guns, whether they be criminal or mentally ill.

I notice that the Oly protesters punched a photographer and sprayed paint in his face, and were smashing windows downtown. Arrested? Good. Again: cops doing a difficult job well.

and, um, shooting, not shooying

Both the hits on local cops in recent memory were appalling and Christopher Monfort should get the needle. But, as a general matter, the conduct of police officers is morally complicated because most cops are, in fact, officious racist pricks from the suburbs who consistently demonstrate a brazen disregard for the due process rights of poor people and minorities. And they get away with some crazy shit. It's all well and good to claim that Seattle cops get more oversight than most cops, but I've seen enough cops just flat-out break the law in my day to know that, whatever oversight they're getting, it's not remotely enough to eliminate misconduct.

Society makes a choice about that -- most of us would balance the misconduct of police under the current rules against what we imagine would happen if we saddled cops with more rules, and we make a choice to allow cops to keep operating the way they do. Which is fine for us, because we mostly don't have to deal with the consequences. But if you're poor, or black, or homeless, and you have to deal with the bullshit that cops dish out on a regular basis, the threshold of "acceptable" misconduct is probably different -- and if you're in one of the groups that cops hassle on a regular basis, the lack of recourse for the shit you have to put up with can be pretty appalling.

These protesters are a pack of fucking idiots. But the thing they're talking about is worth giving some serious thought to from time to time.

@39

While I agree that tipping dumpsters over is lame and boring and pointless, I strongly feel that administering beatings on the street is the number one worst way of responding. In fact, 99% of the time beatings should be a last resort, right?

What if you accidentally do something and are beaten in the street yourself?

@27 No, this is NOT the left's version of teabaggers. The tea parties, by definition, are well-organized and quietly controlled by corporate interests who are harnessing some low-information citizens' unfocused rage against a black president to advance a low-tax, low-regulation climate. You'd never see a corporate group like Freedom Works or NewsCorp quietly leading a dozen people on a "Fuck the Police" protest.

I still wonder if a European or Latin American would laugh both at the seriousness of the protest and our reactions to it. Also interesting that there doesn't seem to be any mainstream coverage of this.

I still wonder if a European or Latin American would laugh both at the seriousness of the protest and our reactions to it. Also interesting that there doesn't seem to be any mainstream coverage of this.

That comment really needed to be repeated.

I just finished my Associate Degree at the local college, and I want to continue on and finish my four-year degree. Unfortunately, the two four-year colleges within driving distance of the home I own (I'm a late-start student, with a husband, child and mortgage) are Evergreen State College and St. Martin's University.

I'd like to attend St. Martin's, even though I'm atheist, but the tuition is a bit hefty. More than that, they don't actually offer the degree program I want to pursue.

That leaves me with Evergreen, which is better for tuition and offers the degree program. I just feel kind of sick at the thought of attending a college where the student body frequently holds anti-police rallies in Downtown Oly, and has also petitioned to create a completely impotent campus patrol.

Lana, Evergreen has educated great people for many years. Not pursuing your education there because of a small group of trust fund anarchists, is like not pursuing a medical degree from UW because frat boys are into being douche bags. Do what's right for your future inside the classrooms and hope you dont get stuck in the middle of one of their laughable protests while bettering yourself as a human being. The only reason they wont go away is because every year a new freshman from New England will become another 'anarchist' to piss of his daddy, but will eventually graduate then go work for daddy's big company and start driving a BMW. These little kids aren't worth the dumpsters they over turn.