Comments

1
Awesome.
And about fucking time....
2
God this is sickening.
3
Sheeeeit. This is starting to look like the Basij in Iran. How much longer before they just start shooting people?
6
@ "I didn't know that saying something the police don't like was against the law." My close friend was arrested in Seattle Center for yelling "fuck the police" in a crowd waiting in line for a concert... he did not realize they would arrest him, but the grabbed him and tossed him into a mud puddle, and slapped cuffs on him.. i got the 2am call to verify his information...
7
You'd think it would give police a bit of pause unless you had some historical context of police actions. From such a context you might learn that when police are challenged and cornered they lash out. They are trained, as an aggregate, to assert social dominance, and when they dominance is challenged they make examples.

This is utterly predictable, and one could take in real honesty only a couple of positions on it: either that this is the inevitable price of civil disobedience, or that precautions should have been taken involving lawyers, prior contact with police departments, and negotiations.

Not that I don't feel bad for that guy or angry at those cops; I do. This shit has got to stop.
8
this is america. they are cops.
9
Hey, I have an idea. When the cops come in and say to disperse or be arrested, that means it's time for a quick break. Go home, feed the dog, have a shower, make some sack lunches, and then go back to the protest. If the cops are still busting heads at that protest site, pick another one (no shortage or criminal corporations or bank locations, eh?). This would create an on-going occupation where arrest isn't the only choice. Imagine people in the streets everywhere, sharing hope and practical ways to move away from the corrupt financial system that we've all played a part in.
10
It's a fucking scooter girls. Now go back to your Radiohead concert.
11
10 beat me to it. That's not a motorcycle, that's a scooter!
12
I totally support the Occupy movement, but what @#4 and @#10 said.

Unfortunately, both videos look "faked" somehow to me. I hate to say that, but unless I saw another video that clearly illustrates how the guy ended up on the ground and that his leg really is UNDER the tire...I dunno.

I really hope someone else has a better video.
13
Oh please. There is no indication in either of these videos that the man was "run over". It appears that he is deliberately shoving his feet under and against the tires. It's an expected part of the whole demo ecosystem, but let's not pretend that this is any illustration of police violence. Silly hyperbole makes the movement easier to dismiss.
14
Fuck the NYPD. Hopefully a building will collapse with them in it.
15
@14 at least they don't squeal like fucking pussies.
16
Really, do they want to force us to go back to the time when cops were called "Pigs?"
17
@15 if a building falls on all of them, there won't be any sound from the donut devils now will there? Heh.
18
@12, @13 (and @4 and @10), it looks like your skepticism was justified. This gothamist post is now saying that "some doubt has been cast on earlier reports that he was seriously injured".

That said, if you watch the second video, you can see that the cop on the scooter must have been trying to get through the crowd quickly (watch how quickly he pulls up) so I wouldn't be surprised if he knocked the guy over.
19
@18 The gothamist report is inconclusive. Give it a rest.

Nothing the victim did deserved the response he got from the donut devils. Oooh. You knocked the wittle bike over, aawww.
Fuck the NYPD.
20
The next time a horrible tragedy befalls the NYPD donut devils I am going to celebrate with a nice glass of expensive champagne. Yum.
21
If my leg was run over by a scooter and parked on, I'd kick the scooter over, too.
22
'you ran over his foot!!!!'
23
There is something funny about this vid. Nothing funny about the white shirt billy clubbing and macing, or the bloodying of that poor HIV+ guy, though. These cops are losing it.
24
Actually, it is pretty obvious the bike was not moving and the kid put his feet under the front tire, then moved them to the rear tire--because the cop was already trying to put his kickstand down. The cops knew exactly what was happening, too. They knew he wasn't having a seizure, they knew the video would be on youtube within minutes, and so on. But that kid was potentially setting up an attack on the cops. And clearly committing a crime by obstructing them. If they grabbed him and he kept thrashing just to force them to get rough--well, I hope it hurt a lot worse than he expected it to. Further, the cops pulled the guy that started yelling 'you ran over his fucking leg you fucking pig' the second the joke started--hence he was involved as well. Watch again and you will see, unless your ideology renders you blind and retarded.
25
@21: EXACTLY! And for exhibiting a basic animal instinct (make pain stop now), he gets beaten like he was trying to vandalize the scooter.

Not proud of my current city and our cops right now.
26
The sociopath conspiracy theorists without a shred of empathy (or decency) should know that wasn't some protestor run over by a cop, he was a legal observer.

That's right, someone with no skin in the game, just there as a witness.

So sociopath conspiracy theorists, your blame the victim strategy was that much more shameless.

The happy irony is: I smell a lawsuit. Yeah, sociopath cop, hope you enjoyed your little "accident," because it's going to cost you -- and the City of New York -- a bundle.

I could be wrong about this, but my feeling is the police department may not care if cops rough up citizens, but they probably dump the copss who get caught doing it (on camera!) to anyone who has access to big time money lawyers.

27
@judybrowni 26 et passim:

"sociopath conspiracy theorists" ?

anyway, the new york times blog:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/1…
currently cites multiple independent witnesses who say that the 'legal observer' deliberately shoved his feet under the immobile scooter in an attempt to make it look like he had been 'run over,' which he had not been.

which is what the two videos already posted above also appear to show.

stunts like this are either silly and misguided attempts to manipulate the public, or deliberate and cynical efforts by people opposed to the occupy wall street movement to discredit them.

shame on the slog for posting this with such inflammatory window dressing.

and judy, you do not know me. let's stick to what we can actually see in the video, and other sources from the scene, rather than going all ad hominem on each other.
28
1) NYPD are douchebags.

2) The guy doesn't look like he got run over, and looks like he was pretty much faking the whole situation. I call bullshit on all that screeching. Nobody does that when they are in any kind of legitimate pain, and a scooter/small motorbike of that size is not heavy enough to do very serious damage to a person even if the cop did run over his ankle/foot.

3) NYPD still douchebags.
29
@27 "Let's stick to what we can actually see in the video"--

1) The guy falls after the scooters approach. Whether or not this is the result of getting hit or not is not clear, but he was not just lying in the road as one commenter suggested.

2) His foot gets under or beside the tire as he is writhing and flailing in seeming pain. He is not looking at the motorcycle as this happens. Whether or not he is faking or not can not be discerned, but for anyone to claim he "obviously" put it there on purpose and was faking it seems ridiculous to me.

3) I'm inclined to doubt what witnesses said at the scene when it seems to contradict filmed evidence. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, and as someone who works with ambiguous crisis situations frequently, I'm often surprised by how much different individuals accounts of an incident will differ with both each other, and with the video.

4) To dismiss this as a stunt, while quite possible, seems to be reading way more into the evidence than is merited. And to cry "shame" to the poster for posting it is unmerited as well.
30
@ 29--for someone decrying the incautious reading of the video evidence, you're pretty badly misreading the text.

i called shame on slog not for posting this video--which i am glad they did--but for doing so with such inflammatory and unwarranted framing, which remains shameful for any organization connected to 'news' even tenuously.
31
The guy has a blue shirt and a tan backpack. Take a look at the Vimeo video at roughly :19-:20 seconds in. At this point, the scooter has been at a complete stop for at least a second or more. Look at the bottom left of the frame and you can see the guy's tan backpack drop suddenly to the ground, clearly not having been hit by the scooter. You can even see people's heads track him as he falls.

In the seconds immediately after that, it appears to me that nobody is quite sure why the guy is on the ground. Their body language suggests that they are a bit confused about what is going on. It is only a few seconds later when people start saying "He's having a seizure", which would be the logical assumption if someone suddenly dropped to the ground and started flailing around like that.
32
If he didn't get run over by the cop, how come is leg got broken? The police did take him to the hospital eventually, ya know.
33
I couldn't find any confirmation of him being taken to the hospital for a broken leg anywhere.

Here's some other videos of the incident:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnIviW7rR…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfSANolzV…

Still looks like the scooter was basically at a standstill when he was there. Off chance, maybe his foot got trapped, but it really doesn't look like that either.

He starts off screaming about his foot. His left foot is what is sortof near/under the front wheel, but then seconds later after moving his legs around (putting his *right* foot near the back wheel), he kicks the motorcycle over with that same ostensibly broken left foot. Adrenaline rush, who knows. But broken leg?

Not defending the cops here, and maybe somehow he got hurt, but I don't really buy it.

Please wait...

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