At the beginning of this footage, you can hear me talking to my friend Kevin Burton on the phone. (Here it is in two parts for those of you with slow connections: part 1, part 2.)
I had been in the same spot for almost a half hour. There was a line of cops in the street, but they had been there the whole time and there was no reason to believe that anything was “wrong” per se.
The last thing I remember (and indeed, the last thing that happens on-screen before all hell breaks loose) is watching my friend Kevin wave to me as he is walking across the street. I had just finished telling him that I decided to take a few steps back so I wouldn’t be “in the street.” The cops would talk to us to tell us what we could do to not be in trouble, although they could have easily done so using a megaphone or some other means available to them — but I could figure out that blocking traffic were what they were so upset about so I (so foolishly) thought I would be OK if I stayed on the sidewalk.
There was little or no communication between the cops and the protesters before the line of cops rushed into the crowd and started hitting people with billy clubs and selecting members of the crowd at random to be arrested.
I wish I could say that I stood my ground and just kept filming, but as my footage will demonstrate. I backed up to the far end of the sidewalk to make sure I wasn’t going to get hit before I could concentrate on filming again.
It was then that I noticed “gangs” of 2 or 3 cops picking on certain individuals — usually male. I got some shots of this (http://www.lisarein.com/3-20-03-copgang.gif) and then turned to see a cops throw a girl into a newspaper machine. I turned the camera on her in time to see her try to stand up while a cop confronted her and she tried to back away from him while he hit her with his club (med res) (hi-res and small) and was about to do it again when she ran off screaming. (I interview her here.) (Hi-res version of interview.)
Again: the violence I witnessed seemed to be at random, unprovoked, and without warning. If they’re trying to scare us out of exercising our free speech rights, they’re sure doing a good job. I’m going to get my footage up today and see what the scene is before going back out there today.
Okay so back to describing this scene. After the cops rushed the crowd, and selecting certain individuals and having them put their hands behind their backs since they were going to be arrested, the crowd begins booing and screaming. “The whole worlds watching,” it screams. (“Ha!” I thought to myself, “I wonder if the crowd or the cops know how true that is!” 🙂
Kevin was shouting, “You don’t have to do this!” Someone else shouted “Take some pride in your work”. I kept having to run from the action periodically so the camera keeps getting shaky, but I decided to leave in all of that footage so you could see the whole conflict within its proper context from beginning to end.
I was seriously worried that I was going to get attacked by one of these cops — even though I was just standing there, far away from the street, with my camera, peacefully. I’ve never personally witnessed cops just running into the street hitting people at random that haven’t provoked them before, and have generally been very supportive of San Francisco cops’ behavior during the protests for this reason. Now I’m scared, and very, very sad (perhaps more sad than anything else).
One good thing I saw the cops doing was about four of them stopped to help an old man that was about to pass out. They stood with him for several minutes while he came around. At first people thought they were going to arrest him or something, and then we realized what was going on and spread the world that they were actually helping him out. (I just felt compelled to pass the incident along, to their credit.)
Photos of cop beating up girl from incident mentioned above:
Here are some other grabs I took from my footage, with captions:
Kevin Burton running out of the street when the cops start attacking people.
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A gang of cops attacking a protester.
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A shot of the crowd during the incident.
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Another shot of the crowd during the incident. (At this point, everyone was putting their hands above their heads in peace signs, hoping they would see that we werent fighting back so they would stop hitting us.)
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A cop brandishing the biggest baton I’ve ever seen in my life.
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Cops restraining randomly chosen folks in the crowd.
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Another shot of the same group of cops as above restraining the same guy (a randomly chosen protester in the crowd).
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A very sad police officer who looks like he wishes he was somewhere else. (There were many sad cops just like this guy.)
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Shots of the scuffle.
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Another shot of the scuffle.
