Last edited Tue Mar 20, 2012, 12:47 AM - Edit history (1)

If you read this story without any prior knowledge of what happen in New York City on Saturday, all you would see was:

"Occupy Wall Street activists on Monday called for supporters to skip work on May 1 to protest what they're calling police brutality during 73 arrests in New York during the weekend."

"'I am here today because Saturday night I saw the New York Police Department using brutal, excessive force arresting people who were protesting peacefully,' Rodriguez told the news conference."

"Bloomberg countered that members of the NYPD were respectful of protesters' rights. 'This police department knows how to control crowds without excessive force,' the mayor said. 'They do allow you to protest but they don't let it get out of hand.' He said police have put up barricades around the park again because protesters were breaking park rules against setting up tents in the privately owned public space."

"But Liesbeth Rapp, a 27-year-old activist who was there Saturday, said police 'charged' protesters and forced them in groups onto nearby sidewalks. In tears, Rapp said she ended up next to a young woman who suffered a head injury in the scuffle. 'We were all on the ground, and they were on top of us," she said. "She was holding her head and screaming.'" Rapp said officers ignored the woman's call for medical help, and it took more than a quarter of an hour for medics to respond."

So what you'd be left with would be:

(1) a Democratic city councilman saying the police used "excessive force" and the mayor saying they did not and were "respectful" of the protesters,

(2) a flat lie by the mayor that the protesters were setting up tents in Zuccotti Park, when the only "tents" there were tent-shaped protest signs,

(3) another flat lie that the police had to barricade the park because the protesters were breaking "park rules," when in fact there is a court order against Brookfield Properties doing anything to keep the protesters out of the park,

(4) a bizarrely distorted account of the protester who had a seizure after a police beating that broke her ribs, turning the incident into no more than an attempt to force protesters onto the sidewalk and the victim into "a young woman who suffered a head injury in the scuffle."

There is also no mention of any of the other incidents, such as the window that was broken when police slammed a protester's head against it, or the protester whose thumb was broken when a police office deliberately bent it backwards using a "pain compliance" technique.

In short, you'd be left with the impression that the police were simply doing their job in a restrained and professional manner and that the protesters are a bunch of whiners making a fuss about nothing.

Outrageous!