Attorney incensed after viewing FTAA police video

A police training video showed high-ranking Broward deputies laughing about shooting rubber bullets at a Coral Gables attorney at the free- trade summit in Miami



<snip>

"As a middle-aged Coral Gables attorney, dressed sharply in a red suit jacket, skirt and black slingback heels, Elizabeth Ritter stood out among the throng of protesters on Nov. 20, 2003.

Frustrated that she couldn't do business because the Miami-Dade County Courthouse was shut down that week during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit, she hastily made a sign that read ''Fear Totalitarianism'' and decided to stand with the protesters.

The sign, however, became her shield against a barrage of rubber bullets fired at her by a legion of Broward Sheriff's deputies in riot gear. And, in an image captured by a videographer, she is shot in the head as she cowers in the street.

And now another video, recently released, raises questions about the degree to which police, specifically, Broward Sheriff's deputies, were encouraged, -- and even praised -- for using force against Ritter and other protesters."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15228898.htm

snip>

But it wasn't trade issues that brought Ritter and her friends to downtown that day. The attorney thought it was overkill that the police had all but shut down the city.

''My city, my hometown, was becoming a police state,'' she said.

A videographer captured what happened next, showing Ritter walking alone in front of a line of BSO deputies on NE Third Street.

As the deputies advance, Ritter turns around to face them and raises her sign.

A barrage of projectiles is fired. She kneels, holding her sign above her head as a shield.

Ritter is shot five times -- in her legs, upper body, and shoulder. And when she kneels on the ground, the sign above her head, a projectile rips through it and strikes her in the head.

Hard rubber projectiles typically leave welts and bruises, but at close range can pierce the skin, or rarely, kill.

'I turned around and said, `Why did you hit me?' Is a woman in a business suit a threat?'' Ritter recalled in a recent interview.

snip>

the people of this country. I am afraid that now there is only one way to force that respect...

I've twice in my life had to speak to police officers looking for assistance, and both times they were unresponsive and rude.

I've also taken part in public protests and demonstrations, and in all but one case the cops were hostile and combative. In all of those protests and demostrations everyone was unarmed (except the cops) and the only violence came from the cops.

It's in the culture and training. It is clearly very common and encouraged for cops to take a hostile approach to almost every situation.

They are the good guys the public are the Islamics who deserve to die.

.... and lots of ammo.

fuck crying.

i have been on the receiving end of that police mentality - no rubber bullets, but i have been handcuffed and stomped by at least 6 cops in a lockup, i know that attitude, and all that video did was send me spinning.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

She never backed down; never left the middle of the street.

Someone needs to put this video up on You Tube and elsewhere. Never forget.

for no reason. Fuck Florida. Atta girl, Ritter!

I hope she sues them for every dollar they have. The actions of those officers were out of line.

:sarcasm:

(Note: that doesn't mean there CAN'T be reasons for owning fully automatic assault rifles. But for the life of me, I can't think of any.)

I hope it never does, but I harbor no illusions what some people are trying to bring about in this country.

edited to add: Some day those bullets may not be rubber.

If we wait for the day when the rubber becomes real, we'll be too dead to do anything about it.

if you were a member of a community-run militia, but we abandoned that mode of defense 200 years ago. The only country in the industrialized world I know that has a civilian militia system is Switzerland, and I think their system is good primarily because it doesn't lend itself very easily to waging an offensive war against a neighboring country.

by the Title 2/Class III provisions of the National Firearms Act, so it's pretty much a moot point.

What kind of asshole gets pleasure out of inflicting pain?

Oh, excuse the fuck outta me: a police officer.

the rightwing move against Knight-Ridder. Not sure who owns it any more. Their reporting during the FTAA protests was outstanding. Knight-Ridder in general has been the only reliable news network in the country--particularly on the Iraq war.

I do find fault with one item in article, though. They perpetuate the corporate myth of Seattle (anti-WTO protests, 1999) that it was the protesters who were at fault. I was there. I know that to be a lie. And it has been used ever since to perpetuate the most repressive police culture we have ever seen in this country. Let me explain.

There is a history to these brutal "Darth Vader" attacks on protesters, going back to the police riot in Seattle in 1999 (and the slanderous mis-reporting by the corporate news monopolies), and including not only extremely assaultive tactics against peaceful protesters, but also the "caging" of protesters into so-called "free speech zones" (as at the Democratic Party convention in Boston--utterly disgraceful), and the shutting down of entire city areas just because there is a big march or a civil disobedience (peaceful) protest. There is also ADDITIONAL brutality in arrests and detentions.

There was never anything like this brutal, ugly, unconstitutional, Nazi organization of the police against antiwar and other protests in the 1960s. Police brutality certainly occurred--and one major instance of a police riot comparable to Seattle 1999 (Chicago 1968). But Chicago was just a lot of bloody-minded police thugs running around beating people up--it was not an organized "army" of robocops (as in Seattle) which methodically pepper-spray hosed ten thousand, seated, peaceful demonstrators right in their faces, tear-gassed whole city areas and placed them "off limits" to free speech, and then invaded and tear gassed nearby neighorhoods and even beat up a city councilman. It was well-organized and deliberate.

After hearings in Seattle, the police chief was forced to resign--something you never heard about from the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, right? Who do YOU think was at fault in Seattle?

Seattle--50,000 protesters total; 10,000 in a highly peaceful civil disobedience action that shut down the WTO--was the most amazing protest I've ever been involved in, and I figure they had to brutalize and slander it, because the power of well-organized, peaceful citizens that was apparent that week is, indeed, an awesome thing. We own this country, you know. We own our government. We are the sovereigns here, and we have a right to tell our government what to do, and to peacefully disobey their obstructive rules if they are protecting theft by the rich and secret proceedings that vitally affect the American people. And we were right on. Look what global "free piracy" has done to this country!

The "Darth Vader" thing started there. Badgeless armored cops in phalanxes brutalizing innocent people, as if there were a war going on--here at home. This was 1999, remember. There was no other war going on. The "war" was by our Corporate Rulers against all us citizens. It started under Clinton, not Bush.

After the 10,000 sat down peacefully in all of the intersections leading to the WTO meeting, cadres of police began surrounding them--long lines of Darth Vader cops, backed by items like a large pepper spray hosing machine and armored vehicles loaded with weapons. They started at 10:00 in the morning, and began assaulting these peaceful, seated people, with cascades of pepper spray aimed at their heads, billy clubs, rubber and wooden bullets, and tear gas. It was both horrible and amazing! Nobody retaliated. Nobody moved. This went on all day long--for about 6 hours--before any other trouble broke out. At that point, A FEW YOUNGSTERS--these black-masked young anarchists--and, no doubt, a few agents provocateurs, amidst clouds of tear gas, began burning trash cans and breaking windows downtown. The real protesters tried to stop them--put their bodies between the windows and the young vandals. And the police went nuts, tear gassing the entire downtown area, beating people up and shooting them with rubber and wooden bullets, arresting the peaceful and letting the vandals go, invading adjacent neighborhoods, and finally cordoning off large areas--the "no free speech zones"--which you were barred from for simply wearing a button!

The first phase of the fascist coup that was about to take over our country had begun. That night, the corporate TV news stories BEGAN WITH and EMPHASIZED the disorder late in the day, and completely ignored the police riot that had been going on all day long. All corporate media--and even some of the leftist media--picked this up, and that became the story. The later hearings in Seattle where the truth was revealed were never covered.

I have never seen anything like this before in my lifetime--the concerted efforts of a Nazified police, the politicians protecting corporate power, and the corporate news media chiming in, in unison, with a completely topsy-turvy, backasswards, FALSE story. I imagine some of the early union protests were like this, in the 1920s and 1930s. It was never like this with the antiwar and civil rights protests of the 1960s. The news coverage was much more even-handed. The police might lie, but everybody would know it. And politicians still had some connection to their constituents--the protesters! (--true of the Seattle City Council members, but of none of the others; Washington DC had long been deaf to the people on "free trade.")

Century City (summer 1967) was probably the most Nazi thing I ever saw in the '60s--a police "flying wedge" of billy clubs wading into an entirely peaceful crowd (huge crowd), and an order to disperse that was not possible to follow. They overturned baby carriages, and did all sorts of awful things--but, again, it still was mostly BAD JUDGEMENT rather than a war against civilians. (LBJ had arrived at CC to give a speech, and the LAPD were jittery.) What we've seen in Seattle, in Miami, and in Washington DC--all anti-globalization protests--has been far different.

It is not just head bashing and police brutality, or jittery cops. It is highly organized, cold, brutal repression of free speech aimed at erasing any connection between citizens and their government. And it's no wonder--our Corporate Rulers are looting us blind, draining our treasury, undoing our Constitution, and outsourcing all our jobs to cheap labor markets. They have used our infrastructure and our resources, and our taxes, and our creativity and productivity as a people, to build themselves into powerful global entities that are inflicting poverty and war around the globe. We are the only ones who theoretically have the power to curtail them. They must shut us up. And their ultimate silencing has been their theft of our right to vote--the corporate takeover of our elections with 'trade secret" programming in the new electronic voting systems.

It is fascism. We see it in the Nazification of the police. We see it in Congress. And we most certainly see it in the White House and the Pentagon. And torture and indefinite detention are only a island away.

I'm glad to see this news story come back round. I never knew of the brutalization of this attorney, who decided to join a peaceful protest and found herself in a "no free speech zone" --and was so brutalized. I hope she sues and wins. John Timoney, Miami Police Chief, is one of the leaders of the Nazification of our police forces. He is an Irishman gone bad. He has got to go!

----------------------------------------

What the newly surfaced video reveals is INCREDIBLE--stark evidence of this Nazi culture in our police forces. From the Miami Herald report:

"In the video -- recorded by BSO on Nov. 21, the day after the event -- a BSO top commander gushes over shooting protesters. Another officer refers to them as 'scurrying cockroaches.'

"And when it comes to ''the lady in the red dress,'' said a sergeant, referring to Ritter, eliciting hoots and laughter, 'I don't know who got her, but it went right through the sign and hit her smack dab in the middle of the head!'"

----------------------------------------

We are the enemy.

I understand much more now than I did before reading your post.

:applause:

n/t

infuriating

......like storm troopers? What's the rational for black uniforms in a city with a tropical climate? It certainly isn't camouflage or comfort.

I once read about a prison warden who forced his inmates to wear pink outfits so as to keep a cap on their "manly hostile instincts." I think it's time we start letting civilians decide how their PUBLIC SERVANTS dress - not some developmentally challenged borderline high-school graduates. I suggest pink and blue flowered outfits will suffice. Pink and blue will provide for more camouflage, comfort AND will remind these pigs they aren't players in a Rambo movie.

Just a thought.

What kind of ignorant, inbred, Fascist scum gets off on hurting the public he was hired to PROTECT?

Pathetic. The New American Nazi.........

Elizabeth Ritter: you are braver than all those scum combined, hiding in their hermetically sealed suits, laughing when they hurt innocent people.

And they wonder why they are called pigs!:mad:

This is for commending an officer, but you can commend Major Brooks and his henchmen for winning this year's Fascist Fucks Competition....





http://www.sheriff.org/apps/commend/index.cfm

weapons then they already have.

:argh:

Though I must say the fact that this is Florida and unlike many other parts of the country, there is no such thing as a "good cop" in that state.

<snip>

"Major John Brooks, a high-ranking officer for the Broward Sheriff's Office, apologized this afternoon for derogatory comments he and other officers made during a police-training video following the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas summit.

His apology came on the same day The Miami Herald published a story about the tape, which was posted on its website and later picked up by other media.

The tape shows Brooks and other officers praising each other for shootingprotesters with rubber bullets at the convention a day earlier.

''First of all I'm here to apologize for the comments. They were inappropriate and unprofessional,'' Brooks said. ``Looking back at the tape, in hindsight, I shouldn't have said those things.''

One of the protesters, Elizabeth Ritter, contends she was unjustifiably shot with rubber bullets while she stood peacefully in front of a phalanx of police in riot gear. At the time, she was dressed in a suit with a red jacket -- and her clothing was part of the officers' comments."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15235582.htm

if he thought there were no cameras watching. If he's true to form, he's sorry he got caught not sorry for what he did, either in shooting the woman or making derogatory comments about it later.

....to come down the pike.

You are slaves.

Welcome to the Plantation.

Thats how you deal with these thugs.

Astonishing. Half of this country has lost it's Effing mind... Fascist sonofabitches.

America looks like its out of control.

And I'm stuck here in Texas. This kind of redneck fascism is par for the course nowadays. :(

Also shown on the news but not in these videos... one man hit in the chest with a big red wound, and another man hit in the right temple holding a hankercheif to stop the blood running down his face.

Ha Ha! Right guys? :sarcasm:

This stuff is old news to people who deal with cops on a regular basis.

Love the way this was worded:

http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&tsn=31&tid=300&webtag=kr-miamitm

Let's face it, the kinds of guys who become cops are generally those sort of ground-based, C-student, hopelessly overmacho, balding, shortish guys with an axe to grind for being born dense and unable to see the gray areas in life. They're generally fairly ignorant, outside the pablum they got force-fed in public schools and churches and didn't really get then. One doesn't argue with one's so-called superiors in that sort of Institution, it would cost them their jobs. You take your pay and whatever graft and payola you can stomach, and you shut your hole. You can't ship THEIR jobs overseas. So they're just hired tools. To protect and serve--the State, not you. They tend to hang out in groups, play foolish reindeer-games and generally victimize their significant others. But they gots them guns, so they're always right, right?

I just came from watching a couple of them effectively arrest a guy for hiking, jobless.
I mean these are guys who don't mind wearing black triple-knit in Miami in August. Very few physicists and Kierkegaard scholars in the mix.

If you've spent that much time working out your arm muscles and that Junior College coaching job falls through, what else can you do?
Should we really expect any more from them?
In times gone by, they'd get weeded out of any proper military organization through basic evolutionary processes, like catching a crossbow bolt in the chest for failing to see what's going on around them. But today we've got that kind of knee-jerk boneheads up to our chins and rising,
their attrition rate really only fed by car accidents, boating and hunting incidents, and alcohol-laced domestic murder-suicide.
But they're really only the tip of the problem;
all America has a love affair with Fascism right now, (We fought fer it!) and these things tend to spiral out of control as the electorate gets more ignorant every time some slick cream-scraping profiteer with a nice head of hair catapults to office by stoking the Elevation of the Primitive (because that's where the bulk of the populace can agree) and starts cutting education and helps all good slaves to get their thinkin' knowledge at the same place they learn to drink blood and eat Jewish prophets every weekend. Can we really expect these dolts to comprehend what's really happening at these Economics Summits? No, and that's exactly what the folks who brought you NAFTA and Eminent Domain seizures (for malls and new high-end housing for the Holy Successful) want to happen. It would mean the end of their hegemony if the truth was desirable over comfy myth-structures. They'd just love it if you'd shut up and not see them selling out your future for their temporary gains. And the vast majority of Americans will applaud them for it, hoping that one day they too will be able to screw so many, so thoroughly.


The people paying and instructing those cops know full well that the majority will always wallow in the fuzzy warmth of blind, callous joinerism, because primates do that instinctually. (They just can't tell anyone that they read that in a book, written by Godless Scientists.) All religion is based on that social approval from The Group. And Patriotism has become just that around here, a religion unto itself. So anyone who fails to cavil and kowtow becomes the enemy, though they may be their only real salvation. They're different, and deserve to be shot, in lieu of any real means of social excommunication, lest they point out Society's shortcomings. (Which is the duty of all true Americans.)

No, the fault lies at what's supposed to be the top--where the thinkers used to go. And the Republican swells in office today occasionally know better, but got where they got through money, and the power brokers above them will remove them from the trough of corruption they've come to demand as their compensation for their toad-eating, so we can't expect any help from them. Capitalism isn't actually a political system, though it sure gets sold that way to the dialectical. Easy to sell, greed. Envy feeds it.
Luckily, the International Banking World will soon collapse from the weight of its own recursive ridiculousness, and they'll all be dragged from their gated communities in the next highly justified reign of terror. (Once the crowds have overwhelmed the guards, who will find out too late the price of servility.) Hey, thanks for the big houses, they'll fit lots of your victims!
So all we can do is be vigilant and cry out when they hang themselves like this-- let's try to appreciate them for their aggressive stupidity.
It's all we're gonna get, til the oil runs out.
Maybe some waggish future politician will sponsor a bill outlawing Ignorance, what fun we'll have then.

#
Posted by: kerry k

kids see there badge, and let them know that through the DARE program you should turn family members in for drugs, and other crimes.

and not surprising, considering that for years, the police have not been forced to account for brutal acts. During my legal studies in the Navy, there was a very uncomplimentary name applied to them. It has been well-earned.

These are the individuals whose mandate is to protect and serve? Who protects us from them?