“They hit me so hard with the baton a chunk of skin had actually come off” From KPFA/Democracy Now!, this account from a UC Berkeley undergraduate:



I was thrown to the ground and beaten with a baton. Police were beating my legs, even though I wasn’t fighting back and I wasn’t resisting. They hit me so hard with the baton on my shin that a chunk of skin had actually come off, and I was bleeding profusely. and this from a UC Berkeley graduate student: They tore the clothes off of me, because they couldn’t grab me, grabbed me by the hair, three of them. They pulled me out of the line of students, which we were like holding hands in peaceful demonstrations. And then, they put me down, and three UCPD got on top of me. And one of them used a rifle, the rifle that they use to shoot the pepper spray, and that officer hit me in the head. When I asked the officers, the UCPD officers, why I was being detained, they themselves told me, “We don’t really know who arrested you. We don’t even know what the charges are. But we’re going to process you eventually.

Second testimony from a graduate student arrested on the evening of Nov.9th I was part of the chain of people in front of a row of bushes on the night of Nov. 9. I was struck by batons in my arm and chest as the officers shouted “Move!” but I was literally trapped between my fellow students being beaten, the large bush, and the wall of Sproul Hall. Even though I was screaming “I CAN’T move!” the police kept trying to advance and hitting us with their batons. The other protestors were trying to pull me away from the police as the officers were repeatedly attempting to grab me while also striking me with batons. They were beating the arm of the man next to me because he was trying to pull me away. An officer yanked hard on my scarf three times to try to drag me away from the crowd, which had the effect of choking me. When that didn’t work, the officer grabbed my ponytail and dragged me by my hair over the bush, threw me face down on the ground, and arrested me.

The first video that went around the world The events in this video happened after the first police attack to take the tents (around 3:40pm on Nov.9th), and before police retreated.

Evening attack on Occupy Cal: raw footage Hits on crowd start at around 2:45. After 5:00, some protestors voluntarily walk away from the human wall; at 5:35 one gets violently pushed back into the crowd by police.

CalTV footage: Use of force after dismantling of tents More video footage of the continued use of force, and arrests, that followed the dismantling of the tents in the afternoon of November 9th. In particular, look at what appears to be a punch at a protester’s face at 0:19, and hits at the head of a protestor already on the ground around 2:15.

“She responded, ‘You have no rights’.” From this testimony of a UC Berkeley graduate student arrested on the evening of Nov.9th on Sproul: They cuffed me and dragged me into Sproul Hall, where they were holding around thirty of us. An officer came and asked me my name, and I told it to her. She then started firing off questions, and I politely told her that before I did that, I wanted to know my rights at this point in the process and when I would be able to speak to a lawyer. She responded, “You have no rights”, to which I responded “That’s impossible.” In one of many disturbing moments of the night, she informed me that I was wrong – and wrote me down as a non-cooperative arrestee. That simple request will earn me extra harsh treatment in the student disciplinary process, she assured me. Throughout the night, we were referred to as “bodies” not “people.” I was never Mirandized.

Video footage and report on excessive force from the Bay Citizen UC Berkeley Pledges to Investigate Police Response to Occupy Cal Protest – Video shows officers dragging a professor and a student to the ground by their hair Langan, who was released late Wednesday after roughly five hours in police custody, intends to file a complaint with the University of California Police Department on Monday accusing authorities of using excessive force. She says as officers approached, she stuck out her wrist and said, “Arrest me.” Instead, they grabbed her by the hair. Perhaps the most telling part of this report is that even UC Berkeley Associate Vice Chancellor Claire Holmes could not understate the severity of these events: Asked to review the video on Friday, Claire Holmes, a spokeswoman for UC Berkeley, promised a thorough investigation. “The images are extremely disturbing,” Holmes said. “Obviously we will be looking into the incident and appropriate measures will be taken. We will have to go through an investigation.”