Scahill of Democracy Now on Miami Protests: Police State Embeds Journos

[BurtWorm]

http://images.democracynow.org/images/story_images/miamimodel.shtml


By Jeremy Scahill

MIAMI, Nov. 24 - We were loading our video equipment into the trunk of our car when a fleet of bicycle cops sped up and formed a semi-circle around us. The lead cop was none other than Miami Police Chief John Timoney. The former Police Commissioner of Philadelphia Timoney has a reputation for brutality and hatred of protesters of any kind. He calls them punks," "knuckleheads" and a whole slew of expletives. He coordinated the brutal police response to the mass-protests at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000. After a brief stint in the private sector, Timoney took the post of Miami police chief as part of Mayor Manny Diaz's efforts to "clean up the department."

We had watched him the night before on the local news in Miami praising his men for the restraint they had shown in the face of violent anarchists intent on destroying the city. In reality, the tens of thousands who gathered in Miami to protest the ministerial meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit were seeking to peacefully demonstrate against what they consider to be a deadly expansion of NAFTA and US-led policies of free trade. There were environmental groups, labor unions, indigenous activists from across the hemisphere, church groups, grassroots organizations, students and many others in the streets. What they encountered as they assembled outside the gates to the building housing the FTAA talks was nothing short of a police riot. It only took a few hours last Thursday before downtown Miami looked like a city under martial law.

On the news, Chief Timoney spoke in sober tones about the tear gas that demonstrators fired at his officers. No, that is not a typo. Timoney said the protesters were the ones launching the tear gas. He also said the demonstrators had hurled "missiles" at the police. "I got a lot of tear gas," Timoney said. "We all got gassed. They were loaded to the hilt. A lot of missiles, bottles, rocks, tear gas from the radicals."

Seeing Timoney up close and personal evokes this image of Mayor Daley at the '68 Democratic Convention ordering his men to shoot protesters on sight. He is that kind of guy.

...

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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

[el_gato]

2. whatever

[BurtWorm]

5. I thought so.

[0007]

3. How do I get this link to work in my favor?

'Tis all greek to me.

[BurtWorm]

4. Dunno.

I'll PM it to you.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. he's saying the protestors, not the cop, had tear gas?

They can't be serious!

[BurtWorm]

7. It sounds like something a character in Elmore Leonard would say.

He's "serious" in a cop kind of way. ;)

[BurtWorm]

8. One other thing Scahill said on Democracy Now

that rattled me a little. Some of the funds that paid for the tear gas and rubber bullets came out of the $87.7 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, Scahill said. How he knows that, I don't know. But if it's true, it's kind of sick.

[Terwilliger]

9. It was a common story last week

there's a thread on DU somewhere