The goons of the Iowa State Patrol of Des Moines spent last night arresting 32 peacenik “men, women, young people, senior citizens and a 14-year-old” after the Ocupados refused to leave the State Capitol grounds after the 11 p.m. closing time, for freedom. The Des Moines Register report mentions only that one protester was pepper sprayed, but a Facebook wall post on the Occupy Iowa page adds that “someone with his hands tied behind his back was pepper sprayed in the eyes and an ambulance came for him,” also for freedom (and good police fun). More details from this “not-reported by any of the news sources we can find” mace-to-the-face hilariousness after the jump!
The video from Iowa Politics doesn’t show the pepper spraying incident, but here is the crazy account from Facebook poster Andrew Rasmussen:
Here is what I saw at Occupy Des Moines tonight….there were around 100 to 200 people there around 11 pm…the state patrol and Des Moines police rolled in with about 50 to 60 people and even dogs…..the protestors were peaceful and repeated their intention of occupying a public area…the arrests began as people were zip tied…then someone with his hands tied behind his back was pepper sprayed in the eyes and an ambulance came for him…a person with a camera who had taken pictures of the pepper spraying was surrounded by state troopers and tried to get his camera away from them….they started to push him around and threw his camera to someone else who was then rushed by the cops but several protestors rushed into the street to protect and get the camera away….finally a 14 year old child was arrested (in zip ties) and the tents were tore (sic) down…..
Taxpayer dollars at work! [Daily Kos/Facebook/Des Moines Register]
{ 168 comments }
Give your licks in now, you fucking donut sucking whores because karma is a bitch…
Really, the cops should realize they're one tax break for the rich away from being laid off themselves.
Hands tied…pepper-sprayed eyes…an ambulance arrives.
The Republican's new health care plan!!
I hope they handed that filthy hippie the bill for the ambulance ride. If he didn't want to pay, he shouldn't have stuck his hippie eyes in the way of the nice officer's Freedom Spray.
A solid baton blow between the eyes works well as anesthesia, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.
Do it hard enough and you don't need to worry about any of those socialist ambulances, either.
You forgot to mention that they bill you for the peppers.
Why would anyone want to occupy Des Moines anyway?
what are you, from omaha? geez
That is a riddle wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an enigma wrapped in yesterday's newspaper.
Obviously, you've never been to the Annual Carp Festival.
Probably b/c it's the only town with more than 100 people within 500 miles.
To protest the termination of Soul Train service to the skies capital?
Iowa, where the corn grows as high as pepper spray in your eye.
Peppercorn spray?
LOL! That made me laugh and I'm in a bad mood. Thanks!
Too bad most of that corn is as edible as pepper spray.
Sung to the tune of 'Oklahoma!'
I don't know how much of this freedumbz I can take.
Tell the soldiers to come on home and stop defending mine.
The police must be working undercover for the demonstrators, because they seem intent on creating martyrs for the cause. Thanks, officers!
Submitting to the arrest? That's a peppersprayin'. Submitting to the peppersprayin'? That's another peppersprayin'. Thanking the officers for the peppersprayin'? Oh, you better believe that's a peppersprayin'.
That's exactly what paid actors from MoveOn.org did on the Brooklyn Bridge.. all faked. To get sympathy…
I still don't get Hee-Haw.
In future posts, please refer to zip ties as freedom ties.
[/head explodes]
[Barb: don't read]
Yummmm … freedom ties with liberty ketchup.
Agreed. That was a masterstroke, Bonzo, good sir (or madam).
This is why Teabaggers always bring bigger guns than the cops have!
Tea partiers don't need to protect themselves from police. They don't block parks where they are told to leave and they don't crap on police cars and American flags, and they don't get naked, have sex in front of children in the park, do drugs, or break windows of other 99%ers or hurl racist epithets at people.
I guess now we know cops are always dressed in shades of brown.
I thought the hippies only came to Iowa for RAGBRAI.
Some of us live here year round.
"Is this Syria?"
"No, it's Iowa."
*cue music swell*
*Cue Lee Greenwood*
"People will get pepper sprayed, Ray. People will most definitely get sprayed."
King's stoopid Twit in 3, 2, …
It's important for America's small town cops to prove that they can commit just as much police brutality as the big city cops.
You probably mean those "small insignificant towns." Who cares what they are called?
Yeah! Who's the president of Io-io-io-waaaahhhh, anyway?
Nightstick envy isn't pretty.
Do you think they took the bullet out of their shirt pocket too?
No revolution worth its salt ever started without gross abuses of power. Get used to it.
And pepper spray goes with salt, so . . .
Just imagine if politicians were not for sale and Iowa was not an early primary state. Goodbye corn subsidies which in turn means good bye to the ridiculous profits of the "family" corporate farms in Iowa. Why do the cops care? How do you think they pay for those fancy uniforms? I don't have the facts to back this up, but the cops ultimately serve corporate interests.
They didn't have pepper spray back in my day, so I just got spit on. Grosser, but not as long-lasting. Rock on, Des Moines!
today, we are all des moinesers.
This is good news for Eric Cantor.
Can't see most of the video.
Honey, where are my night vision goggles?
It's time someone started a branch of the Forza Gnocca to represent these folks!
11 pm?? Wow.
By then, Teabaggers would be asleep in front of a Murder She Wrote marathon.
No no, "Matlock" is on at 11:00. "MSW" starts at 8:30. These kids today…you can't tell the NFL players from the girls, and their "music"–it's just noise.
No one deserved this (except for the guy in the psychedelic hippie shirt).
They should've consulted Michele Bachmann — she's seen all of his movies and would recognize him in a heartbeat.
Oh, this would've been far more appropriate where I thought I had placed it, under Chillwaver's John Wayne Gacy comment. Let this be a lesson to you kids: don't get on the internet sober.
It's a corn pepper spray. That Monsanto can make anything these days.
Plus, it's genetically engineered so the protesters won't get weevils.
Actually, it's too cold for weevils. Broadleaf weeds are a bigger concern. That's why they used Roundup Ready Corn Pepper Spray.
Please, when speaking of Jesus' Miracle Crop, don't forget to use ™ and ®, or you will run afoul of Mon-de-mort
Hmm, pepper spray or baton upside the head…which is the lesser of two weevils?
Better living through chemistry.
You know what I wanna do? I want to make a music video combining scenes like this (EDIT: Or rather, the actual pepper-spraying in NYC, police charges in London, Toronto….that sort of thing) with Randy Newman's Jolly Coppers on Parade (only I'd use the original track from Little Criminals). I have no video editing skillz, though, so if someone wants to go wild with this, please go wild.
Needz moar Yakety Sax.
We, the cops, are here to arrest you from these government steps, because – government.
We, the cops, vote Republican against our own best interests and the government, because – freedom.
What the fuck is happening in this country?
I got no snark.
Same thing that's always happened — the thin blue line has been working for the man to keep us safe from such scourges as unions, workmans' comp, women's suffrage, alcohol, jazz, blacks voting, blacks having jobs, anti-imperialism, long hair and all manner of other threats since this country began. Remember, The Law Is for Protection of the People.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
–Anatole France
Thanks for the pep talk.
That's only by way of saying that the fight for equality is an ongoing dialectic, not a race that's one once and is over. The galloping greed of those with monetary and temporal power ensures us that we will have to fight for our rights in new ways every generation. Fortunately our side has unending determination and a sense of justice, while they have to get by on lawyers and brutality. I'll bet on us every time.
BART Police tactics work, y'all! This guy's lucky it wasn't a bullet.
In Iowa, pepper sprays you. (fuckers).
Wasn't Pol Pot from Des Moines?
No, but Tony Baloney was there.
No, that was Corn Pot. The tall and wide cousin.
And there's also Pol Dance, the slutty one.
Well you just can't negotiate with fellow citizens who want equal opportunity — people like that only understand One Thing, and that's brutal, unreasonable force.
Don't these people have JOBS!? <— my favorite line so far directed at the OWS protestors
" …a Facebook wall post on the Occupy Iowa page adds …."
You know if i read something like that on a Right Wing web site, I would send it in to Wonkette on the theory that anyone who will report something based on a Facebook wall post has lost touch with reality.
Most of the fourteen year old girls are in school today. The police should go round them up. Nip this whole occupy thing in the bud.
They are out of school today celebrating "Took a Wrong Turn" Day.
This just proves it. How do they manage to be always one step ahead? And on this most suspiciously European holiday too.
In Soviet Russia, you watch television. In America, television watch you!
America: vat a cunt!
"The police are not here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder."
–Mayor Richard M. Daley
To be fair, the police in Des Moines don't have anything better to do, so they gotta make the most of things. I'll bet the protesters were happy to get their fair share of abuse.
Right after they went down to the Chelsea Drugstore, to get their prescription filled.
You can't always get the hope and change you wanted…
But recently you can hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy.
Smell that? You smell that?
Pepper spray, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.
I love the smell of pepper spray in the morning.
Someday this country's gonna end.
There's always work for a goon. Now hit somebody!
There were occupiers to the left of him, blacks to the right…
Just load up the crop dusters with pepper spray. It's quicker that way.
Don't give them any ideas. Downfister might still be here.
This type of repressive activity is to be expected in End-of-Weimar America.
:-(
The Movement in Iowa. If you build it, they will pepper spray.
Now I understand why my dead father walked out of the cornfield to whack me over the head with a truncheon.
Well now Fox News has a conundrum. Of course, someone got pepper sprayed, which automatically means he was resisting arrest and assaulting the officers – and as much as the talking Faux News heads want to automatically make that guy black, it would mean admitting there are black people at these rallies. What to do, what to do.
That would also require people to believe there are black people in Iowa.
And if they know his name, they'll put a D beside it.
These are the same asshats who let to John Wayne Gacy go free on parole.
Hey, they love his old western movies.
Or perhaps they identified themselves with Pogo the Clown.
well, of course, he was killing gays (and the young people who weren't would have probably voted for Obama had they lived, right?).
Cheney would call it a "preemptive strike" and pin a medal on him.
Well, to be fair, he was in the Chamber of Commerce, small business owner with family values. Oh yeah, and the clown thing.
Amidst all this tragedy and buffoonery, you have made me laugh out loud.
Good for you, son. Here, have a
fingerthumbs up.Thanks, Bean. It's extremely challenging to keep up with the top-flight snark from our fellow Wonkeratti…
When someone gives you pepper spray, make tacos.
These damn Des Moines and Ames bankers run amok.
Welcome to life in red state 'Merika. No wonder the conservatives in these states love their guns…they know they'll need 'em.
At one point the crowd repeated, “Police need a raise.”
OWS: Give cops a raise. Public needs come first.
Tea Party: Cut government spending. Corporate greed comes first.
I really hope some of those cops go home and think long and hard about that…
The police are not for directing traffic and the army is not for marching in parades. They exist to protect property.
I'm paraphrasing from the game Class Struggle. For more info: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/…
You know who else tried to use a board game to educate people about class struggle?
Milton Bradley?
Winning Moves USA?
RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
–Ambrose Bierce
Not in the habit of dissing law enforcement (my son is an officer), but Jesus H. Christ.
There was no need to spray a person in cuffs.
Fucking pigs.
A lot of oldz in that crowd – guess I've been shown up…
……“someone with his hands tied behind his back was pepper sprayed in the eyes and an ambulance came for him,”….
Safe to say he was chickenhawkeyed.
My guess is the handcuffed sprayee probably made some tart observation having to do with the propensity of men attracted to the police force to derive their power from phallic substitutes. Keep that in mind in the future, you waggish Wonketteers, with your pee-pee poo-poo jokes all the time.
Now that is just bad advice. Cops love to joke around with homo jokes, if you want them to rough you up, crack wise about their moms, then they'll whip out their bully club. Or, just be negro or some other pigment other than paste and say something, anything.
Bring it on, assholes. Every time you strike us down (with pepper spray, against innocent people), it only makes us stronger.
Your move, Scott Walker.
I wonder if Mrs. Gov. Tonette carries pepper spray in her designer handbag.
Her coco chanel is a mole.
Oh, yeah, it probably IS a camera bag.
Hero cops are heroes.
Take it easy on that cop. He probably had the Hawkeyes + 4 on Saturday. Fucking Joe Paterno.
Still not as bad as the twisting of genitals in US-funded Afghan interrogation techniques.
Relax, folks. There are asshole cops just like there are asshole preachers or teachers. Every profession has its share. It is possible that police work has a slightly higher percentage than most, due to the draw that the possession of perceived power has on some small men who also have small peckers. For the most part, cops are a decent lot. The assholes will mace the defenseless and make news, but they will not be supported by the rank and file so long as the demonstrators are PEACEFUL. Also keep in mind that this is the information age, and most of these cops have wives, brothers, sisters, cousins who are at home…watching; many of these folk are also teachers, firemen and union members… 99% of them are in the 99%.
Most Afghan interrogators are nice too but this provides little if any solace to the prisoner whose genitals are being twisted.
I submit to you that Genital Twisting is the sole responsibility of the “Assholes” I speak of. A good interrogator never touches his subject.
Genital Twist was the follow-up song to Peppermint Twist. Didn't do very well if I recall correctly.
The beat was good but the lyrics were weak.
There was a certain sociology-psychology experiment some years ago which would seem to refute your observation. Something about almost every subject applying the maximum shock, when told to by an authority and believing it was necessary.
I support the IT infrastructure for some small town "peace officers". They all are assholes, hate progressives and are just itching to beat the shit out of someone. They don't really want to shoot anyone as that leads to an enormous amount of paperwork and scrutiny.
Those were test subjects picked at random for a study. My remark was limited to professional and skillful interrogators. OpEdNews published at article of mine about interrogation and torture a few years ago. It is prolly still available if you do an author search: Thomas Unger.
Tommy, I know your heart is in the right place, so allow me a gentle reminder: we are well past the time of defending the indefensible.
Not defending, just explaining. I owe cops/law enforcement nothing. I did not volunteer either for the local job or the Feds. I was recruited and had no other solid prospects. The first fresh out of the Army the second fresh out of the Corps.
No snark:
A psychiatrist friend of mine who worked with cops told me that there was a VERY thin line between some of them, and the guys they arrested.
As someone with lots of law enforcement in the family, I'm sure this is very hard on the good ones.
It's tragic that the wrong kind of people are drawn to this job.
Your friend is 100% correct. Often the line only separates the “Caught” from the “Uncaught”.
Damn I’m old, police acting brutally towards protesters replete with dogs and mace. It’s making me all misty I might have to start calling the wife Moonbeam again.
Tea Party Patriots(tm) would never do that at a rally . Shoneys and Golden Corral close at 9pm.
Went to Seattle's Occupy Westlake on Saturday. Pretty disappointing. Scheduled speakers discoursed on American Indian rights and union rights, both of which I support, but "the 99% need to support the 8% of us that are union members" isn't really a great rallying cry for the masses. The hard hat union members that showed up didn't look all that interested in the Indian rights speakers and all the speakers I heard were lame – inarticulate repetition of catch phrases that shudderingly reminded me of Sarah Palin.
Beyond that, several groups of Socialists had news stands set up, signature gatherers for marijuana initiatives, and the LaRouchies. When the LaRouchies have the most salient thesis (reinstate Glass Steagal) you're in trouble. It did seem there were a good number of unaffiliated citizens, like me, seeking some direction, but none seemed to emerge. It seems various organized leftists (plus the LaRouche morons) had their canned self-promotion messages, which preemted construction of a pragmatic, consensus message or action plan.
I was there noonish. Maybe someone else who came later can file a more encouraging report?
Sounds like the lefty version of the Values Voter Summit. In case, thanks for representin'.
OT
On Cocktober 31st are Wonketteers planning to give away Jeebusweenies or the boring traditional Halloweenie stuff like chocolate covered mouse droppings and apples with pins in them?
NEVER FORGET DES MOINES!
Where is that again?
Actually, I prefer Iowa City, aka The Paris of the Midwest®.
Pretty quiet(it seemed to me) around 5:40 last night at McPherson Square. I was actually there for another reason(feeding the actual street people). There were reporters from News Channel 8- a minor local station- doing some filming and interviewing.
There were more homeless people than Occupy DC people but of course, there is also Freedom Plaza.
Where are the children of the corn when you need them?
With the Santorum campaign.
You win … a jar of Santorum jelly. You know you want it.
I can personally attest that having your air turned off is as horrible a feeling as it gets, which is why turning off ones air is classified as torture. Having your air turned off with ones hands tied behind ones back puts you into pure fucking panic mode.
A short but heartfelt comment from smashedinhat for those pigfuckers who think it is funny to be maced/pepper sprayed full on in important facial orifice things.
Many seek to understand how to stand against tyranny without contributing to negative energy. This may help: http://supremeboundlessway.com/2011/10/01/occupy-…
OT, Now my response to the DNC and professional politicians unsolicited phone calls requesting a donation is: "I gave all I have to give to the OWS Committee. "
Well, hey, goons need jerbs too.
This incident is HUGE in Des Moines, just not quite as huge as other, more pressing issues are at the moment. For example, here we can see a city in turmoil:
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This is from the front page of the Des Moines Register. Two minutes ago.
That's my home town. Really.
You make me proud, Occupy Des Moines people.
Put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue. That is the way it is done sheeple.
Somebody needs to explain to the cops that having protesters removed individually in ambulances costs the city WAY MORE than having them removed en masse in a paddy wagon.
Pepper spray isn't good enough… bring out the tasers for these weirdos… these are not Americans but wannabe european communists.
Wow, you sure busted those godless Commie grandmothers & 14-year-old girls REAL GOOD.
Reforming capitalism in order to root out judicial/political con-games, rampant cronyism & fraud is right there in Das Kapital somewhere or other, alrighty! I'm pretty sure it's right after the part where Marx says, "we have to save capitalism in order to destroy it."
I must've missed the new law that predicates one's American citizenship on what one believes – & I'm sure that such a nakedly fascist sentiment would please America's founders greatly. Yes indeed, what could be more UN-American than protesting the very real & very dire ongoing human misery of tens of millions of victims of economic injustice? Boasting about your freedoms = patriotism, but actually doing something with them = communism!
Only ignorant commie scum would express discontent with a Free Market system that involves epic levels of mandatory CORPORATE socialism on their dime, along with a guaranteed additional handout & Get-Off-Scot-Free Card every time they water down the laws enough to go Full Dillinger … plainly this proves that they hate America & love teh terrorists! All GOOD Americans support & thank those who rob them for the glorious privilege of watching their job cross the ocean while their 401(k) evaporates … as long as they wear suits & ties, or use something less plebian & vulgar than a gun.
Civics 101: someone fails it.
This movement is everywhere, now, and it's made up of just about any demographic you can think of. This is happening in Des Moines, of all places. This thing isn't just going to go away, anymore. The most success the powers that be may have in the end is running this thing underground, and even that seems unlikely, now.
Billy Joe look! One dem Messikins…get'em!
They are insular, only mingle with other cops, and hate ALL "civilians." They are enmormously self-pitying, paranoid, and there is no small amount of "roid rage" among them. Its bullshit that only a minority are bad.
Well, my sorry story isn't much better than yours, so, fair enough.
Let's go rag on the new recruits.
I think they get enough, don't you? ;)
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