We had some good numbers out in the  streets from May Day morning to May Day night–and saw broad daylight police Tasering of protestors, to the forewarned “surgical arrests”, to the Alameda County sheriff’s department lined up with their assault rifles, to the sickeningly brutal front line police charges on Broadway that rushed and tackled protestors and nabbed at least one of us while filming and hauled us off to jail. We had new copwatchers in the streets that showed solid bravery, endurance, and camera savvy, as well as veteran copwatchers refusing to be bullied by the numerous agencies (Union City Police? What were you doing rushing down the Oakland sidewalks in full riot gear?)

We could have used more numbers with cameras–as actions in San Francisco were left unwitnessed by our team, and at least one team was broken up with members left isolated following the 9:30pm arrests on Broadway.  But overall, we ran a strong, responsible, and fluid monitoring patrol that covered lots of ground throughout the day, supported by an excellent dispatcher. Great job copwatchers and solidarity to Occupy and all May Day protestors!

Come by our weekly meeting tomorrow at 7pm at the Grassroots House and compare notes on positions and what we saw, and plan for the next actions and sign up for neighborhood shifts. See you there.

And, from Dave Id, check out his piece on crowd control violations this May Day, including footage of OPD’s motorcycle “BUMPing” ….Judge Thelton Henderson, we’re counting on you to be watching:

www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/05/04/18712886.php

Also, if you haven’t seen the massive Alameda County sheriff’s armored vehicle “Grizzly”, see Anonymous’ photo at:  http://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews/status/197459134013120512 )

Excellent video and commentary posted by Copwatcher on IndyBay. Have any of the targets for surgical arrests already been identified? From the Oscar Grant protest cordons, to the Moving Day chemical deployments, does this rush-and-snatch policy indicate a more individualizing approach to crowd control from OPD Chief Howard Jordan?

UC Berkeley Police will hold a meeting tomorrow at 6:45pm at 60 Barrows Hall as part of the investigation into the Occupy Cal protests. For more information:

www.dailycal.org/2012/03/04/police-review-board-to-hold-meeting-monday-as-part-of-nov-9-investigation/

Occupy Eureka asks all people of conscience to write a letter or send an email to the Eureka Police Department, urging the immediate return of property confiscated from Occupy Eureka.  Many community members have been without their belongings, including warm clothes, blankets, stoves, tents, and backpacks.  Banners and signs from many movements, taken from Occupy Eureka, are in Eureka Police Department’s storage.  If you loaned or donated property to Occupy Eureka, please join other Occupy Eureka participants in retrieving property, much of which was confiscated almost four months ago, and is still being withheld.

Occupy Eureka is requiring the Eureka Police Department to return all property on or by March 7, 2012.  Below is the letter delivered and sent today.  Feel free to use what was written below to craft your letter.  You could even copy and sign onto it, and tell the EPD that you do!  Please show your support.

Thank You,
Occupy Eureka

08 Feb 2012:  The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck. “We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have to be ready.” What began as a grass roots idea following the 9/11 terrorist attacks is now a state-of-the-art real-time analysis critical response center. It’s called RACR, and it’s located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/02/08/lapd-pioneers-high-tech-crime-fighting-war-room/

More on Cognitech from the SF Chronicle:

February 6, 2012

A Pasadena forensic video enhancement software company has donated its technology to Oakland police to help in capturing the goings-on at Occupy Oakland demonstrations, the company announced in a statement.

At the request of Oakland law enforcement, Cognitech, Inc. officials said they bequeathed the Oakland Police Department the company’s Tri-Suite 11 software system. The software will help enhance and “deblur” the hours of footage police have of demonstrations, double video storage and capture accurate biometric measurements from video to provide police with any possible wrong-doer’s height and weight.

“It is our sincere hope that in donating our forensic video Tri-Suite software to the Oakland Police Department, we are helping to assist the entire community,” CEO Lenny Rudin said in a statement. “Pictures tell the truth and when enhancing these videos and photos forensically, unlawful acts will be seen and analyzed clearly and scientifically, no matter who committed them.”

Occupy Oakland protester Shon Kay, 30, said he thinks such technology won’t deter the movement at all — many protesters assumed that police were employing some form of  forensic software already.

However, Kay said he thinks that knowing the police have such technology will just spread more fear and distrust.

“This kind of thing aids their attempt to portray the movement as criminal, by being able to single out the actions of certain individuals and use that as a way to frame everyone that was there,” he said.

“I wish that some private video analytics firm would give us that equipment so that we could analyze what the OPD is doing,” Kay continued. “I think we’d find a lot of criminal activity there.”

blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2012/02/06/oakland-police-get-free-forensic-software-to-analyze-occupy-videos/

FUCK THE POLICE

Posted on 30 January 2012 by Cami Graves

hellaoccupyoakland.org/opd-then-and-now-seriously-fuck-the-pigs/

OPD’s unwarranted reaction to #J28

The streets of Oakland became a war zone Saturday as, once again, the police showed excessive force in their response to Occupy Oakland demonstrations. Over 400 protesters were arrested, and many more, including the elderly, children, and some unwitting passersby, were teargassed and injured during the course of the first day of Occupy Oakland’s Move-In Weekend and Rise Up Festival.

The day began with a march from Oscar Grant Plaza to the location chosen to become Occupy Oakland’s new community center and home, the Kaiser Convention Center, a 215,000 square foot multifunction building that has been empty for nearly six years. The Kaiser Convention Center is publicly-owned, meaning that it should not be unreasonable for its use to be determined by members of the public. Occupy Oakland intended to repurpose the abandoned building for the good of the local community, serving as a place for general assemblies, housing, offices, events, meetings, classes, workshops, and the like.

Things did not go as planned as the police surrounded the building, preventing protesters from coming near. As the march continued, police began using teargas to make the crowd disperse, rushing into the crowd with batons and making numerous arrests. This was only the first in a series of conflicts that lasted until midnight.

Click here for a more detailed account of the day, during which the police repeatedly violated the very laws they are supposed to uphold.

What we learned from the events of Saturday is more of what we already knew–that the resources and institutions that are meant to work for the people are truly inaccessible, even becoming entities to be used against the people. A supposedly publicly-owned space can really be shut down indefinitely and made unavailable to the public pending a 1% government’s unfulfilled desire to sell it to a private interest during a brief real estate boom six years ago. The mayor and city council of the city of Oakland can really lie, cheat, and steal from us without accountability, and even give orders to brutalize us. And the police are not hired to protect and serve the citizenry but to distract us, beat us, and stifle our discontent.

Following this, somehow yet again, unprecedented show of force by the Oakland Police Department,Occupy locations across the country organized events and marches to stand in solidarity, showing that with every show of force, Occupy will only become stronger–because with every show of force, the authorities only expose themselves further. They, like the emperor who has no clothes, are bent on keeping power and exerting control by squashing the truth.

The weekend’s events came on the heels of another action and hotbed topic, the weekly Anti-Repression/ Fuck the Police March organized by the Occupy Oakland Tactical Action Committee. Some don’t agree with the ideology, others don’t agree with the semantics, and yet others don’t agree with some of the strategies advocated by marchers. Let’s take a look at the larger issues.

The Tactical Action Committee has made it clear that the Anti-Repression/ Fuck the Police march is a direct response to OPD abuses of Occupy Oakland–continued harassment, snatch-and-grabs, and use of excessive force, to name a few–but the Oakland Police Department has a long history of misconduct, not to mention that it is not exempt from the many ethical problems haunting the practice of American law enforcement nationwide.

Read the city’s latest press release regarding Saturday’s turmoil.

Mayor Quan and OPD’s response to the past weekend’s events should be an eye-opener for those who don’t understand what the phrase “FUCK THE POLICE” really means in the city of Oakland. It is not a trendy slogan thrown around for shock-value. It indicates a much deeper problem, one that is endemic to Oakland and has its roots at the core of American authoritarianism and exceptionalism.

Consider the Oakland Police Department’s numerous violations against the people of Oakland, spanning back long before Occupy Oakland ever pitched a tent in Oscar Grant Plaza. These violations are what caused OPD to come under scrutiny by the Department of Justice–who have placed constant watchdog Robert Warshaw as overseer of every decision made by the department–and what now potentially put OPD only weeks away from a federal receivership: a complete takeover by the federal government, which will just be a more thorough way to weed out loose cannons and cover up police gaffes.

The long, dark history of a troubled police department

Back in 2000, rookie Oakland police officer Keith Batt caused a stir when he blew the whistle on three of his fellow officers, Jude Siapno, Matthew Hornung, Francisco “Frank” Vazquez, and Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, under whom Batt was training. Batt accused the four, who were later given the infamous name the Oakland “Riders,” of kidnapping, making false arrests, beating arrestees, falsifying police reports, and forcing Batt to help them cover up their crimes.

At the time, the Riders were the most popular and respected officers on the force, believed to have made a substantial number of drug busts. The reality is that their success was the result of a lot of violence, corruption, and conspiracy.

Three of the officers were charged with multiple felonies. Besides Batt, eight witnesses, all African American men who had been arrested by the four, testified against the Riders. They all claimed to have been beaten and some to having drugs planted on them during their arrests. During the trial,Batt corroborated their stories, describing how one man was pepper-sprayed and beaten before being driven under an overpass, pulled out of the cop cruiser, and beaten further by two of the officers. Batt also described how another man, who had called the cops for assistance, ended up being choked by one of the officers. Finally, Batt described how he was pressured to lie about everything.

Somehow, a (suburban, mostly white with no blacks) jury failed to convict the officers, who maintained their innocence throughout. Were they innocent? Considering the volume of witnesses, one a fellow cop, willing to testify, the ensuing federal investigation of the entire department, and the flight of the “ringleader” of the group, Vazquez, out of the country when the allegations were first made (he is still a fugitive): you tell us.

In the end, all four of the Riders walked free, and two of them asked for their jobs back.

One of the cases made by the defense was that Keith Batt was a “naive rookie with little understanding of the ways of an urban police department fighting a deadly drug war.” In the words of one of the Rider’s defense attorney, Michael Rains, “You don’t send choirboys out to West Oakland to get rid of drug dealers.” No, of course not. You send thugs.

Envision what it would be like if police like Keith Batt refused to play malicious games with peoples’ lives and came forward to report their corrupt peers. What would we find?

Unfortunately, stories of police misconduct and brutality–especially in the troubled communities of Oakland–often receive little to no attention. Or, somehow, we forget them. Numbers of how many of the innocent have been killed by Oakland police may be impossible to know, let alone true numbers of those beaten and unlawfully arrested. This doesn’t mean those stories don’t exist.

But even when we know these stories, how often are complaints sustained, charges filed, and violators indicted and convicted?

With the federal government’s ongoing investigations of OPD, it’s probably safe to assume that Internal Affairs cannot be trusted. We might also want to keep in mind that the 2009 head of OPD Internal Affairs, Capt. Edward I. Poulson, became subject to an FBI probe after information resurfaced that he had badly beaten a man, Jerry Amaro, nine years before. The injuries sustained by Amaro were enough to cause his death a month later. Not only did Poulson lie about the incident, but he ordered his subordinates to lie. When his subterfuge was discovered by Internal Affairs at the time, he was suspended for two months. We might not want to know what OPD Internal Affairs is up to in 2012.

That leaves us with the Oakland Citizens’ Police Review Board. Sadly, the CPRB’s reports don’t provide enough insight into the truth of Oakland police behavior except that most complaints filed with the board against the police come from African American and Hispanic men and most often include excessive use of force and unlawful arrest. (It’s important to note that the CPRB doesn’t have the staff or the resources to properly address Oakland police department problems.) Their recommendations for how to deal with police behavior have obviously gone unheeded, while the Oakland Police Department continues to rampage. We do know a few more stories of OPD’s crimes:

In a high-profile 2007 incident, Oakland Post editor-in-chief Chauncey Bailey was assassinated in downtown Oakland by an employee of Your Black Muslim Bakery, which was operated at the time by Yusuf Bey IV. Bey’s father was at the center of a small Muslim black empowerment movement, as well as a ring of crime. The older Bey rubbed shoulders with local politicians, and his bakery was so popular that a power struggle for its control ensued upon his death. Chauncey Bailey’s attempts to uncover that struggle led to his assassination, which the younger Bey had ordered, and for which he was convicted in 2011.

Following Bailey’s death, allegations arose that homicide detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire, who was close friends with Bey, had mishandled the investigation and had either attempted to or made an agreement to protect Bey. Longmire allowed Bey and Bailey’s murderer, Devaughdre Broussard, to speak together alone and unrecorded, as well as failed to note GPS tracking and phone logs as evidence. Despite his clear conflict of interest and confusing handling of the case, Longmire is still with the Oakland Police Department, possibly because firing him would mean bringing attention to some mistakes of their own.

In another incident in 2007, the city of Oakland was forced to pay $6 million in damages to Torry Smith after a jury found two police guilty of planting a rifle in Smith’s back yard and then arresting him for having it. The city later complained as though Oakland officers were incapable of such a plot, with the defense’s attorney saying, “To reach this decision, the jury had to believe that two highly respected officers, in uniform, in a community where they are well known, in broad daylight, carried a 2 1/2-foot assault rifle from their car and planted it in the backyard of a man they had never even heard of before that day.” Coincidentally, the prosecuting attorney had also represented some of the plaintiffs in a civil suit against the Riders a few years before, which the city settled by awarding the plaintiffs $10.5 million.

A comprehensive and perceptive report by Ali Winston for Colorlines.com details the 2003 “Copley ruling,” a decision made by the California Supreme Court that limited public access to police records and had a profound impact on police transparency. Winston’s report includes discussion of the ruling’s impact on Oakland specifically. He talks especially about the recklessness and misconduct of one notorious officer, Sgt. Patrick Gonzales, whose actions may have caused the deaths of two of his fellow officers in a March 2009 raid, as well as some disturbing statistics on trigger-happy Oakland cops.

Gonzales, who Winston alleges is one of sixteen officers responsible for the 85 police shootings that occurred in Oakland between 2000 and 2010, is behind a multitude of violations. These include not only the raid in 2009, which left Lovelle Mixom and a total of four officers dead, but also the fatal 2002 shooting of Joshua Russell, the 2006 shooting of Amir Rollins that left Rollins a quadriplegic (Rollins says he had already put down his weapon when Gonzales shot him), and the fatal 2007 shooting of Gary King, Jr., an innocent man who was running away from Gonzales after being arbitrarily stopped and assaulted by him, calling for help.

In a little over the past year alone, at least four instances of OPD slayings of innocent people have made a small dent in the press:

In November 2010, police shot and killed Derrick Jones, who was unarmed, as many as eight times. Jones had been in earlier altercations with his girlfriend, but a friend said he didn’t call the cops because he “was afraid something like this would happen.”

In January 2011, Matthew Cicelski, a Gulf War veteran suffering from PTSD and a more recent head injury, was gunned down by police in front of his ex-girlfriend’s home for carrying a toy gun around his neighborhood. The police had been informed that Cicelski needed mental health assistance, that the gun was not real, and that they should not shoot.

Also in January 2011, the Oakland School Police Department, who are close partners with the Oakland Police Department, shot and killed 20-year-old Raheim Brown. Their reason for pulling the trigger was that he was holding a screwdriver and, according to them, trying to stab a cop. Brown was shot five times, twice in the head.

In September 2011, witnesses, one an eleven-year-old boy, reported that cops fatally shot a suspect four times in the back after he had raised his hands in surrender. This story received little to no follow-up.

So remind us again whom the perpetrators are in Oakland…

To be sure, these are only a small portion of OPD’s crimes and are probably nothing compared to what we might discover were we to explore every police department in America. Yet Mayor Jean Quan continues to use this disgraced police department against Occupy Oakland, a police department that needs to be babysat and is under investigation for murder, abuse, conspiracy, and fraud.

Just last Wednesday, Judge Thelton Henderson warned Quan that after ten years of waiting for OPD to shape up, he was appalled by the city’s failure to comply with orders for long-expected reform. This warning came in the wake of overseer Warshaw’s criticism of the city’s handling of Occupy protests.

But Quan claims that Occupy Oakland are the ones antagonizing the city. We are costing the city millions (how many millions has Oakland paid to the victims of its police force, again? How many millions more would it have to pay if we only knew everything they’ve done?). We are diverting important attention away from the neighborhoods who need it, as though Occupy Oakland has really disrupted OPD’s long history of defending and guarding the innocent of this city.

Actually, it seems more like Quan is more concerned with strangling protest than she is with policing, or, heaven forbid, providing effective services and aid, to the parts of Oakland that have already been long neglected.

How OPD is treating protesters is shameful, but in light of how we’ve seen them operate and continually get away with it, we should realize that we can hardly fathom the frightful grip OPD has on the Oakland residents it most often targets.

While we can see that the police force’s behavior toward Occupy Oakland is certainly not the first or most brutal of its many offenses, it is an extension of every other offense: of the failure to protect and serve those in society who are most in need of protection and service; of the commitment to perpetuate a bigoted and marginalizing status quo by suppressing only certain members of society while others are allowed to get away with psychological and economic crimes against the entire population; and, perhaps most of all, of the astonishing refusal to take responsibility for the terrifying trail of death and destruction it has left in its wake.

Quan also wants the public to believe that Occupy Oakland is made up of outsiders, and there are few Oakland natives and people of color in the movement. This is definitively not true, and many of our most impassioned members, those organizing marches and occupations, are native Oaklanders who know all about the Oakland police’s tactics. Occupy Oakland says “FUCK THE POLICE” because OPD has for too long been allowed to brutalize Oakland’s communities, and now they are being used to stamp out our right to protest against the complex systems that allow, even encourage, that brutalization.

If you are out there and you think OPD is looking out for the people, protecting Oakland from us oppressive, complaining Occupiers, you are dead wrong. You are dead, dead wrong. If you think the city’s handling of Occupy Oakland by using this murderous police force means that the city is doing its best for Oakland, you are dead wrong. In fact, if you think that any militaristic force within or outside of the United States is here to look after you, the ordinary citizen: think of Oakland. OPD’s inevitable movement toward receivership is just one instance in which the police’s reign of terror against citizens has been–at least partially–exposed. But this isn’t enough.

Imagine what else your government is hiding from you and trying to make you forget while they pretend to be working for you. We have yet to make people really see the crooked intentions of those who order the police around and cover for them. Remember that if you, the ordinary citizen, don’t police the police, you have no reason to hope that your government will.

hellaoccupyoakland.org/opd-then-and-now-seriously-fuck-the-pigs/

BY LYNDA CARSON – originally posted on Indy Bay

Oakland, CA — Counterinsurgency is defined as a political and military strategy or action to oppose and forcefully suppress insurgency.

Out of the playbook of dirty tricks used by the CIA and FBI to crush rebellions and insurgencies across the globe, a police support group called “Stand for Oakland” entered the arena of Oakland’s political landscape, in an attempt to crush Occupy Oakland, and the political dissent that has been challenging Oakland’s police and ruling elite in recent past months.

On the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 6, Occupy Oakland found itself confronted in front of Oakland City Hall by around 2 to 3 dozen members of the counterinsurgency group called “Stand for Oakland,” that claimed to be a grass roots group that was tired of Occupy Oakland taking up so many police resources, from their communities.

Around noon, conflict between the Occupy Oakland protesters and the police supported counterinsurgency group Stand for Oakland took place in front of City Hall, and in an abusive power play the cops grabbed a sound system that belonged to Occupy Oakland member, 20 year old Brian Glasscock, who said, “It’s a concerted effort by the Oakland police to destroy the occupy movement.”

Sporting a blue duckbilled hat, and pointing a finger at the police supporters arranged along the steps of City Hall, Oakland resident John Reiman, a member of Occupy Oakland, told the counterinsurgents, “You stand for the chamber of corporate crime for corporate Oakland, that’s who you people stand for!”

Occupy Oakland protesters held their ground against the counterinsurgents and in their own message said that they were fighting against police repression, and the brutal tactics of violence being used by the police against Occupy Oakland protesters.

After being briefly confronted by the police supported counterinsurgency group and pushed around by the cops, around 150 Occupy Oakland demonstrators left the plaza in front of City Hall, and marched to the Wiley Manuel Courthouse, for a court case that ended up being postponed.

The Occupy Oakland protesters were not fooled by the charade taking place with the local police support groups that tried to hoodwink the local population with their media stunt, into believing that Stand for Oakland was actually a real grassroots movement against Occupy Oakland.

Indeed, Stand for Oakland is not a grassroots group at all, and has been totally manufactured by police support groups with the full consent, support and cooperation of the Mayor, the Oakland Police Department, Oakland City Council members, wealthy merchants and hill residents, including the full support and blessings of Paul Junge, the Oakland Chamber of Commerce President.

As part of a dirty tricks campaign being orchestrated by the powers that be, Stand for Oakland is a counterinsurgency group that was organized by police support groups including members of Oakland’s Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils (NCPCs), involving key organizers Angela Haller, a Neighborhood Watch leader, and Nancy Sidebotham, a Community Policing Advisory Board member (CPAB), whose term expires on March 24, 2012.

CPAB has 15 members that are all Oakland residents that advise the police on local community policing matters in Oakland, and Nancy Sidebotham was appointed to CPAB by the mayor, and her term began on March 25, 2009.

Along with the lead organizing members of the police support groups such as Angela Haller and Nancy Sidebotham, Councilmember Desley Brooks was present in the crowd against Occupy Oakland, as well as Bruce Stoffmacher from the office of Councilwoman Libby Schaaf, and rich man Greg McConnel who fought against Oakland’s Just Cause eviction protections was there, including wealthy developer Phil Tagami who also joined in on the orchestrated attack against Occupy Oakland, by the police support groups.

To make the fraud taking place seem even more convincing to the public at large, most of the counterinsurgents even wore little green armbands that said “Stand for Oakland” in the effort to make it look like a real grass roots movement in opposition to Occupy Oakland. In addition, they had even gone as far as to recruit a few turncoats from the Occupy Oakland movement, including Jim Forsyth, to make the protest look real on TV news channels.

Additionally, District 4 Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) member Jill Broadhurst was a part of the orchestrated counterinsurgency protest that was generated against Occupy Oakland, and she stated that most of the people who came out against Occupy Oakland on Feb. 6, were from other crime prevention groups in Oakland.

In a recruiting notice for the counterinsurgency demonstration that was posted on “Welcome to Today in Montclair, 94611,” Stand for Oakland claimed that it is a group of residents, merchants, and downtown businesses who have been the silent majority in Oakland. In reality, the rich and powerful residents, NCPCs, merchants and landlord’s of Montclair are anything but the silent majority in Oakland, and they have a very loud voice in the arena of Oakland’s brutal politics, and they carry a very big stick indeed.

The Montclair notice to the wealthy hill residents from Stand for Oakland failed to mention that the protest being organized against Occupy Oakland was actually being orchestrated by police support groups, including the members of the NCPCs, Neighborhood Watch, and Oakland’s Community Policing Advisory Board members.

The main focus of the counterinsurgency notice sent out by the police support groups against Occupy Oakland was to say that they had grown tired of the property destruction and vandalism that have occurred at Occupy Oakland protests, and are concerned about the costs of policing the protests.

Additionally, the same police support groups including the NCPCs and Oakland’s Neighborhood Watch groups have been active in Oakland for years as the eyes and ears of the cops (as snitches), and usually are very active in working with the police to go after poor black people in neighborhoods with public housing projects for petty crimes such as loitering, drug dealing or prostitution, and they have been busy with efforts to shut down public housing projects throughout the city of Oakland.

The demonstration in front of Oakland City Hall on Monday Feb. 6, by “Stand for Oakland” was a sham of epic proportions being orchestrated by the police support groups against Occupy Oakland, and confirms that the powers to be in Oakland have given their full blessings and consent to unleash the brutal police support groups such as the Neighborhood Watch groups, the NCPCs, and the Community Policing Advisory Board members (CPAB), against the democratic protesters of Occupy Oakland, in the all out effort to criminalize, crush and destroy Occupy Oakland for it’s on-going political activities.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule@yahoo.com

Note: Nancy Sidebotham was one of the lead organizers for Stand for Oakland in the orchestrated attack against the Occupy Oakland movement, on Monday Feb. 6, 2012.

Click here for more on Nancy Sidebotham:clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/23061.pdf

from:

hellaoccupyoakland.org/oakland-police-supports-counterinsurgency-group-to-oppose-occupy-oakland/

Occupy Legal, the National Lawyers Guild, the Anti-Repression Committee, Copwatch, and the Bay Area Committee to Stop Political Repression present a day of community education at The Holdout.

Sunday, February 12, 2012
12 Noon – 6 PM
The Holdout: 2313 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, CA

Join us for a series of workshops and skill shares designed to help empower our movement and community to take the law into our own hands. Topics will include: know your rights when dealing with the police, documenting/observing police brutality and misconduct, street law, know your rights for building occupiers, investigation techniques for community based accountability efforts, and defend our communities against police repression and surveillance.

Lawyers and legal workers will be available from 1 – 5 PM (and after workshops and panels) to share legal information. Literature, Know Your Rights info., and other resources on a variety of topics will also be made available.

Food will be provided throughout the day.

************************

Schedule of Workshops and Panels

12-1pm: Know Your Rights When Dealing With the Police
This know your rights workshop covers interacting with the police, searches, warrants, and the court/arraignment process. We use roleplays and real life scenarios to empower activists to assert their rights in protest situations, how to do this effectively but safely, and to demystify the legal process.
Hosted by: Occupy Legal and the Occupy Oakland Anti-Repression Committee

1-2pm: Squatting Rights and Strategy with Steve DiCaprio

2-4pm: Investigation Techniques for Community Based Accountability Efforts
This workshop will be presented by Diana Christensen and will focus on how to structure and conduct credible civilian-initiated investigations of police misconduct. Guidelines for conducting and recording interviews, securing physical evidence, or gathering other information and using it in service of accountability will be presented. Diana Christensen is a former investigator with the Oakland Police Review Board, but also provides trainings on how to conduct trainings at the workplace.
Hosted by: Copwatch Berkeley

4-5pm: Building a Movement that Can Defend Itself
This workshop will look at the political process of building a movement that is able to defend itself against repression. We will discuss how various parts of the state: the FBI, police, courts, grand juries, and the press, collaborate to try to split our movements, isolate us from our best support (each other and our allies), and how they use our own words and weaknesses to terrorize and imprison us. We will look at examples of strong political defense combined with strong legal defense, such as the San Francisco 8 case, the case of the 23 people subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in the Midwest, and the frame-up of Carlos Montes in Los Angeles. We will emphasize that our ability to politically defend ourselves against repression is central to building our movements.
Hosted by: CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), the San Francisco National Lawyers Guild, and The Committee Against Political Repression

5-6pm: Know Your Rights For Building Occupations and Foreclosure/Eviction Defense
This panel and discussion will focus on our rights around political housing actions. Discussion will be centered on building (re)occupations, foreclosures, and eviction defense. Lawyers, legal workers, and activists will present on what rights we do (and do not) have when engaging in these types of actions and the basics of housing law, foreclosure issues, and how these laws can affect the kind of political action we take. The bulk of this workshop will be a guided discussion where housing and occupation activists can share their experiences and knowledge.
Hosted by: TBA

occupyoakland.org/2012/02/occupy-legal-is-holding-an-occupy-know-your-rights-training-on-sunday/