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Stephen Lam / Reuters, file
Members of the Oakland Police department form a line during a confrontation with Occupy Oakland demonstrators on January 28, 2012.
Oakland police used "an overwhelming military-type response" to disperse Occupy Oakland demonstrators and fired at a former Marine and Iraq war veteran who was critically injured in the clashes in October, according to a report issued on Monday.
The federal court monitor tracking reforms in the Oakland Police Department came one day before anti-Wall Street protesters plan nationwide rallies on May 1, with Occupy Oakland demonstrators vowing to take over San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge.
Oakland's police practices came under intense scrutiny last year when former Marine Scott Olsen was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister.
Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, injured at an Occupy Oakland protest, gave his first live television interview following the incident to MSNBC's The Ed Show
The report concludes, for the first time from an official source, that police did fire at and hit Olsen that evening. An Oakland Police Department SWAT team member fired a beanbag round at Olsen, striking him in the head, according to the report.
"We have viewed many official and unofficial video clips of the Occupy Oakland-related incidents," the report said. "These recordings lead us to ask additional questions as the level of force that was used by OPD officers, and whether that use of force was in compliance with the Department's use of force policies."
Exclusive "Occupy" interview: Scott Olsen on MSNBC's The Ed Show
The beanbag rounds fired that night leave a green residue, which was found on the hat Olsen was wearing that night, later retrieved by police, according to the report.
The monitor, Robert Warshaw, said the court-ordered reforms, many of them related to how the department polices its officers, have gone backward during the past year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
'Thoroughly dismayed'
Olsen's case reinvigorated the Occupy movement against economic inequality, and the confrontations with police in subsequent protests turned Oakland into a focal point for the movement as demonstrators rallied against what they described as police brutality.
Jay Finneburgh / AP, file
Scott Olsen lays on the ground bleeding from a head wound after being struck by a projectile on October 25, 2011.
The Oakland Police Department has been subject to court-ordered external monitoring and review since the 2003 settlement of what was known as the Riders case, in which four officers were accused of planting evidence, fabricating police reports and using unlawful force, according to the Oakland police.
Injured vet spent days at work, nights at protest
Monday's report was the latest in a series designed to monitor and enforce compliance with the court-ordered reforms, known as the Negotiated Settlement Agreement.
"We were, in some instances, satisfied with the performance of the Department; yet in others, we were thoroughly dismayed by what we observed," monitor Warshaw wrote.
The police department announced last week that it was making significant changes to how it trains officers to control large crowds following criticism over its practices during Occupy Oakland protests that sometimes turned violent. It received more than 1,000 misconduct complaints during those protests.
"OPD has turned the corner," Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said in a statement upon the report's release. "My vision is to make Oakland one of the safer major cities in California."
The police department's critics of the department said the report brought the force closer to a federal takeover, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Stagnation is troubling. After nine years, more progress should be made," John Burris, one of two attorneys who brought a civil suit a decade ago that led to court oversight, told the newspaper. "We must seriously explore the next step."
Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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you're right. protesting doesnt accomplish anything. except civil rights, desegregated schools, women's rights, minimum wage laws, ending Vietnam, gay rights, and on and on and on.
but you're right to slander the occupiers for the the titillating fox news coverage of a few of the hundreds of thousands in the country. yes, i want to be on your side in the history books:
with those that, like all of us, got screwed by fraud commited by Wall street investors, but instead of having the balls to stand up and say NO MORE! i want to be like you-sit on my ass and write trite comments bashing the protestors-totally ignorant of who that entails-and defending a corrupt system rigges against you.
that's heroic of you. those whiny occupiers! why dont they just get a job. oh wait-the economy was flushed down the toilet because greedy investment bankers defrauded their own clients, and the country.
I think I'll stand with the likes of Dr Martin Luther King Jr instead of you, Richard, and the other pansies who slander protesting which this country was founded on and by.
ed... Well done.
I hope you wrote the same letter to Nancy Pelosi, many other Democrat representatives and "Journalists" who tried to disparage the Tea Party protests...
All of the above were focused, had a clear goal, wanted clear action taken and proposed clearly defined objectives for laws regarding them to be passed. They wanted to pass specific laws for the right to vote, right to go to school, right to get married and share benefits with a loved one, etc... Everyone in their entire respective movements knew precisely what they were about, and they were unified in their cause.
These OWS idiots can't even agree on their "cause," let alone what to do about it. Some were screaming "no more foreclosures!", others were screaming "I shouldn't have to pay back my student loans!", while their website even had bullet points about animal cruelty.
OWS had lots and lots and lots of complaints how EVERYTHING was unfair, but proposed nothing to get any of it addressed. Comparing OWS to civil rights, gay rights, womens' suffrage, etc., is pretty disingenuous and hyperbolic.
Bath, shave, gargle and go look for work instead of hand outs...oh and blame Obama and the DEMS, they have run the country for the last 3 years. Maybe if you cleaned your room your mommy will pack you a sack lunch, you'll need the energy actually looking for a job.
A better way to handle OWS protesters is to hand out job applications to them. They would probably turn tail and run in terror.
Lol, nothing responsibility to scare them away. Better yet tell them they have to clean up the mess they make. That will put an end to protests.
If the OWO(?) people had been in class instead of conducting a social experiment this wouldn't have happened. You are never going to fix fiscal inequality in a Capitalistic financial system. I, personally, don't want to go to a Socialist system, especially since there are more than enough LEACHES in our current Capitalistic system. Get rid of the current "Money for nothing" programs that we can't afford to fund and put people back to work. If social costs have to come down to meet the needs than i guess an order to reverse inflation needs to be made. Reset all costs to the 1950's prices and people can go back to work for $5/hr and still live comfortably and businesses can still inflate prices for overseas sales. That way everything becomes affordable again, companies can afford to hire people again and now the cheap labor is domestic instead of foreign so jobs and manufacturing plants get moved back. It's an easy fix, you just have to think outside the box.......way outside. Until then, these tards need to keep looking for jobs and quit squatting in parks. The guy that got hit with a canister? He deserved it.
All the occumass left in Oakland was their stains...
@moshuluu,
Boy, isn't everyone lucky to have a wizard like you amongst us............
This is supposed to be the USA. Syria is supposed to be across the world. You arent supposed to get shot for gathering and protesting here, even if you are making a mess and some people dont agree with you.
So has OWS come up with an objective yet?
May 1 - MAY DAY.
An important day for the Occupy Wall Street folks.
The start of the " american spring " .
99 % ers be advised.
1 % ers beware.
May Day has great historical meaning for communists around the world.....
OWS groups are warned to stop including the rest of the 98.9999% in their figures. We do not support slackers. It is false advertising to those you want support from. To the 1%, keep ignoring these 0.0001%ers unless they block traffic or sidewalks, the rest of us do.
Occu-Marxist-tard-scumbags deserve an "Overwhelming military-type response".
Hopefully they'll get pepper sprayed with a fire hose or catch some rubber bullets in their empty noggins.
For the record-for all those morons who are trying to label the occupiers as entitles, lazy, and druggies, I am proud to say I walked with the occupiers, and am proud to stand with them, as did tens of thousands of people and continue to do.
And I own my own company, and work hard every day, and I do not do drugs, and none of the Americans I have walked with in protest were any of the things people are trying to label them as. There were by in large, well educated, hard working, intelligent, and as sober as could be-with a clear vision of forcing this country to serve its people instead of a tiny fraction of the country that bribe the government daily to do their bidding for them and rigg the system in their favor.
All of the comments about property damage and disruption of people's daily lives by the movement is completely silly, lets be serious here: the disruption to the entire world economy by the fraud on wall street is beyond quantifying, the idea of whining about a dirty park is laughable.
And to top it off, to not be horrified that fellow citizens are being abused by their own police force-that their taxes pay for, is missing the scray truth: these institutions are in place to protect the 1% only. Everything in this country has been co-opted by the 1%, for their interests, and those interests are only to make money no matter who it hurt or who they steal from.
People belong in jail. Crimes have been committed. But its not the protestors.
But what is their objective?
Do you stand with the organizers of OWS? Have you even bothered to find out who they are and what their objectives are?
Or, do you support violent Marxist (wanna-be) revolutions?
door to door vacuum sales is not really owning your own company but at least you work!
No one can find out what their objective is because they don't have one.
I heard "down with government", "bring Bush to trial", "spread the wealth" and "stronger laptop batteries" at one occupation.
Yep, should have used live ammo and rockets. that way we could have order ,just like they have in Syria,right now. this is just one indication of a much larger problem we have in this country. it isn't banks or big corps. you can bankrupt them in a week by choosing what you do with your money and your labor. stop work and don't spend for 1 week and they would certainly sit up and take notice. the problem is an unresponsive and arrogant, corrupt governing class. when was the last time you were treated with respect and courtesy by any gov't employee? State or Federal or even local? The police are absurd in even the most trival interactions with the public ,how much more so in a situation where they have been "let off the leash ",so to speak. The solution may be a constitutional convention, attended by duly elected delegates, to determine what form of governance we need in this millenium. The current socialist/facist form is schizoid and unusable
We already have a form of governance.
Don't like it? Elected like minded people to office or leave the country.
But you do not get to mandate your preferences over the rest of America.
The majority don't like the current government and are going to vote that POS right out of the WH...along with his illegal birth certificate.
He took his case to The Ed Show ? His head injury must have been more serious than previously thought.
The 8 viewers were mortified....
Holding protest events or rallies on May Day doesn't exactly differentiate the Occupy folks from the Communist Party. It's obvious that the Occupy movement was quickly co-opted by experienced far left wing operatives, but surely even they could have seen the date connection. Maybe they did and it's intentional, but I have to wonder why they would virtually advertise it.
I can't imagine that it would increase their support.
Gab a bucket and mop....we alsways need janitors, hard.... honest work and believe it or not kiddies people start at the bottom and WORK up...
monitering monitering collapsing collapsing
This is how msm is when they are not allowed to play.
Kill all those POS occupiers. They're all less than ZERO.
*********** Someone wrote: "So we the people of the United States should have just allowed the British to run over the colonies? Or was protesting the right thing to do?"
That's the best damn comment I've read in a long time. People in this country are tired of being sh!t on by bankers, big business and our government. Corruption and greed is now the standard in Washington D.C. and has trickled down to local government. It's a pity what this country of ours has come to: motivated by greed, racism, self righteousness, arrogance and corruption. We are no different than any other corrupt country in the world. Say goodbye to democracy.........it was good while it lasted.
"It's a pity what this country of ours has come to: motivated by greed, racism, self righteousness, arrogance and corruption."
You have just summed up the entire OWS crowd in one sentence.
You have just summed up the Federal Government and our banking system in one sentenc.e
Its known as "collateral damage" in the military and as an ex marine, he and his fellow protesters should be aware of it.
I agree that protest and war can be a fine line.....but not that fine.
Even though the main subject of this story is the Oakland PD, I see more comments directed at the protestors. Some folks always have to look for something to point their finger at.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." ~Voltaire
Hmmmm.......could it be because of the fact that the police wouldn't be out in force if a bunch of clueless violent deadbeats weren't out in force demanding us to give them money to shut them up???
Where you and I differ is our perception. What you see as clueless, violent deadbeats, I see as people not wanting our country to continue on it's current path in the toilet because of greed and undeserving entitlements. And don't blame Obama, because the country started its downslide way before him.
Perception can be a tricky thing.
Not clueless???? So what is their objective, if they aren't clueless?
All police departments use the military tactics to instill fear in the people. This is the major reason why there is no trust between law enforcement and civilians. Yes they put thier lives on the line but so do the rest of us just in simple dealings with them. The paramilitary outfits and the guns drawn are all to familiar and that is the norm with the majority of forces in the U.S. They want you to fear them. What is the first question? Where are you coming from? The last time I looked I lived in America and it is a free union so I can go where I want,when I want. If you dont answer that question you are face down on the ground with a Glock at your head. Chill it out skin heads we pay your salary!!! Learn how to deal with people and you may gain some respect from us. If they can't come up with a law they will invent it. They need to come down off thier high horse. Even the smallest towns have a force now and statistics do not bear out the money we spend on these forces. Quinn Bill? Benefits? Overtime for details at 35 to 50 dollars per hour for something a flag person can do? Get real jug heads you are no beter than the rest of us except the goverment keeps bailing the bugets out to keep us in fear!!!! If they did not you would be next to us in the unemployment line.
The problem with our economic system is that it's not capitalist anymore but a debtorist kleptocracy.
Thanks for doing what the rest of the 99% was scared to do!!!
He didn't get a job....that's what the rest of us 99% do.
The Police should just stay home and let them destroy the city. No one will miss Oakland.