Jason Cherkis
The Huffington Post
November 17, 2011
WASHINGTON — Nearly three weeks ago, the Oakland Police Department made international headlines when it razed Occupy Oakland’s encampment under a hail of rubber bullets and lung-stinging clouds of tear gas. The police deployed the same aggressive response on the subsequent protest march that night.
YouTube videos and Twitter carried images of a wheelchair-bound woman caught up in tear-gas haze and close-ups of point-blank wounds left by rubber bullets and bean-bag pellets. Iraq War vet Scott Olsen became an icon not for his service in Iraq, but for being severely wounded when a police projectile fractured his skull and put him intensive care. He has only recently left the hospital.
It has not been a good time to be an Oakland police officer, or the city’s top official. After initially praising the police for their morning raid on the encampment, Mayor Jean Quan then went into damage-control mode amid the ensuing marches and candlelight vigils for Olsen, visiting the 24-year-old at his Highland Hospital room.
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