Editor’s note: Here is an example of the sort of violent behavior the Pittsburgh police are notorious for using against non-violent demonstrators.
Update: Infowars Reporter Rob Dew Now Released After Being Arrested
Police and military units savagely attacked peaceful protesters in a Pittsburgh park last night, cracking heads with billy clubs, deploying LRAD sound cannons and shooting rubber bullets at close range, according to Infowars’ Jason Bermas. Fellow Infowars reporter Rob Dew was arrested during the melee.
Bermas called Alex Jones last night as the attack unfolded. Around 200 to 300 peaceful protesters had converged at Schenley Park for a demonstration but they were soon under assault from busloads of riot cops and military units who quickly descended on the scene.
According to Bermas, police were aggressively charging protesters and cracking them on the head with billy clubs and also shooting rubber bullets at close range, which in numerous past cases has proven deadly.
Police also deployed LRAD sound cannons once again in an attempt to disperse the protesters. Pittsburgh marks the first time that such weapons have been used against American citizens in public as before they were only used against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bermas described the scene as like something out of a movie as police attempted to block off the whole park and catch every single protester and were prepared to use violence to do so, saying that they would run up to people and crack them on the head as hard as possible.
“Everyone was just sort of standing around spectating. No one was really having an adamant protest. It was just a bunch of college kids,” witness Ben Balik told The Pittsburgh Channel.
By the end of the confrontation, around half of the entire crowd of protesters had been arrested, including Infowars producer Rob Dew and most likely We Are Change leader Luke Rudkowski.
“Varun Viswanathan, a Pitt sophomore, said he saw a police officer hitting one individual, reports Pitt News.
“I think they completely use unnecessary force on us,” he said. “They have no right to do that.”
“Pitt senior Ken Egler called the police action “one of the crazier things” he’d seen during last night’s protests, especially since he didn’t see many demonstrators in Oakland.”
“I really think it’s ridiculous,” Egler said. “We should be allowed to protest. This is needed, and they’re just basically trying to scare us.”
It is important to emphasize that the obscene behavior of cops in Pittsburgh suggests that police in America will now follow any orders, no matter how barbaric. No one can plausibly deny that the majority of cops would willingly line up American citizens and blow their heads off if they were ordered to.
Police behavior at the G20 has been widely condemned as unwarranted and the violence metered out not to provide security but to provoke demonstrators.
“The deployment of police seems to be more geared toward suppressing lawful demonstrations than actually preventing crime,” Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press.
“Legal observers at the gathering saw police surrounding, chasing and arresting students who weren’t involved in the protest, said Paige Cram, spokeswoman for the National Lawyers Guild, a liberal legal-aid group. She called the show of force “an ominous spectacle,” adds the AP report, referring to a similar protest on Friday night.
“A video posted Friday on YouTube shows a group of Pitt students briefly trapped on the outdoor stairwell of a campus building, evidently exposed to gaseous pepper spray and unable to move because riot police were blocking the bottom and top of the stairs. The students had been standing on a second-floor balcony, observing the clash between police and protesters on the street below.”
As of Saturday morning, we were unable to trace the exact whereabouts of Infowars reporter Rob Dew after he was arrested last night.
“After a long night of calls to Allegheny County Jail and the Pennsylvania Corrections Department, they keep referring us to one another saying they have no information, but that “protesters” are treated differently,” writes Jason Bermas.
We can now report that Rob Dew has been released and the Infowars crew are attempting to catch their flights back to Austin.
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