A photographer on the scene of Occupy LA during the LAPD raid on the encampment, identified by L.A. Now as Tyson Heder, 35, was taking pictures of the eviction, when a police officer shoved him away. The video shows Heder then standing up, yelling at the officer, and then being forced to the ground by several policemen.
Via:
His sister, Christy Collins, said Heder was in custody Wednesday morning.
Collins, who lives in Albany, N.Y., said she got an emotional phone message from him some time after his arrest. He posted on Facebook, “They beat me and stole my camera.” Collin said her brother had not been an Occupy participant previously and apparently went to the encampment Tuesday night just to take pictures.
“I do think it was horrible and excessive,” Collins said after watching a video of the encounter. “But I have to say, I was relieved it wasn’t worse once I saw it.”
A blogger who is a member of Occupy LA writes of other police violence during the eviction:
"Approximately 300 of us walked down 1st towards Los Angeles, leaving 300 left standing by the cops. The police moved in after us, and kettled the 300 left behind. Seeing this, we ran, as a group, a couple of blocks to get away from them, losing people all along the way. Then suddenly a group of police emerged. We were blocked (kettled) in on Alameda between second and first. The police started running towards us - the group was now about 100 people by this point - and everyone ran into a parking lot to escape. The police ran after them and started beating protestors with batons repeatedly as they were running away trying to escape. I saw about ten police hit protestors. I did not get video footage nor photographs as I was running."
While most can agree that the police violence in LA wasn't nearly as bad as Occupy Oakland, or Occupy Wall Street, it hardly seems cause for the high praise given the LAPD in the mainstream media. They successfully shut down a peaceful group exercising their First Amendment rights without beating them up "too badly." Woo-hoo?
