DENVER — When I ran over to the Civic Center park area after riot police cleared out the Occupy encampment here, I found dozens of riot police forming a wall to block protesters from reentering the park.
Impeded from reoccupying the park, the remaining group of protesters began shouting down the cops and taunting them. The protesters argued that it was a waste of taxpayer dollars to send so many riot police to handle what they saw as just some people peacefully camping. They said there were rapes, murders and other crimes that weren’t being prevented because of the police focus on the protests.
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“Today, you are on the wrong side of history,” one female protester, Jeannie Hartley, shouted at the cops. “Today, you are the criminals.”
Hartley, who noted she was a guest on Keith Olbermann on Oct. 31 to talk about police brutality (see interview here), claimed a cop hit her as hard as he could with a baton for no reason.
“He hit me right accross the chest, right accross the breast, as hard as he could,” she said. “He just had a smile on his face when he did it. He hit me as hard as he could.”
I asked her if she broke any bones or sustained any injuries as a result.
“No, I didn’t, no,” she said. “That’s only because I probably have so much padding on. I have like three layers of clothes. That protected me. He didn’t break anything. But he hit me as hard as he could.”
Eventually, the protesters reached consensus that they were wasting their time standing around yelling at the cops, so they decided to relocate to Skyline Park, and begun marching up Denver’s 16th St. pedestrian mall. They chanted, “We are the 99 percent” and “Whose streets? Our streets!”
When they reached the Sheraton hotel, they stopped. A messenger who had just been to Skyline park said there were already two riot police vans there who had already chased another group of protesters, claiming that one was run over by a police motorcycle.
“I say we let police chase us all over the f–king city,” one protester shouted over a bull horn.
Riot police assembled nearby to observe the group.
At that point, Hartley warned the cops that they wouldn’t be able to get away with their actions because she already called the national media.
“Yeah, she knows Keith Olbermann,” a protester boasted to the cops.
After she warned them that Olbermann, as well as representatives from other media organizations were watching, the crowd began shouting, “This is not Tehran,” “This is not Tahrir Square” and “This is not Benghazi.”
They began marching on at which point I parted ways with them. I shot some video that I’ll post once I’ve uploaded it.
