His fist came at me as though everything was in slow motion, my entire body frozen as I saw the black glove getting closer to me. The next thing I knew, I fell to the ground and received a kick to my ribs, after which I was quickly pulled out of the chaos to the sidewalk. The next morning I awoke with a black eye and bruised ribs. I was embarrassed to go out, as I had never been in a fight before; I knew people would think of the worse-case scenarios, like I had lost a fight. So I decided to make a shirt explaining the eye. In bright red and black marker, it read "My black eye thanks to the MPD. Your tax dollars at work."
In fact, the beating I received was by an officer of the Metropolitan Police Department at a rally to protest the war in Iraq. While you may think to yourself that I deserved this, the truth was that the officer pushed a friend of mine and I requested his badge number three times. The only response came after asking the third time, and it was a fist. It was than that I really understood and became aware of police brutality. Before that I knew it existed, but it was nothing more than a distant thought.
President Bush held his $40 million inauguration in D.C., on Thursday. As a result, Washington became what many saw as a police state, considering the amount of money spent on security (Washington paid $11.9 million of that) and the way the city became a fortress with police, military, buses, concrete barriers and fences blocking everything. I marched with the Anarchist Resistance march, which made its first stop at a checkpoint. Upon arrival, 20 feet from the checkpoint at 7th and D streets, the police charged a large banner leading the march and began beating it with bully sticks. Everyone in the march then began to run backward in fear as the police pushed forward, hitting people with bully sticks and shoving them onto the sidewalk with violent force - force that was so great it caused people to fall onto the concrete ground. As this happened, three police cars arrived at a fast pace, driving right into the crowd with no regard for the people on the road.
These officers began to shoot pepper spray pellets from a fire extinguisher-like unit, which I was hit with, at people on the sidewalk. While this was horrible, perhaps the worst part was when one particular officer began to beat a person on the ground until he was bleeding and was taken in an ambulance. After the march had cleared out, I saw a protester with an injured arm and a protester with a black eye. What scared me the most, though, was that police sergeants were ordering certain officers to back down and leave us, the protesters, alone. But the brutality did not end there on 7th and D. Later on in the march, the Anarchist Resistance went to a second checkpoint located at Freedom Plaza. Upon arriving and attempting to enter the checkpoint, the police fired a cloud of tear gas at protesters, reporters and patrons of the inauguration waiting to get inside. It left a lot of the crowd throwing up, and many eyes were tightly closed and burning bright red. No medical attention was given to them by anyone but fellow protest medics. These are only two examples of police brutality from the day, though there were four others.
And it does not end there. Protests like the ones against Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami and the People's Strike in D.C., have seen this occur, sometimes with greater violence and weaponry. I understand that the police are human and, like myself, get caught up in the heat of the moment and can lose their tempers. The difference is that if I were to lay a finger on an officer, it is a guaranteed assault on an officer and a minimum of seven years in jail in the District of Columbia. If an officer were to attack me, as we saw, nothing occurs a majority of the time, and when something does occur, it is a short paid suspension. The other difference is that I do not have any weapons, lethal or "less lethal." But as we saw on Thursday, an officer has a range of weapons, such as tear gas, pepper spray, Tasers, rubber bullets, bully sticks and guns.
I know some of you are reading this and may not believe it, or accuse me of deserving it for my actions or because we are destructive and violent. To this I respond with a reaction held by a fellow marcher and friend. Jared Hall, a senior at AU, is not an anarchist and is not a radical leftist, but he joined that march as an observer and to take photos. But when Jared saw a kid, younger than him, beaten with a bully stick to the point of blood coming out of his body, his jaw dropped open and he stared in disbelief. Right in front of him, in America, a man was beaten by the people who are there to protect us.
No matter how many times I see police brutality, the feeling never changes. It is hurtful, shocking and upsetting.
Brian Kruglak is a senior in the School of Public Affairs.
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