(The following article appeared in Pulse Magazine on
December 30, 1998.)
Police brutality fails to stop reroute protest
by Leo Cashman
Despite accounts of excessive police force and brutality, some Hiawatha
reroute protesters have set up a small new encampment, this time at four
old oak trees that are regarded as sacred according to the tradition of
the Mdewakanton Dakota people. These trees are located about a block
south of 54th Street and about a block and a half south of the massive
police raid -- the biggest in Minnesota history -- that arrested 33
protesters last week and opened the Riverview Road site up for the
bulldozers that demolished the seven remaining houses.
Although MnDOT denies that it will destroy the woods that lie along the
reroute path when construction begins, some protesters have feared that
the trees' destruction is imminent. The Native Americans and others who
are now encamped at the four oaks have fastened heavy chains around the
trees and are ready to chain themselves to the trees to protect them.
Last week Governor Carlson, who is in his final week in office, said that
the protesters chained to the trees would soon be evicted from the
site.
On Tuesday [sic], December 28, those who were arrested in the earlier
raid were arraigned on charges of trespass and obstruction of justice.
All plead not guilty. Trial dates were set for January 19, 1998.
Meanwhile, most of those arrested have provided detailed accounts of abuse
suffered in the night raid by masked state troopers wearing no badges, who
burst into the encampment December 20 with guns and chemicals.
"Within seconds, my lockdown partner and I heard the hissing of gas
seeping into our room. We locked our arms into the cement, and
immediately began coughing, choking, crying and vomiting fluids ... we
unlocked and exited to find a room full of men in black with gas masks and
with guns pointed at us. They dragged us upstairs, dropping us in the
frigid snow, applying handcuffs so tight they cut into my wrists."
Another recounted, "We were peacefully telling [the troopers] that we are
nonviolent protesters. They ignored that and proceeded to pepper spray
within one inch of our faces ... I tried to get my arm out of the hole
[where it was locked into place] and I couldn't. After 10 seconds, they
got impatient and started pain compliance. One officer put the heel of
his hand directly under my nose and his other hand on top of my head and
applied extremely painful pressure for about a minute. I was later told
by several people that 10 seconds more and I could have been dead."
Another says, "They show us the pepper spray before they use it, laughing
and jeering as they threaten us with it. One of them forces my eyes open
as another one dips a gloved hand into the poison. With two covered
fingers he rubs it into my eyes. I have been trained in nonviolence; I
stay quiet and calm, blinded but hearing the screams of my beaten partner.
The pain is unbearable. They drag me upstairs by the jaw, throw me
face-down onto the floor of a room. After a couple of minutes they put
another pain hold on me, dragging me out into the falling snow. I am
wearing no jacket; I sit there in the cold for over an hour."
A young woman recalls, "my wrists were bleeding and swollen from the
handcuffs. I asked the officers to please change my cuffs and loosen
them. They simply laughed and told me that I got what I deserved. I was
taken outside with no shoes or jacket and sat in the snow for at least 30
minutes."
(WEB MASTER'S NOTE: The hand cuffs used were not the
traditional metal
kind. They were the disposable plastic kind that police use for mass
arrests. These cuffs are applied by sliding them into place and pulling
them tight around the arestee's wrists. Once tightened, they can not be
loosened, only cut off, and it is very easy to slide them on tight enough
to cut off circulation to the hands. The edges of these riot cuffs are
especially
sharp, so as to continue to cause pain after the victim has been subdued.
One individual who was put in these during the October 14th raid told me
four weeks later that he had just gotten all of the feeling back in his
hands. Several of the protesters arrested on December 20 showed me their
hands two days later and they were still swollen; their wrists still had
dark blue/purple rings around them.)
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