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(The following story appeared in the January 1999 issue of Southside Pride)

Reroute protestors tell tales of police brutality
Set up new encampment near old oaks
by Leo Cashman

Despite the most massive police raid in Minnesota history at the site of the Hiawatha reroute protest encampment, some activists have regrouped to form a protest camp at the site of the four trees, a block south of 54th Street. The new encampment is all the more dramatic because it comes on the heels of police brutality and abuses that allegedly occured during the massive raid in the early morning hours of December 20. The most serious allegations verged on police torture, serious abuses of the human and civil rights of the protesters - all unarmed - who were arrested without resisting.

"The allegations are very serious," said 12th Ward Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy, whose ward includes the Minnehaha Park and the encampment where the raid by 600 state troopers and city police took place. "Those claiming brutality should talk to the agencies set up to hear such complaints - the Minneapolis Citizen Review Authority, the state Civil rights Authority and the State Public Safety Commission," she added. "However, there were serious allegations of natural gas being pumped illegally to vacant houses. There were eye witnesses who say it was." Neither Colvin Roy nor any city official could be found who had personally seen such illegal gas hookups, but Colvin said "it is my belief that it was illegally hooked up and that could have endangered the people who live near there. Now the protest site has moved to the four trees where it fits better with the concerns expressed about saving special sites."

Neither Mayor Sayles Belton nor Governor Carlson returned phone calls in time for comments about the raid and the allegations of brutality.

A number of site protesters reprt that guns, including assault weapons, were drawn and used to threaten the protesters. Michael Haney, a native American elder visiting from Oklahoma, said "I thought I was going to die," when troopers shoved a rifle against his chest. While two women who were in the Kratz house with Haney were allowed to escape, Haney, an Indian elder, was arrested and held in jail for several days. MnDOT's spokesperson Bob McFarlin denied any awareness of pepper spray being forced into the eyes of protesters or of invaders bursting into tear-gassed rooms with semi-automatic weapons drawn. "Weapons drawn? I'm not aware that there were any weapons drawn. I would not accept that as fact." But McFarlin said "there was every reason for law enforcement to protect themselves and to protect the protesters. It was all done with safety first and foremost. There were no law enforcement officers hurt and there were no injuries to protesters despite their claims."

The view from Santa Claus

Micheal Haney, a native American elder visiting from Oklahoma, said "I thought I was going to die," when troopers shoved a rifle against his chest.
Earth First activist Wes Wenger had a different view, from a chimney top high above the action. Wenger was dressed as Santa Claus and was perched on a chimney top high above one of the homes during several hours of the police invasion and arrests. "Ho ho, s__t," said Wenger's Santa Claus in mock Christmas verse describing what he saw in the police action.

"Santa Claus saw riot police pouring out of Ryder trucks... Santa Claus tastes the tear gas filtering out of the chimney from the basement where his friends are locked down... Santa Claus hears the sound of breaking glass in the next house and sees his friend at the basement window screaming for a medic and takes up the call until his voice cracks so the people across the street can hear...

"Santa Claus sees that same friend staggering, blinded, his arm twisted, his head bandaged, his face bloody. Santa recognizes a young woman being dragged out of the house on the other side by her shoes; they wrapped her sweater around her head to work in the pepper spray and so the press can't see what they had done to her face."

Santa Claus - Wenger - was in a sense, rescued by the arrest as he was slowly removed from his precarious position on a chimney top and hauled onto the end of a long, telescoped fire truck ladder. After several hours of being immobilized on the high, wind-swept chimney top, he had been "losing the feeling in his fingers and toes and wondering how long he had to hold out until sunrise." His slow, dramatice arrest/rescue was witnessed by the media snapping photos and by about a hundred supporters just across Riverview Road who yelled messages of encouragement.

Carlson calls protesters anarchists

"Weapons drawn? I'm not aware that there were weapons drawn. I would not accept that as fact."

-Bob McFarlin,
MnDOT spokesperson
After the invasion had come down and most of the arrests had occurred, Governor Carlson showed up to put his stamp of approval on the raid, personally reviewing the massive police show of force. Carlson told reporters that the massive raid was needed because the protesters were "anarchists" and had harmed the neighborhood and the community. He said that the raid was needed because of the potential for gas explosions from alleged illegal gas hookups. However, Earth First spokesperson Bob Greenberg denied that illegal gas hookups were used.

MnDOT's McFarlin, asked to provide documentation of the alleged illegal natural gas hookups, conceded that there were no pictures taken of the alleged hookups and that the media who were on site the morning of the raid were not shown the illegal gas hookups "for their own safety and because heavy demolition equipment had begun to move onto the site." The media, including this reporter, were kept well away from the homes themselves where the alleged illegal hookups occurred and where the butality against those arrested allegedly occured.

New protest at camp and court action

At the core of the new protest camp at the four trees are the Native Americans, the Mdewakanton Dakota, who feel a deep spiritual connection to the site they call sacred. They are prepared to lock themselves to the trees with the heavy chains already fastened and ready at the site. The Mdewakanton also joined with Bob Greenberg and a handful of of other Earth First allies to seek, on Christmas Eve, a temporary restraining order in federal court against any destruction of the trees along the reroute path. The sudden move into the court was motivated by a fear of imminent tree cutting on the part of MnDOT, which had toyed with the idea on the day of the massive police raid. But the federal judge who took the case, Judge Rosenberg, denied the request initially, but kept the case open for further evidence to be submitted. One of the plaintiffs, Bob Greenberg, said that in light of the matter pending, the Minnesota Attourney General's office has ruled that for one week no trees can be cut along the reroute site.

Allegations, denials of serious abuses

While the governor and other state officials claimed to be pleased with all details of the massive police raid at the encampment, Minneapolis Police Chief Robert Olson bestowed police awards on Police Inspector David Indrehus and two of his lieutenants for the conducting of the massive raid, code named Operation Coldsnap. Earth First activists protested the awards, calling justice to be done in the wake of "brutality and violation of civil and human rights and of religious freedom." Among the religious violations were the burning of a wooden sweat lodge; the lodges were used as a sacred place of worship and cleansing and, as a place of worship for native Americans, are comparable to a church or synagogue. Tipis were either burned on site or were seized and not returned.

Nor was respect paid to the native elders. One elder, Ron Bear, reported being knocked down by troopers as he was beating a sacred drum near the sacred fire. The drum was knocked out of his hand and broken. Bear was handcuffed and lying face down; another protester, Linda Lentz, herself bound, helped him roll onto his side on the frozen ground. Lentz, partly of Bolivian ancestry, "had not planned on arrest because of health problems." She has CIP, a disorder of the central nervous system that has some of the symptoms of muscular sclerosis and fibromyalgia. She lay "for what seemed like hours" on the cold ground, and then was held in a house where there was tear gas. She suffered a rash on her face and neck from the tear gas. Taken later to jail, she was denied medications during the entire two days she was held in jail even though the medication was available there.

Freedom of the press?

One of those witnessing the police actions against Lentz, Bear, and the sacred drum was freelance photographer Dick Bancrift, who works for the Connection, a monthly peace and justice magazine publiched by the resource center of the Americas. Noticing that Bancroft had snapped several pictures, and officer yelled "get down" and immediately pushed bancroft down painfully on top of his camera. His press pass was ripped from around his neck. "You don't have the red mark on the back of your card," one officer declared derisively. Bancroft was left to sit on the ground before being put in a wagon with about 10 other arrestees. "The photos that the press got are sanitized," Bancroft warns, saying that the media was "managed" by state officials who covered up the worst police abuses from the public eye. The shocking photos that Bancroft himself had taken were never recovered from the police - his camera had not been returned to him as of 10 days after the incident. Like about 20 other arrestees, Bancroft has been arraigned and ordered to appear for trial on January 19.


The police arresting a protester at the reroute encampment last month.

Pepper spray, mace and pain holds

The Earth First activist known as Joe Hill was going exactly nowhere, immobilized 20 feet atop a trip, his neck locked with a bike lock onto the tripod. His supporters warned officers grabbing the tripod that to knock down the tripod down [sic] would kill him. "I don't care - are you ready to die?" one officer asked Hill. Warming up to their task, the officers tear gassed him. Then they went up to him and sprayed mice right into his eyes. Hill said quietly to his tormenter, "You didn't have to do that; that won't bring me down any faster." "Shut up," the officer responded, "you had it coming." Finally, the tripod and Hill were slowly lowered down for his arrest.

On a rooftop adjacent to Hill was Henry Fieldseth, who was not locked down to anything, but was there as a witness for Hill. Two troopers climbed atop the roof, held Fieldseth's eyes open and sprayed the can a few inches from his eyes. "I was blind for three hours," Fieldseth declared. Speaking to the press assembled at a press conference at the Capitol, Fieldseth, a familiar face from years of working at the New Riverside Cafe, showed obvious skin and eye damage to his face from the toxic fluid sprayed onto his face.

Protesters who were arrested inside the houses and down in the basements did not have a nice experience with the troopers either. Several of them submitted anonymous statements. One of the protesters, who had locked himself into position in a basement, recalls, "My lockdown partner and I heard the hissing of gas seeping into our room. We locked our arms into the cement, and began coughing, choking, crying and vomiting. We unlocked 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 our wrists."

Another recalled, "We were peacefully yelling [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 hold 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 tenmore seconds and I could have been dead.

Another one testified, "They show us the pepper spray before they used it, laughing and jeering as they threatened 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."

Many of those reporting police torture were young women, such as one who also was heavily tear gassed in a small basement room. She testified, "I unlocked myself and came out of my lockdown site. I was thrown to the ground and the police proceeded to first hit me in the head and back and then kneel down on my back and head and then handcuffed me so tightly that I almost immediately lost feeling in both of my hands. As my wrists were bleeding and swollen from the hand cuffs, 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 lease 30 minutes... I desperately hope the officers involved will be held accountable for what they've done.
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