Oakland PD hospitalizes another vet, releases man who deliberately ran down protesters

So, you'll remember Scott Olsen, the Marine who was hospitalized after being hit in the head with a non-lethal police projectile at the Oakland Occupy protests. Well, the Oakland PD has doubled down. According to this report from Reuters, Kayvan Sabeghi is now in the Intensive Care Unit after being severely beaten by the police:

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."

via Boing Boing.

Meanwhile, here's the video of the couple being deliberately run down at Occupy Oakland by a guy in a Mercedes:



Now, this is a good example of everyone acting like an idiot. What seems to happen is that the march is moving along and holding up traffic. The Mercedes guy gets frustrated. I mean, he seems to be an entitled asshole who thinks that his time is super important. So he starts inching his way through the crowd. One of the marchers gets pissed and stops in front of the car and bangs on the hood. So, he's being sort of self righteous and stupid. And then Mercedes guy guns it, running marcher guy down, as well as a woman who wasn't doing anything.

This is one of those situations that could have been avoided at any point if one of the parties had made an effort to be less dickish and entitled. The marchers were being a little bit dickish by not letting the cars through. The driver was being a little bit dickish by forcing his way through anyway. The one guy was being a little bit dickish when he started banging on the car.

But running someone down? That's totally out of control.

There are two places where the Oakland Police failed here. First of all, managing the relationship between the marchers and the traffic would be a much better way to spend police resources than, say, throwing flash grenades at people who are trying to help an injured protester. From what I have seen, this is one of the things that the NYPD have been doing really well.

Second, you know the guy who was driving the car? They happily sent him on his way. Move along. Nothing to see here. Certainly not a two-tiered justice system.

Here are a just a couple of relevant shots from an excellent series of photos at The Frame:

One of the two people who got run down by the Mercedes.

Awww . . . don't worry, Mister Mercedes Driver! The Oakland PD doesn't arrest nice, rich, white guys!