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An Eye for an Eye?
Incident A - For - Abomination
Around 7:00 p.m. on the evening of Friday, the 3rd of August, the Burlington Police arrived to tell young people that playing conga drums was forbidden. A snapshot exists of this. They asked for names and ages, taking aside Amanda whom is 14 and Cheryl who is 23, but being petite looks much younger. They warned the young women “Those hippies will rape you.”
“The police know nothing at all about us,” Cheryl told me, “We’re about love.” A young man named Chris asked the cops how they could slander the entire group. One cop took out a can of mace spray and warned him he was committing a felony, impeding justice. Chris asked what “impeding” mean and was thrown on the ground, cuffed, and kneed in the ribs. A snapshot taken on Cheryl camera is a blur but young people say a clear photo exists showing a copy on the young man’s back, pulling his hair as his face was sprayed with mace. I saw the victim’s name on the hospital report.
Burlington Police closed City Hall Park at 7:30 p.m. issuing everyone a trespass notice. Kids were told the ban was for life, but the cop with an impressive hat said it was only until Saturday. On Saturday, cops told kids they had reports of pot smoking and someone cleaning a gun, things the kids deny seeing or doing. The police frisked them and found that Petey has a trespass notice; they gave petey two tickets. One ticket was for miscellaneous trash and one for breaking park shrubbery, though the kids say the branches came from the Waterfront Park. Kevin and other kids went to police headquarter, where Chris was chained to a wall with no access to a restroom. The uniformed desk cop told Kevin that the beating was legal and he (the desk cop) would have done the same much more severely. The hospital report shows Chris was given Ibuprofen for pain. Chris has been arraigned and will be going to trial on the 19th for Impeding Justice and Resisting Arrest.
Is Belligerence a Crime?
I was having my dinner sandwich in the outside sitting area of the Red Onion sandwich shop, when a few youths came up with tempers flaring. Justine obviously wanted to do damage to something. Justine told me how the police had assaulted their friend with mace. Justine describe a scene where they were playing their drums and hanging out and a few officers walk up and asked the two girls that were with them who they were and how old they were. They told the girls the hippies would probably rape them. When the girl told the cops these guys were her friends, they proceeded to order the kids out of the park. Justine described how his good friend Chris asked “why?” According to Justine, the police would not say why they had to leave, other than “We decided to close the park.”
According to Justine, Chris declared that he was not leaving the park just because the police feel like closing the park. The park is for people to enjoy. None of them had done anything wrong. The curfew is from midnight to 6 A.M. and he didn’t see any reason why they should have to leave.
“You have to leave, because we are closing the park.”
According to Justine, Chris then demanded “Why? What gives you the right to close the park? Show me an ordinance or a law that says you can just close the park.”
According to Justine, the police proceeded to mace Chris and beat on him. Then they hauled him away and ordered the others to leave. Justine says Chris was belligerent, but they could not see he could not see any reason why the Police can get away with beating up people like that.
Cheryl said she had taken photos of the beating and promised to allow me to scan the photos once she had them developed. Maryse says she tried to get the photos to help in Chris' case, but Cheryl claimed she gave the photos and negatives to someone claiming to be from the web magazine. Cheryl's friend says several people have asked for the photos, since. If these photos do exist, they seem to really hot photos. I have spent most of today hanging around Church Street and City Hall Park. Each time I saw her friends, they claimed I just missed her. They claim she has my business card and is looking for me. Doubt is starting to set in.
After the kids cooled down they decided to go back to the park. They figured they had the right to be in the park. After all, isn’t that what the park is for? After all, as they were peaceful and not bothering anybody, they reasoned, the police can’t really do anything about it. Let’s see the police arrest us for just being there.
After I finished my sandwich, I headed over to the park. Several people were enjoying the park, include the street kids. I chatted with the kids for a moment, and then went over to a couple officers that were radioing in from about 30 feet away. I asked the officer, “Is it true the park is closed?”
“Yes, that’s true,” he responded.
“May I ask why?”
“We had an incident earlier and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” I stood there for a couple minutes and then left the park. I chose to sit on the steps of the old bank building at the intersection of College and Saint Paul Street. Six more police officers pulled up and walked toward the center of the park. A seventh officer pulled up, parked his jeep type car, noticed me with my camera, and then decided to leave. I watched from across the street to see what would happen. The officers issued warning tickets and told the youths to leave again.
I continued to pump the youths for more information for the story, walking with Dave all the way down to Battery Park. On my way down, we saw a couple police on bicycles, to which Dave says, “Hey, we got some piglets.”
“What?”
“Piglets. We call the cops in cars "pigs," so we decided the cops on bicycle are "baby pigs," or "piglets."” I laughed and said, “That’s not very nice.”
“Well, they’re not very nice to us, either.” I found out that he had a problem with the police and was kicked out of the Burlington Square Mall for problems in there.
I decided to go back to City Hall Park to see what was happening down there. The police were gone within the hour and a bunch of people were enjoying the park, again. I talked to different people. A guy on the steps of City Hall told me he saw an incident late that afternoon where a girl walked up to a guy that looked like he was probably from out of town. As the story goes, she looked like she was a teenager. She asked the guy, “Can you get me high?”
“I have a couple hundred dollars, I could spend. What’s in it for me?” To which, she stormed off. Later she came back with a couple male friends. They proceeded to rough him up and mugged him. According to this guy the police had arrested one of the guys, and were looking for the other two suspects.
This certainly adds an interesting twist. I wish I had asked the guy what time the mugging happened and what time the arrest happened. Yep, my hindsight is almost perfect. I know that things are not always as they seem.
Story Update
Wednesday, September 05, 2001
I spent all afternoon today waiting for Cheryl to show up in the park to see if she had photos for me. I spent the afternoon writing my piece about the new denial of service at GRC.COM and the new Trojan horse used to do it. I did not see Cheryl at all.
At 5 P.M., I went down to the Salvation Army to see if I might catch Cheryl there. Just as I went into the place, I saw three people serving Cheryl and her two street friends. Cheryl’s friend told the people waiting on them that one of them can’t have fish and demanded for something else to be served.
"Well that’s what we’re serving tonight, because that’s all we have. Take it or leave it." I watched as Cheryl took their plates of food and ground it into their trays. Then they left. It reminds me of how demanding the street people often were when I used to volunteer at the Burlington Emergency Shelter at 95 North Street.
I ran after Cheryl to get the pictures, which she allegedly has that allegedly show the cops beating and tear-gassing Chris. She turned, thought a minute, and then left without saying a word. Her new boyfriend drove off with them in what looked to me like a nice black van. I heard he drives around in that a lot. How does a street person afford to drive around all day? If she really has those photos, and they are as good as the street kids say they are, and she really has been hoping to get them to me as her street friend say she is, why didn't she even want to talk to me?
It’s starting to sound like police are
involved in a war against the street people.
By Ken Lawless
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