My Experience Being Arrested During the Occupy Los Angeles Raid Los Angeles December 4, 2011 To interested parties, My name is Jerome Berglund and I was one of the nearly 300 arrested by the Los Angeles police department late Tuesday night at the Occupy Los Angeles encampment. Myself, along with the vast majority of others present, were not members of the camp, but rather concerned citizens who arrived to show our solidarity with those who were being violently evicted from the grounds. My fiancé Cat Doss and I arrived to find a long line of police officers in riot-gear blocking the park, while protesters peacefully expressed indignation as we witnessed them shredding tents and roughly handling occupiers still in the park. As we observed these outrages, we noticed the police line snaking out around us, until it surrounded the thousands of protesters on three sides. At this point a white van pulled up, and from a muffled loudspeaker started addressing the crowd. Because those who got too close to the police line were snatched up or swung at with batons, we were standing near the back of the group, a good distance from the van and could not hear the announcement coming from it amidst the general cacophony of megaphones and chanting from the protesters. I recall it was at a low volume, crackling and screeching intermittently. We approached the line to attempt to hear what they had been saying and one of our peers informed us we had been given ten minutes to disperse. At this point we turned and began making or way through the dense crowd toward the exit. Then suddenly everyone attempting to comply with the LAPD’s instructions were running through the streets frantically in terror and we saw the police fanning out in front of us and a line of them flowing across the way blocking our exit. Then we found ourselves surrounded on four sides by hundreds of police officers. Those boxed in begged the police to be freed, tried to explain that they had been in the process of dispersing when their way was blocked. When we approached the line of police asking them to be allowed to leave as instructed, they menaced us with their batons, swinging them in our direction until we backed away. The only ones who managed to disperse were those who disregarded police orders and desperately forced their way through the lines. Those who obeyed police orders, ironically, were one by one systematically cuffed and charged with failure to disperse. My fiancé had her phone camera rolling as they moved in on us, and they were very polite until they had pulled it out of hand and shut it off, at which point they violently twisted her arm behind her back. I will never forget how she shrieked in pain as they savagely manhandled her while applying the plastic cuffs. Once our hands were painfully wrenched behind our backs and the cuffs were attached far too tightly, we were marched over to the busses and shoved down to the curb where our information was taken and our property bagged and tagged. While we sat on the curb, we watched police firing rubber-bullets knock a man out of a tree. Cat attempted to stand up to adjust her cuffs and was brutally shoved back to the curb. We also witnessed one of the most alarming images I can recall from the evening, a shredded American flag lying in the street, which the police were trampling back and forth over. They ignored our pleas to remove it from the ground and laughed at us. Then we were marched onto the busses, and that’s when the real injustices and human rights violations I personally witnessed started. Around twenty-five arrestees occupied each bus, with one to two people per cage, the quarters so tight we could barely move. This was made even less comfortable because we had our hands cuffed behind our backs, which allowed no real comfortable way to sit down. Many people’s handcuffs were so tight their hands turned blue and started going numb due to the lack of circulation. As the driver started off, she suddenly slammed on the brakes inexplicably, sending everyone on board crashing headfirst into the grating in front of them. The officers laughed uproariously at this, and a woman behind me began shrieking that she had knocked out a tooth when her face hit the wall and that she was bleeding profusely. This sent the bus into an uproar, demanding they give her medical attention. The officers systematically ignored our pleas as they pulled up to the local jail and exited the bus, turning on the air conditioning full blast. We sat there freezing, screaming that the woman needed medical attention for approximately an hour. At this point another woman on the bus got so sick from the chilling temperatures that she began vomiting, which caused several others in the back to follow suit from being in close quarters with the stink of sickness. When the driver got back on the bus, we begged her to give the two sick women medical attention, and she laughed and turned the music up as loud as she could to drown our voices out. Apparently they received word the first jail was full, so our bus headed out on the long drive to Van Nuys jail, where we again parked and the officers exited the busses. Then the waiting started. We sat on the busses for another four hours, unable to relieve ourselves, while some bled and others vomited and several who could not hold it any longer were forced to urinate or defecate in their cages. The officers who treated us like caged animals popped on occasionally to chuckle at our many humiliations. Then we were unloaded one by one. I was the last person on the bus, and by that point the stench was overpowering and I was crouched on top of my seat to avoid the pool of urine that had seeped beneath it. When I was finally taken off the bus, an officer approached me and asked “Are you healthy?” When I was later booked, I found out the questions she was supposed to have asked me were “Do you have aids? Do you have any contagious illnesses? Do you have any sexually transmitted diseases?” which she apparently paraphrased to “Are you healthy?”, and then checked them all off. When we entered the jail, things went from bad to worse. They confiscated our belts and shoelaces, our pens and watches, and we spent the next several days behind bars unable to write anything or know what time it was. They separated the males and females, and put us in windowless cells of about twenty occupiers each, staggered between cells of legitimate prisoners. When the regular inmates began expressing genuine interest in the movement and the ideals behind it, we were promptly whisked away to our own block. It’s also worth noting that I shared cells with eight different veterans of varying ages, who had served from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The age range of arrested occupiers was also diverse, from several minors to a 79-year-old woman who was reduced to tears from how tight her handcuffs were. Let me also acknowledge that despite the presiding mood of cruelty and barbarism from the vast majority of the police force, there were at least a few officers in the jail who demonstrated remarkable humanity and expressed hushed sympathy toward our cause and were apologetic they were being forced to treat us in this matter for political reasons. Ironically, considering the camp was purportedly shut down for unhygienic conditions, the jails themselves were wildly unsanitary. Twenty or more prisoners were sharing two toilets, forced to use them in full view of their fellow occupants, and we had no soap to wash our hands with. We were denied soap, toothpaste, and deodorant. The women, many of whom were on the same cycle and menstruating, were initially denied tampons. Others were refused their birth control medication and they began menstruating as well. Thankfully after much begging they were eventually given pads. One female occupier came down with a urinary tract infection, and was refused medical attention. We were shuffled from cell to cell every couple hours in a musical chairs of sorts, carrying a blanket and sheet with us to use on our bunks. The mattresses on these bunks stunk, and several occupiers witnessed bed bugs on them. The water was undrinkable, with a disgusting tang of chlorine, and the food was highly suspect. Old apples, questionable half-frozen turkey sandwiches, tepid milk. Apparently once at 4:00am people were given the option to shower and share a toothbrush, but I did not witness this personally and no one in my cell was able to get a shower. Once a nurse came through and distributed some Advil, but otherwise everyone was categorically denied any sort of medical attention, which became a very pressing issue during the later portions of the incarceration. Near the end our time at the Van Nuys jail about a third of the occupiers were violently ill and vomiting. It is unclear which of the manifold hygienic issues listed above was the cause, but the fact that they consolidated the prisoners into bigger and bigger cells, essentially petri dishes, and refused to separate the sick did not help things. When we finally left chained in four man lines, I had a sick person on each side of me, one of which spent the entire bus ride to court vomiting into a plastic bag. And this brings us to the most alarming moment of my time in the Van Nuys jail. We spent the day they were preparing to ship us to court caring for our sick and lobbying for them to receive medical attention. When the busses arrived, the driver came in and addressed us. Four people were huddled around the toilet at that point taking turns vomiting. He told them if they wanted medical attention they would have to remain at jail over the weekend and be arraigned on Monday. This apparently was no idle threat, as one of the female occupiers ended up doing just that. Under threat of their release being delayed, every sick occupier I was with got on that bus. When we arrived at the courthouse we were met by sheepish grins and apologies from the officers present. They explained that we were being held for political reasons to be made examples of and reiterated what we had been hearing from our lawyers the entire time, that in California those charged with misdemeanors are traditionally released immediately on their own recognizance and that if you have not been arraigned within 48 hours you have to be released within 72 hours. As the 72-hour mark was rapidly approaching and none of us had as of yet been arraigned, we braced ourselves and waited for the timer to buzz. And buzz it eventually did, at which point the bulk of us were released with apologies and no black marks in the slightest marring our records. Let me also call attention to a policy at the courthouse jail that deserves some attention. When we came off the bus, the first thing they told us was “black prisoners in this room, white and Hispanic prisoners in that room.” When we balked at this, they chuckled and said proudly that segregating inmates was “what we do”. This is as absurd as it is comical. As if race would be an issue between these fellow occupiers! Until becoming close with my fellow incarcerates I have never before felt such a sense of camaraderie, purpose and powerful positive energy. One of the most inspiring things about this movement is how it has allowed people of all colors and creeds and economic backgrounds to band together towards a common goal. The mainstream media has done everything in their power to brand occupiers as disgruntled homeless people, as pot-smoking jobless hippies, as violent anarchists in V For Vendetta masks playing the bongos in a drum circle. These attempts to vilify and miscast the face of this movement could be no further from the truth. The occupiers I met were generally employed, articulate, sober, college-educated, peaceful people not unlike myself. Even when faced with brutal suppression from the LAPD, they categorically abstained from ANY form of violent resistance, chanting the ubiquitous “we are peaceful” slogan like a mantra. Coverage in the press seems to be attempting to persuade the public the occupy movement is over. Don’t be convinced. This week’s events, if anything, have only fanned the flames. Occupiers are going to grow in numbers in every major city in the world until their demands are addressed and these wrongs are righted. What wrongs you may ask? A very valid question, because as you may have noticed the media has gone out of their way to almost categorically ignore what these people are actually rallying for. Naomi Wolf sums it up well in her article in “The Guardian”: l The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. l No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create fake derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks. l No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors. Not exactly unreasonable, right? I can’t fathom how anyone who doesn’t have a vested interest in these corrupt practices would take issue in the slightest with them being redressed. If you would like to express your disgust and indignation with the way the Los Angeles Police Department treated their detainees, on the human rights violations and lack of decency we suffered at their hands under the explicit orders of Mayor Villaraigosa, I encourage you to mail him the soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, tampons, pillows, toilet paper and other basic hygienic items we were denied so future unjustly incarcerated persons in his jails aren’t subject to the unsanitary conditions he claimed to find so deplorable in the occupy camp. His mailing address is: Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa Mayor of Los Angeles 200 N. Main St. Rm 303 Los Angeles, CA 90012
