In the immediate aftermath of last night’s murder at the Occupy Oakland encampment, Occupiers instantly began issuing denials that the victim and the shooting had anything to do with their protest, in an attempt to spin the story and disassociate the movement from any violence.
Turns out they were wrong — the victim was indeed an Occupier:
Slaying victim slept at Occupy Oakland camp
The man who was shot to death near the Occupy Oakland camp Thursday had spent a few nights there, his cousin said, as city officials and the police union renewed their calls for the camp to pull up stakes.
Madea Williams, who said she was the shooting victim’s cousin, said he had shared a tent with her at the camp.
Police have not released the man’s name, but said he appeared to be in his 20s. Williams said his first name was Alex.
The man was shot in the head around 5 p.m. outside a BART station exit in Frank Ogawa Plaza, at 14th Street and Broadway. He was taken to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made.
Protesters originally said they did not think the man was associated with their month-old encampment.
In a statement today, the Oakland Police Officers Association said the protesters need to leave their downtown camp “so we can get back to fighting crime in Oakland neighborhoods.”
“Our officers are the 99 percent struggling in Oakland neighborhoods ever day to contain the 1 percent who rob, steal, rape and murder our law-abiding citizens,” the union said. “The Occupy Oakland protest, now 30 days old, is taking our police officers out of Oakland neighborhoods and away from protecting the citizens of Oakland.”
Note also the interesting evolution of the “1%” concept in the police union statement: They redefine “the 1%” not as the wealthy but rather as the street criminals and thugs who ruin things for the rest of Oakland’s law-abiding citizens.
Whether the criminal is Bernie Madoff or a two-bit drug-dealing gang member, I agree with the police union on this one: The real enemies of society are the law-breakers and the peace-disturbers, regardless of how much money they have.
UPDATE:
The SFGate article linked above has now been scrubbed and replaced with a new article which tries to backpedal from its original claim. The revised replacement article now says:
Oakland police say they have no reason to believe that a man shot and killed outside the Occupy Oakland encampment had ever spent a night there, despite the claims of a camp resident who said he was her cousin and had slept in her tent.
The victim, who appeared to be in his 20s, was shot in the head about 5 p.m. Thursday outside a BART station exit in Frank Ogawa Plaza, at 14th Street and Broadway. He was taken to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made.
The man’s name has not been released. Although the woman identifying herself as his cousin said he had slept in the camp, several veterans of Occupy Oakland said they didn’t recognize him.
Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman, said today that investigators had found no indication the man was connected to Occupy Oakland.
Some city officials said that even if the victim and killer were not part of Occupy Oakland, the encampment is attracting a violent element and needs to go.
I guess eyewitness testimony is no match for the pressure of political spin. If several OWS activists with a strong political motivation to disassociate the crime from their movement insist they don’t know the guy, then that becomes the dominant narrative. But ponder this: if no one even knows the victim’s name or identity, and very few people saw him on the ground before he was carried away, then how they be so sure he wasn’t one of theirs?
Expect the victim’s cousin, who personally shared a tent with the victim at the camp, to suddenly change her story and/or disappear from the scene.
This is how history is molded. One crucial detail at a time.
Interesting branding technique to evolve the 1% to mean everybody who’s bad. Wasn’t this tried in Salem Massachusetts once?
– police union has to call upon the police department to call upon the mayor to enforce the municipal code and ordinances?
Public health and safety? Let’s put it to a vote! We are devolving to the state of nature; perhaps order will evolve out of it.
Redefining the 1%, two thoughts:
1st… this means that previously, the “Occupiers”, their division of America, classified criminals as “us”, instead of “them”. Mistake.
2nd, it shows how thoroughly arbitrary classifying people based on one factor, such as wealth, really is. There is a 1% wealthiest, and a 1% tallest, strongest, smartest, and northernmost. The Occupiers have lived their lives not dwelling on the achievement of wealth. They left that to others, while they pursued their own dreams. So now, after discounting the importance of wealth their whole lives, they see it as the single variable by which they are going to classify and divide people? Wrong.
You mean the protesters lied?
I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!!!
Anyway, I’m sure there are no immediate plans to remove the congregation of animals. But it is nice that they gave us a live demonstration of their capabilities in building a society. It’s a shame that people had to die, be beat up or raped to put proof to what we already knew. And that is, when left to their own devices without an iron fist maintaining complete control over them, they immediately descend into chaos and devolve back into a Dark Age-like society.
In other words, they are basically incapable of any form of self-reliance. Big surprise there… Or not…
It’s no surprise he was part of the encampment.
My only remaining question is: was he a protester or a “businessman”?
Wait. Isn’t Madea Williams the gal from Code Pink?
I am appalled that public officials, police & fire personnel are supporting these so-called “protestors”. To even try to rationalize this degree of devolution as “civil disobedience” is crazy & sad. Literally mentally ill crazy.
Liberal reasoning:
1) If a congresswoman is shot in Arizona, it’s perfectly reasonable to blame it on someone as close as Alaska.
2) If a person is shot near #0ccupy0akland, you’re crazy for thinking the two had ANYTHING to do with each other.
“Expect the victim’s cousin, who personally shared a tent with the victim at the camp, to suddenly change her story and/or disappear from the scene.”
Just like how cop-killer witnesses eventually retract their testimonies years later.
See my update.
And yet a video you posted last night from one of the Occupiers said that the murder took place in the camp, over a bag of weed.
Funny how the story changes, innit?
Dear Occusquatters:
It’s over. We’re done coddling you. You’ve had your precious little tantrum, now it’s time for you to go home. Because now people are dying, regardless of whether it’s from exposure, drug ODs, assaults, or gunshots; basically it’s now society’s job to protect you from yourselves.
Clearly, from the reports at OWS, Occupy Atlanta, and Occupy Portland, you don’t even have a basic understanding of how to maintain proper sanitation in a campground. So you’re suffering from head and body lice, drug-resistant TB, and “Zuccotti Lung,” among other maladies.
You’ve had your fun… now go home to mommy and daddy who will love you no matter what. The rest of us, not so much…
Occupy Wherever is the 0% — zero percent common sense.
Stunning to see it all coming apart at the seams in the same week or so, in so many different places. Maybe there’s some time period in human nature when cooperation breaks down & chaos takes hold — say, two months of infrequent bathing, living outside in close quarters, frequent drug use — yeah, that’s sounds like when I’d give it up and start going wild.
Who will we believe, the DeMSM or our lying eyes?
Like I’ve been saying for a couple of weeks folks, benign neglect, benign neglect. When enough of the Occupy Sesame Street crowd has been shot, stabbed, raped, or gotten really sick they will grow up. Just leave ‘em alone till they do.
I find this all very horrible but it still doesn’t answer what I should have for dinner tonight.
I’m a horrible, horrible man who’ll never be allowed to live in Utopia.
Couldn’t have been a #Occupy member. He was shot in the head, and for 100% of the #Occupy people, that would simply be a minor wound that hit no vital organs.
Note also the interesting evolution of the “1%” concept in the police union statement: They redefine “the 1%” not as the wealthy but rather as the street criminals and thugs …
History Lesson: The “1%” concept originated in Oakland many years ago, back in the ’60′s with Oakland the city being the home-base of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and the self-identified most bad-ass time-serving notorious Angels being the *first* and original 1%-ers – like the guys who were on-duty as Security at Altamont when the Stones played there…just up the road over the hills. The Hells Angels MC Daily City website has a slightly different interpretation. (They have a website?!)
This is also when the original “OMG!” designation came about standing for Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Read up on your Hunter Thompson, please.
I live in the neighborhood and I don’t drive. The camp is a magnet for every homeless person and every crazy street person in Oakland and several other cities as well. Based on my admittedly limited interactions with them, they are all combat veterans, they are all close personal friends of Scott Olsen and soon, I suspect, they will all have shared a tent with the murder victim.
No conspiracy necessary. Just people who are mentally ill and/or needy.
Exactly, and time and time again, reporters have shown themselves to be incredibly gullible, un-critical, and lazy, when it comes verifying the statements of people who support their simple perceptions of society.
I doubt that the media is covering for the dead guy so as to not identify him as an occupier. It is MUCH more likely that they are covering for him because he is/was black and no media is currently permitted to say anything negative about any black guy.
I understand the point that you are trying to make, but civil disobedience and lawful assembly doesn’t start and end with the availability of police resources to abuse it on behalf of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. That is kind of the point of the whole exercise. To increase the police resources overall, and end the privatization of what our taxes should be procuring for us, privatization that threatens the infrastructure of our world. Oakland has crime, bad crime and no one wants the residence to be put out of their first respondents, but if they were being served to begin with the OWS wouldn’t be as strong as it is there. After all, if these are people from somewhere else, they’d be somewhere else. And I don’t see the need for the giant conspiracy theory. Statistically speaking, and not that it’s acceptable, but, one murder at a Bart station is not that unusual, even when it is the Bart police doing the murdering.
From the beginning the camp was run by the Oscar Grant goons with intimidation, threats ,sign policing and other crimes,as soon as somebedy got killed they run away and those that stayed are covering up for them.