NYPD officer caught on video punching pro-Gaza protester during Brooklyn rally

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 633 points –
NYPD officer caught on video punching pro-Gaza protester during Brooklyn rally
independent.co.uk
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It's crazy how this makes headlines around the world, yet we've had cops behave ten times worse with protesters here in Germany and it never leaves fringe news outlets. Not even one big German news outlet explicitly talks or goes into details on the cases of brutal police violence happening here. It feels like I'm living in a dystopian future. Beware, this is coming to you too.

It's because of our past and now Israel can do no wrong and anyone who even hints at Israel doing a genocide is an antisemitic Nazi sympathizer. The media and politics bias is extreme

I'm part jewish myself. My great grandmother was killed by the nazis during the Holocaust. Yet Germans are trying to gaslight people like me for speaking about the fact that Palestinians are humans and should be treated as such. All of the German talk about "Erinnerungskultur" (memory culture) makes me want to puke. It feels very performative and void of any substance.

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Yes, it's funny, I grew up listening to my clueless mother about how Germany has repented and Nazi stuff isn't tolerated because they understand the weight and all that nonsense.

I'm part Jewish. Reading EDIT: (accidental press) some of the stuff on the interwebs from Germans make me wish they were more like Japan FFS.

Germans love to pat themselves on the back while telling themselves that. But it's just performative. It has no substance, no value. Their nazi grandpas were still working for the government after the war. Some of them were even ministers. Some of them were big generals in the German army during and after the war. At the same time Germany is cracking down on the "bad jews" that do not fit their rabid colonialist ideology. Oh, where have I seen that before? Separating the bad jews from the good ones.

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If it makes you feel any vindication, the fact that this was reported by news outlets here means nothing. This cop will never see punishment beyond a slap on the wrist or some paid administrative leave at best. Police violence has already been institutionalized in America too.

Sadly it doesn't. I'm here just trying to warn people that things will get a lot worse.

we’ve had cops behave ten times worse with protesters here in Germany and it never leaves fringe news outlets

Enormous numbers of German Jews being targeted by a Berlin PD that just got caught in a giant pro-Nazi Cops scandal a couple of years ago, all under the guise of the antisemitism statutes.

If I didn't know better, I might begin to suspect German obsequious deference to their shameful history has been twisted into a new state-sanctioned Kristallnacht.

Do you have any news articles (even local ones in German) to share regarding that? Would be interested in reading.

Just a ton of videos of police violence taken at protests and posted in activist groups on Instagram. I'll drop you some links to them here. As I've said, almost no german media outlets picks on these cases of extreme police violence even when they are actually there when it is happening so it's next to impossible for me to send you links to newspapers.

Most of these videos are from a few days ago. Oldest one is from three weeks ago. Honestly they're all scattered all throughout my gallery, so here are just the last few ones I've found now. This has been ongoing since last year.

Here you can see a police officer repeatedly hitting a protester that's already on the ground. Remember that cops have gloves with knuckles covered in hard plastic.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6OauD0MK7j/

There's also this one from the same event with cops pummeling protesters that are on the ground with fists and jumping on them with their knees.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6PSMzaxwUp

Here is one with a cop hitting a woman directly in the face, again, with hard gloves.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7Ji4JGM6Ta/

Here are some of cops spraying people with pepper spray at extremely close distance.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7H4E3OMGUW/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7HjvAzMHEM/

Attacking sit-in protesters, jumping on them with their knees

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5HH7H3sNWN/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6OXmErNRRu/

Beating on a man that’s on the ground

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6Op_5LMudO/

This looks like a straight up rape scene (Major TRIGGER WARNING)

https://streamable.com/of0f86

Attacking a guy for peacefully carrying a flag

https://streamable.com/7rjsmt

Attacking a lone man at night

https://streamable.com/diprmv

Remember that these happened either over the last few days or very recently. This has been ongoing for many months now and there are many more horrible examples of this happening. There are also the many iconic pictures and videos of police officers holding protesters from the back while completely covering their eyes and mouths from behind. This is inhumane. Also most of these situations are easily avoidable, but cops are more trigger happy at some protests than at others for some reason. It seems like they've been let off the leash to escalate these situations to the extreme. These protests are almost always peaceful. They're not riots. They're not destroying the city. They're merely walking from one place to another and are met with extreme violence.

There are many reports of activists with broken noses, arms, or legs coming out of here (again, in activist groups and so on; also many of the victims are simply posting to look for witnesses to sue cops when they inevitably end up in the hospital because of them). One report of a protester ending up in intensive care after being beaten by the cops.

It also doesn't help that in Germany the chances of successfully suing a cop are close to zero. Police officers have the closest thing to immunity when it comes to being sued. Because they are sworn in under oath, their word always counts more in a court of law than yours, under German law. If they say you were resisting, then you were resisting and there's nothing to discuss.

So you can see, police violence that makes international headlines when it comes out of the US, goes unnoticed in Germany. It feels like I’m living in a fever dream, where the worst in the US is considered the norm in Germany.

EDIT: deleted further replies and added everything to the same comment for better readability

Uff, that's hard. But people should definitely still try to sue if they feel up to it. This is the only way stuff like this gets out to the public!

That's not how Germany functions. First and foremost, it's next to impossible to sue the police. Secondly, the media doesn't report on any of this and won't. It doesn't fit in their agenda to acknowledge that such things are happening.

That's not true. You can definitely sue the police. You can literally sue anyone. But the chance of winning is something else. And we have lots of private Newspaper which don't follow an "agenda" and are more than happy to report about this. For example Katapult Magazin & Volksverpetzer. There is no overall "agenda". Don't start to schwurble.

What I clearly meant by that is that it is impossible to successfully sue a cop. No one cares that you can sue if the chances of winning are literally zero. And that’s what your chances do look like in Germany.

Besides that Volksverpetzer is trying way too hard to go the enlightened centrist route which is especially now a problem when we’re looking at a possible genocide. Katapult Magazin is okay in that aspect. There are a few other acceptable media outlets out there too. But again, these are mostly fringe outlets, which was exactly my point in the first place.

Police violence that is at least as bad as the one seen in this article, or even worse, is not picked up by big media outlets in Germany as it is in other countries like the US or UK. And that is what I was criticising. If you do find an article from a big German media outlet going into detail on cops using excessive violence and pummelling protesters with fists in the current context of pro Palestine protests, then link it here. Otherwise I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss.

Ahhh now it's THIS specific kind of police violence, interesting. In your other Post it was Police using excessive violence in general which was not talked about. Moving goal posts, I see. It took 30 seconds of googling to find this. And... wow, lots of these are public media. Who could have known. You have the same flaw as most "political people" today. You have strong opinion about politics, but doing something? "Naaaah. YoU cAnT dO AnYtHinG!11!!! THEY wont let us!!!1111 No, I haven't tried yet. I just know....." You can't expect that People get punished for doing wrong if NO ONE does something. People have to try! You might fail because the system is rigged but not trying is no solution either, then you lose every time. You want the police to stop beating you up? SUE THEM. Start a social media campaign, do something else instead of only complaining. And don't bother answering me I will have blocked you at this point, I have enough idle people around me, I don't need more.'

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/polizeigewalt-praevention-studie-100.html

https://www.fr.de/politik/polizeigewalt-studie-mit-niederschmetterndem-ergebnis-veroeffentlicht-zr-92282918.html

https://www.rbb-online.de/kontraste/pressemeldungen-texte/unveroeffentlichte-studie--12-000-verdachtsfaelle-unrechtmaessig.html

https://taz.de/Polizeigewalt-in-Deutschland/!5931901/

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/polizei-gewalt-studie-aufarbeitung-100.html

I'm clearly talking under a post about "police violence at PRO GAZA PROTESTS" which the main german media is clearly ignoring and pushes a hardcore pro Israel agenda on. And again, many similar cases as the one in the article I'm commenting on also happening here that the mainstream German media is ignoring. Why would I even be talking about police violence in other contexts other than the one everyone is clearly talking about here, which is on an article on explicit cases of police violence at pro gaza protests. What I am very clearly saying here is that the mainstream German media has a blind eye for Israel, or the exact same cases of police violence as the one discussed in this article go uncovered. I very clearly didn't come here to talk about meta studies on police bureaucracy

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I dunno. Are your polzei intentionally firing rubber baton rounds at protesters' heads, breaking limbs, and pepper-spraying at point-blank? Haven't seen it reported as happening yet for the Gaza protests but there's a load of people from the BLM protests (where people wanted police to stop murdering fellow citizens) that suffered blindness and/or traumatic brain injuries (among other things) as a result.

I really hope your police aren't as bad as those in the US. Here they are generally legally untouchable and can even straight-up rob you by charging your property with a crime (they can it "civil asset forfeiture" and despite it being blatantly against the word and spirit of our Constitution, the courts keep declaring it somehow legal).

Actually yes. They’ve been doing that. Minus the rubber bullets. I don’t think they have those here. Just watch the videos I linked in my other comment.

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