As Occupy protestors began to settle in for the night, London Ontario police raided the Victoria Park Occupy site and began tearing down tents. No arrests have been made and there are no official reports of violence (though one Occupier is saying he was assaulted by police and that it was caught on camera).
The [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/zQuestionsleep#g/u]videos[/url] are dark and it's hard to see much, but it's still shocking enough that cops showed up at night and trashed tents and personal property. Letters of appreciation should go to Mayor Joe Fontana. This is the first Occupy camp forcibly destroyed in Canada. May it be the last. And folks in London are discussing [url=http://www.facebook.com/occupylondonontario?sk=wall]how to revive it[/url].
According to witnesses, the police were there for quite a while, and managed to convince 100+ Occupy supporters that they would do nothing until well into this morning. As soon as supporters left, police began pulling down tents. I don't know why so many people chose to believe them (well, London isn't exactly Protest Central), but they did. I really do hope they can resurrect the occupation.
These reports aren't really accurate. Here's what happened :
The occupiers raised the alarm over the internet saying the police had told them they were shutting down the camp at 6pm. There was a lot of people there but no cops until later, maybe 8 or 9. Then the cops showed up in force, shutting off central (a street that runs along the park where the occupation was) and brought with them paddy wagons and ambulances (a chilling sight since usually you wouldn't expect ambulances unless they were planning on hurting people). The police left their cars idling for like 5+ hours... probably not that great for the environment.
A short while after they arrived... maybe an hour or so they began dismantling tents. They threw a lot of stuff in garbage trucks and took a lot of other stuff away in pick up trucks. The crowd had mostly dissipated by this time its true. Eventually the camp started taking down the tents themselves in order to save them. Then the cops stood menacingly in a circle around the protesters who chose to stay in the park as an act of civil disobedience. The protester who was assaulted by the cop was Mike Roy. He stood between the cops and the tents and they shoved him out of the way. There was an arrest the following the night. A man in a cast set up a tent and refused to get out. The cops came and they rolled the tent over repeatedly, roughing him up and then used a lot of unnecessary force in arresting him. He did nothing but lie there passively.
It was a first hand demonstration of the violence that is the state.
just goes to prove that when you have been court ordered to leave follow the court order.
