This is what some of the laptops the NYPD confiscated from OWS protesters last Tuesday look like.
The mayor says OWS protesters can pick their stuff up at a Sanitation Department facility on West 57th Street up until Tuesday.
Gothamist reports what one protester who went to pick up some computer equipment found:
A reporter followed Isaac Wilder, a member of OWS' Signal Corps, which was charged with providing Wi-Fi in Zuccotti, as he entered the Sanitation building to collect his property taken in the raid: a backpack, a nine-foot tall tower containing wireless routers, and $5,000 in cash. No press are allowed in the building, and Wilder describes the mound of personal affects as "a large heap of damp, mangled, cat-piss smelling stuff." He finds all the broken computers, laid out in a row.
A Sanitation rep tells Motherboard that he's "not surprised" that the laptops are damaged, and neither are we considering that witnesses to the raid described the "crunching" sound of the contents of Zuccotti Park being dumped into truck beds. Wilder didn't end up finding any of his property; it appears to be lost along with the items from the library, medical tent, and other portions of the park that accrued two months worth of resources.
Such a nice respectful nighttime raid by the NYPD goons.
And thanks, Mr. Mayor, for saving their stuff.
See you in court, asshole.
So, how can they justify keeping the Press out of the building? I wouldn't think they could use their bogus public safety argement THIS time.
ReplyDeleteI don't think they do try to justify it. It's simply another example of a media blackout. That's why all the cameras and phones people have to take photos and videos has become so important.
ReplyDeleteFor a while, most of this equipment has been used by the State against citizens (think all the cameras downtown below Chambers Street or London, where everywhere is "cameraed".)
But this works two ways now too - the UC Davis video of the police coldly, methodically brutally pepper-spraying seated students contradicts their official statements that police were in danger from the protesters.
I suspect that similar video Tuesday night during the NYPD Zuccotti raid would have shown much of the same. But Bloomberg and Kelly made sure there was very little of that kind of video.
They know, man - control the images.