Cops in Utah apparently raided a peaceful, outdoor party last Friday using assault weapons, dogs, tear gas, and full riot gear. Here’s one account:

A few “troops” rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone “get the fuck out of here or go to jail”. This is where it got really sticky.

[...]

They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying, guys are cussing… bad scene.

Here’s another account. More accounts here. Looks like the cops made a concerted effort to confiscate any video of the raid. Still, some seems to have found its way out. There’s some video here.

If you follow the message boards, the guy who took the linked video was beaten down and detained — not for breaking the law, but for videotaping the scene. His buddy managed to flee with the camera. The video is scary as hell. Cops in full-combat gear raiding, beating, and detaining peaceful partygoers.

The cops say the promoters didn’t have a permit specific to this kind of large-group gathering. Hence the raid. The promoters say the cops destroyed the permit when the promoters showed it to them at the onset of the raid. The promoters did have private security, insurance, and a host of other permits.

Let’s give the cops the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the promoters didn’t have the proper permit. Apparently, then, a promoter’s failure to obtain a permit is now grounds for a full-scale war operation, smacking around and detaining unarmed teenagers, and attempting to confiscate all evidence of the raid, as if a private field in rural Utah were the streets of fucking Fallujah.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 1:39 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.