Scott Olsen survived two tours of Iraq, but his life could be over after being critically injured by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland, The Guardian reports. He's 24 years old.
As we know, Occupy Oakland got incredibly ugly this week as police tried to remove protesters from their camp in front of City Hall by using tear gas, fire crackers, and rubber bullets.
Olsen suffered a head injury on Tuesday night, and is now in critical condition in Oakland's Highland Hospital. Jay Finneburgh, a photographer on the scene, managed to witness and take pictures of the incident. Police policy specifically prohibits the firing of these weapons at a person's head.
"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.
At first, Doctors told Olsen's friends that he was in critical, but stable condition. Now they're being told that his skull has been fractured and his brain is beginning to swell. Neurologists are in the process of determining whether or not he will require surgery.
According to Keith Shannon, a friend who served with Olsen during his time in Iraq, Olsen was hit in the head with a tear gas or smoke canister, and he has the scar on his head to prove it.
Meanwhile, Oakland police admit that they used tear gas and baton rounds, but have denied the use of flash bang grenades. Protesters, however, say they saw police use them, and the more video that comes out, the harder it is to believe the police.
Olsen hails from Wisconsin, served tours of Iraq in 2006 and 2007, and is active in both Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War.
You can see a video of him collapsing and injured below.
I went to a human rights event tonight at which a Washington state senator told us about how her grandson and a bunch of his 4th grade classmates volunteered to do a project on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. In so doing, they learned about the civil rights movement of the late 1950's and 1960's. They learned that the South had been segregated and that people often were subjected to police brutality when they demonstrated for equal rights. They also learned about the Birmingham Alabama Children's Crusade of May 1963. (Something I didn't even know about.) During that demonstration, hundreds of school children were arrested by police (or deputies) each day they tried to march in support of their parents, who were afraid to show public support for desegregation for fear of losing their jobs or being run out of town.
Police brutality is nothing new in the US, nor in the world. And though the police should be given the responsibility for controlling themselves during peaceful demonstrations, I think the story goes much deeper than just a few bad cops. We are seeing that in the non-demonstration-related blow-ups in the NYCPD, too. Those police were goaded to commit crimes on New York citizens by -?- their seniors - or some pressure above or external to the force.