VIDEO: Police Brutality Lawsuits (Bicycle Activists v. Berkeley Police)

This video chronicles some of the major issues in four lawsuits brought by bicycle activists against the Berkeley Police Department, cases which you can read more about at this story:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/01/1563964.php

The video was shown to the Berkeley City Council on Monday, February 10, 2003 before they entered into a closed legal session. Approximately 16-20 supporters showed up on 24-hour notice for the 10-minutes of public hearing and deferred their time to the video. At the end, their faces looked stricken with shock and speechlessness, some of them having experienced one or more of the incidents.

The day before, the video was shown to a full house at La Pena at the 7th annual Bicycle Film Festival. This was the exact two-year anniversary of the most egregious of the incidents, which occurred at a Reclaim the Streets demonstration. It was also the birthday of Tristan Anderson who was brutalized by police and arrested on outrageously trumped up charges on that day, two years ago. Happy birthday Tristan.

The videos proceed factually and chronologically yet do not deal with a large number of incidents and facts which are either too complex, too numerous, not captured demonstratively on video, or dealt with the many who were abused (some very seriously) who are not plaintiffs in the cases. Note that video, though extremely important, never shows everything.

Let me know if you need the video in a different format in order to view it and I will try to post that.