From danno@hundred.acre.wood.net Sun Feb 2 23:58:25 1997 Received: from mx4.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW96.08/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA58920; Sun, 2 Feb 97 23:58:24 -0800 Received: from hundred.acre.wood.net (haw.usfca.edu [138.202.3.188]) by mx4.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW96.12/8.8.4+UW96.12) with ESMTP id XAA23907; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:58:21 -0800 Received: (from danno@localhost) by hundred.acre.wood.net (8.8.2/8.8.2) id XAA26558; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:52:23 -0800 From: Dan Murphy Message-Id: <199702030752.XAA26558@hundred.acre.wood.net> Subject: Re: Critical Mass To: jnachtig@u.washington.edu (J. Nachtigal) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:52:22 -0800 (PST) Cc: uwracing@u.washington.edu In-Reply-To: from "J. Nachtigal" at Feb 2, 97 11:19:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit i would like to kick in my two cents on this whole incident briefly. first of all, in as far as i can recall, jeff's story jives with what i saw. it was total madness. i counted 19 cop cars, a paddy wagon, three helicopters (one was SPD, others belonged to the news) and ambulance. all burning up taxpayers' (read: YOUR) money because some officer went overboard on a peaceful 'protest.' i am not going to completely defend 'our' actions, but there was no reason for the police to react in this manner. i did see one female push the officer who was holding down the guy with the broken wrist. let me tell you, there's nothing quite like the sound of a guy screaming in agony because his wrist is being broken and the hold that the cop is using on him is grinding all those broken bones together. initially, i thought he was yelling for effect, but this notion soon passed when i looked in his eyes. sorry if it sounds cliche, but this was being tortured right in front of us. also, i saw a cop throw a bike at some riders, and they really got fierce when the riders at whom the first officer instructed to be arrested scattered. instead of trying to locate a "leader" or spokesperson for us, they decided to get LAPD on us. i was not injured physically, but i fully regret not having done more. i was tempted to join this melee, but i knew it wouldn't be right. instead i should have tried to find out from the cop why the cyclist was being held and what it is they wanted from us. i am also sorry that there's really no way for the news to portray this incident in any favorable manner. the whole of seattle saw a news story on tv that made us look like lunatics and provacators of violence. this is not the case. i will be back at westlake at the end of the month. hopefully i will see some of you there. keep pedaling, dan .