Liberty Lockdown: Raid on Zuccotti [LEAKED TARU FOOTAGE]

[midnight]

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Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have released sixty hours of footage of the raid by the New York Police Department against Occupy Wall Street on November 15, 2011. The footage posted is from the NYPD’s Technical Assistance Research Unit (TARU), a surveillance unit that is regularly present at political demonstrations to film police actions. It was posted as a torrent for download late in the evening on September 23, 2012. A tiny sample of the footage, including a statement read by a member of Anonymous, was posted on YouTube.

The computerized voice in the video begins, “On November 15, 2011, the NYPD surrounded Zuccotti Park and proceeded to forcefully dismantle the Occupy Wall Street encampment. As part of this effort, the authorities made all media leave this scene and the only images of what happened came from livestreamer who stayed in the center of the park until his arrest and one other citizen journalist who kept filming on his camera and managed to smuggle his footage after the arrest zone.” It goes on to say a “trove” of video shot by the NYPD itself from “fourteen different angles,” including surveillance cameras, is being released.

The statement in the video also suggests the NYPD tampered with videos in the “mini-archive” of footage released to cover up “atrocities” or acts of police brutality committed. The voice claims a “lot of this police footage” has been edited, “some may say even tampered with to remove the most damning incidents.” It adds there are” obvious edits,” which makes the tampering apparent but, in total, there is enough footage here to “paint a picture of what really happened when the cameras left.”

To use a term writer Glenn Greenwald has used, this act of forcible radical transparency was couched as a response to the NYPD’s decision to deny freedom of the press during the raid. The right people have to view this footage, according to Anonymous, stems from the fact that the police would not let people film or record what was unfolding the day of the raid so, in order for the public to see the truth of what happened, obtaining and releasing the NYPD’s own footage had to be done for the sake of freedom and liberty.


http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/09/24/anonymous-releases-sixty-hours-of-nypd-footage-from-occupy-wall-street-raid/