Under a Gibbous Moon

Here is another video coming out of the protests on Wall Street in New York City, in this video, a reporter and camera man for the local Fox affiliate are injured by a police officer during the protest.

One thing that I found interesting in this video is the police officer’s (captain in the white shirt) use of force. Most police, including the NYPD train with what is known as the Force Continuum (or Continuum of Force, etc). It details how violence escalates and which actions are to be used and it what order. I could not find an online source for the NYPD’s guide (though it is apparently on page 7 of the NYPD Academy textbook), typically you are supposed to use OC spray (pepper spray) before you start striking people with batons. This is because OC spray does no lasting harm while a baton can cause bruises, broken bones, and internal bleeding.

The other thing I found interesting is how the officer is swinging almost at random, frequently striking people in the back who are either trying to escape or are unaware of his presence.

On a final note with regards to the pepper spray itself. According to the Report of the Pepper Spray Committee (pdf), NYPD Patrol manual states that: “They are taught not to fire the spray from within three feet of subjects, not to use the spray on a windy day, and not to use OC in group settings or for crowd control; they are trained to fire a maximum of two one-second bursts of the spray.”

Occupy Wall Street, the protest against the economic policies that allowed Wall Street to destroy this countries economy (and still benefit from it), turned ugly this past weekend as the NYPD started getting violent with some of the protesters. This hasn’t been covered well in the media but here is a collection of some of the videos that I have found of what is going on.

Looks like the NYPD is trying to run through all the goodwill they built up after 9/11.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t watch a lot of TV as I don’t have cable or even a TV antenna. Because of this, I was only tangentially aware of the recent Old Spice (which is apparently cool to wear again) ad campaign. And by tangentially, I mean I’ve never actually seen one of the ads, but I’m pretty sure that this is funnier.

Hat tip to The Firearm Blog

It’s too bad the lyrics to this music video are unintelligible, maybe they would provide some sort of context for what the hell is going on and why the hell someone is keeping a huge rocky mountain oyster as a pet. It’s also possible the the lyrics are quite clear and the horror on the screen simply blocks it out. All I know is that this music video is a textbook example of what is known as “shooting yourself in the foot”.

Via Great White Snark, whose penchant for rocky mountain oysters is legendary.