OLBERMANN: We continue with this special edition of "Countdown," following today's postponement of the confrontation between police and Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in New York, and the police violence that followed as demonstrators marched down Wall Street.
The worst example of that we've seen was this: National Lawyers Guild legal observer Ari Douglas, in some fashion -- at minimum -- hit by a police motor scooter which was then left on his leg while he screamed in agony. Police spokesman Paul Brown, however, insists Douglas was not, in fact, run over by -- nor trapped under -- that scooter.
Brown claiming "Independent witnesses said he purposefully put his legs under the scooter and then claimed falsely he was trapped." A New York Daily News photographer, Joseph Moreno, reportedly having said that -- while the scooter did, indeed, hit Mr. Douglas -- "I saw him sticking his legs under the bike to make it appear he was run over."
An Associated Press photographer has also reportedly claimed that Douglas put his feet under the scooter, which still doesn't explain the blood you saw on Mr. Douglas' face, or on the street. Mr. Douglas has been hospitalized and arrested on charges including felony criminal mischief, obstructing judicial administration, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Yetta Kurland is Ari Douglas' attorney, also a member of the Liberty Park Working Group, which supports Occupy Wall Street legally. Thanks for coming in.
YETTA KURLAND: My pleasure
OLBERMANN: Have you had a chance to speak with your client?
KURLAND: I have not. I have been trying all day. He's been incarcerated for over 12 hours, and I have not been able to speak with him.
OLBERMANN: Do you have any idea the extent of his injuries?
KURLAND: I know that he was forced -- he had to go to a hospital to get emergency services. He had lacerations on his face. You saw the photos. He was bloodied all over his face.
OLBERMANN: And the police theory on this is -- he threw himself onto the ground, and then purposefully stuck his feet under a moving motorcycle or moped -- is probably a closer description -- a moving vehicle?
KURLAND: Vehicle, yes.
OLBERMANN: He purposefully put his feet, one or both of them, under this thing in order to what?
KURLAND: That is a good question. Well, let's start with what we do know. Ari Douglas was a National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter legal observer. He was standing with a number of other professional photographers and journalists. It's important to note he was not part of the protest. He was there in an official capacity to legally observe. He was run into by a motor vehicle, as you described, which unfortunately is one of the tactics NYPD uses to affect crowd control, and was clearly struck by the vehicle.
And then -- instead of being attended to or the police officer helping him, it seems -- as I watch the various videos -- the police officer backed onto Mr. Douglas, pinning him under the motor vehicle. And then, again -- rather than helping him -- dismounted that vehicle, walked away from it, and left him trapped under that vehicle. He was finally able to dislodge from the vehicle, at which point the police officers jumped on top of him and proceeded to injure him so seriously that he had to be rushed to an emergency room. That is not what police officers should be doing in that type of situation.
OLBERMANN: Apart from the idea that everybody's made so far on the show, it's probably a really bad idea to be using not just -- mounted police on horseback are dangerous enough. You put a horse into the equation, you put some sort of combustion engine into it, you are going to get combustion. Apart from that -- if your client is going to be an attorney and he actually did what they're suggesting, wouldn't that have ramifications for his career?
KURLAND: So, let's accept the premise that a trained National Lawyers Guild legal observer found it prudent to, I guess, throw himself under a moving motor vehicle, and then, I don't know, pretend to have injured himself. Although, that's not what I see when I look at the video footage. I see someone clearly in distress, and if you look and listen to the audio, you hear people also around him also distressed over seeing him in distress. But let's assume, for argument purposes, that that's the case. That does not justify bloodying him and injuring him so severely that he requires emergency services. The police are supposed to be here to protect us.
I think it draws an interesting parallel to what our clients are fighting for at Zuccotti Park and Liberty Park for this kind of oversight and balance, and, you know, the NYPD is there to protect and serve the public in situations like getting run over by a motor vehicle. That's when the police step in to protect you.
OLBERMANN: Well, let's just step it one step back. Let's say he's there, and he believes he is about to be run over by the vehicle. This is not a lightweight -- he's not being hit by a bicycle here, going zero miles an hour. Even if he is just panicking and just bawling like a child there, some attention needs to be paid to him at some point.
KURLAND: Sure.
OLBERMANN: All right. Well, we probably have exhausted the absurdity of this. Let me ask you -- you mentioned that you're part of this legal team representing the entire movement -- how is this going to resolve? Because the thing that seems to have gotten ignored in this entire equation is -- the announcement today was, "The cleaning has been postponed." It is not -- "There's not going to be a cleaning. Have a nice time. Merry Christmas." How is this going to be resolved? Is there going to be a negotiation, or how do you think this is going to turn out? Do you know?
KURLAND: That's a really good point. It's unfortunate that we're seeing such serious problems with excessive force in NYPD, and that overshadowed -- I think all of us watched that video over and over today, and I think we're all sitting here this evening, saying, you know, I'm not sure the police have learned their lesson post the Republican National Convention and post 9/11 in terms of handling protesters and dealing with public space -- but I think that that will, unfortunately, overshadow the fact that there was a victory today. The police did not go into Zuccotti Park and shut it down, and that's a good thing, and we're delighted by that.
But at the same time, we're not out of the forest. We're not over that. And it's great the Brookfield folks have put out a memorandum saying that they want to work with us, but we have heard nothing concretely in terms any type of opportunities to sit down or to clearly negotiate. So, that's something that we're looking for.
OLBERMANN: Is there any suspicion that what happened this morning was a ruse just to get witnesses out of the way, that the city will swing by at some point at 4:00 in the morning saying, "Oh, by the way, the owners have changed their mind again. Get out."
KURLAND: Right. I mean, there were a number of tense moments. To say that it was victory today is not to say that we didn't, at different points, worry that all sorts of things were going to happen. But I think that that's exactly right. I mean, it seems very much it was a pretext to basically shut down and stop folks from demonstrating and being in a space -- constitutionally-protected use of the space -- and to be there.
So, you know, and I think you played earlier Mayor Bloomberg's statement, which is basically saying, "Well, you know, we're going to negotiate, or if they don't negotiate, then, basically, we're just going to do the same thing." So, you know, it's great -- again -- that they've put out that they want to do that, but now they need to come to the table.
You know, we’re attorneys -- I'm just one of the attorneys representing these arrestees, we have a whole National Lawyers Guild here working around the clock to do this -- and we need to hear from the folks at Brookfield to actually sit down and come up with some concrete solutions.
OLBERMANN: Otherwise, the next confrontation gets 1,000 times the publicity that this one did, which also would seem to be, at some point, going to occur to the police in the City of New York. Although, clearly, it has not.
Yetta Kurland, the attorney for the injured protester and one of the attorneys representing Occupy Wall Street, great thanks for coming in, and our best to your client.
KURLAND: Thank you.
