Jun 9, 2020

Activists Catalog Nearly 600 Videos of Police Violence Against Protesters

"This kind of documentation serves as a counter-narrative to repeated denials of responsibility from the police, who are routinely claiming protesters were the ones to grow violent first."
By Jake Johnson / commondreams.org
Activists Catalog Nearly 600 Videos of Police Violence Against Protesters

President Donald Trump on Monday applauded U.S. police officers as "great, great people" who "have been letting us live in peace," praise that is starkly at odds with the direct experience of protesters and journalists on the ground who in recent days have witnessed—and, in many cases, captured on video—cops beating and tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators in the streets demanding justice for the killing of George Floyd.

"They've done a fantastic job," Trump, who has repeatedly encouraged police to use excessive force, said during a roundtable with law enforcement officials at the White House. "There won't be defunding. There won't be dismantling of our police. And there's not going to be any disbanding of our police. Our police have been letting us live in peace."

Trump's description of police officers as peacekeepers comes as activists are in the process of compiling an online spreadsheet of videos and images documenting law enforcement brutality against demonstrators across the nation, violence that has galvanized efforts to fundamentally change policing in the U.S.—including by disbanding entire police departments.

Attorney T. Greg Doucette and mathematician Jason Miller teamed up to create the Google spreadsheet—which, as of this writing, has nearly 600 entries—after efforts to compile the footage of police violence on Twitter proved difficult, given the sheer volume of videos that have circulated across social media during the nationwide uprising over Floyd's killing.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has also documented nearly 300 incidents of police violence against members of the press covering the demonstrations.

"This kind of documentation serves as a counter-narrative to repeated denials of responsibility from the police, who are routinely claiming protesters were the ones to grow violent first, or that a man who they pushed to the ground, cracking his head open, simply tripped," wrote VICE's Katie Way. "It also combats media coverage that downplays police violence or even goes to the lengths of using passive voice to obfuscate what the police have done."

On Monday, the Washington Post published a video timeline of the violent police crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square on June 1, an assault that cleared the way for Trump's photo-op at St. John's Episcopal Church.

Asked about police conduct during a briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the administration has "no regrets" and is "not sorry" for the attack on demonstrators.

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Activism   Human Rights   Police & Prisons
Rate this article 
Police & Prisons
A List of Top Lists!
Grow Food Not Lawns!
Trending Videos
Louis Theroux: The Settlers (2025)
62 min - Fourteen years after his first visit and 2011 film The Ultra Zionists, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the West Bank.Louis...
MAGA Push INSANE LIES As MN Shooter Revealed To Be Trump Supporter
14 min - Tim Miller returns with a disturbing update on the targeted political assassination of Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and the attempted assassination of another Democratic...
HyperNormalisation (2016)
161 min - We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random...
Anonymous Issues DIRE WARNING To MAGA | The Kyle Kulinski Show
11 min - Anonymous has released a new video warning about the growing threats posed by Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk. They outline how economic policies, mass firings, and regulatory rollbacks are...
The Century of the Self (2002)
230 min - The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?...
Trump CAVES in Shocking Statement
12 min - He's finally admitted - in Trump's characteristic fashion - mass deportations is a disaster.
Israelism (2023)
84 min - When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young American Jews...
Trending Articles
Racism is a Strategy to Divide & Conquer the Working Class
Indigeneity
Subscribe for $5/mo to Watch over 50 Patron-Exclusive Films
Subscribe $5/mo View All Patron Films

 

Your support keeps us ad-free and financially independent

Our 10,000+ video & article library is 99% free, ad-free, and entirely community-funded thanks to our patron subscribers!


Want to double your impact? You can subscribe for $10/mo or more as an extra show of support.