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“Occupiers say police arrived suddenly before a protest march, pouring from vans to order residents of 540 NW Seventh Street into the building’s courtyard before searching both people and apartments,” huffingtonpost.com reports. “Three Occupy [Miami] members were reportedly handcuffed before being released; three others were taken to police headquarters for questioning. No one was arrested.” So what was that all about? “They said that they had gotten a tip that we had ‘long guns’ and were going to use them at our protest,” Occupy member Thomas Parisi told Miami New Times. “But we are a peaceful movement and told them that we had no intention of doing anything like that.” Anonymous tip, SWAT team, a little ride downtown for some questioning and, you’ll love this bit . . .

A photo taken by one member who was detained suggested he was taken to MPD’s Special Investigations Unit, which houses the Narcotics Unit, the Intelligence and Terrorism Unit, and the Joint Interdiction Unit. Miami Police have not yet responded to requests for comment, and the FBI would not confirm one eyewitness report that FBI agents were also present.

“It is not uncommon for the FBI to assist local law enforcement,” FBI Special Agent Michael Leverock told HuffPost. “In this case, we are not going to discuss if this is one of those instances.”

When the Occupy movement was in full flower, TTAG journeyed down to the protestors and found the majority of those interviewed were in favor of the Second Amendment. Say what you will, but if the left joins centrists and the right in antipathy for militarized police, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Or, as Reverend Wright testified, the chickens have come home to roost.

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39 COMMENTS

  2. No one was arrested but three were taken to police headquarters for questioning? If they went against their will, they were arrested. If they went voluntarily, they’re idiots.

    • Or they were young people who have never had negative encounters with authorities. When people have done nothing wrong, they often think the best course of action is to cooperate with the police. I hope that they talk to lawyers so the next time they face a situation like this, they do not do something idiotic.

      Also, why should Americans be upset about things like this? Heck, no one seems to be all that upset about the killing of US citizens without judicial review, nor have I heard much outrage about indefinite detention of US citizens without charges.

  3. “Peaceful Movement”? You mean the one rife with rape, violence, destruction of property, and that has directly destroyed the livelihood of hundreds?

    Yeah, right. I’m pretty far from a proponent of militarized police, but to not act on a tip about a group with a history of antisocial and generally reprehensible behavior would be downright negligent.

    And.. a Reverend Wright quote? Really? How about the rest of that particular speech, for context.

    • Use of the phrase “rife with” more than alludes to a belief that such activities were commonplace, perhaps encouraged, and an every day occurrence.

      While it’s foolish to deny that such things did take place, to say that “the movement” (as opposed to individual members of individual protest sites) was “rife with” those things is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst.

      • The rapes in question number in the double digits, and those are the ones that have actually been reported. To your mind, what number of rapes associated with a given organization would constitute “rife”, then? What number is just spiffy-tastic? Are 50 okay, but 51 just a bridge too far?

        What is truly disingenuous, and morally bankrupt to boot, is to attempt to justify any of that nonsense under the guise of freedom of speech and assembly.

        I have peaceably assembled for the purpose of petitioning the government. When I left, there weren’t any rape victims, and pressure washers were not needed to clean up the place.

        • I have been looking for actual statistics that might be used to support or contradict your description of the protesters. I see numerous bloggers talking about violence and destruction, but I am not able to find anything that truly points one way or another as far as the amount of violence or the number of sexual assaults. The NYPD did argue that the number of gun crimes went up because of the Occupy movement, but that seems a bit suspect. Could you point me to a definitive source?

              • Links to mainstream media sites are aggregated in the post. Read it or not. You asked, I gave you a repository with 417 cited incidents.

              • OMG those kids are bad, look at some of those incidents! They were hanging a fucking flag or causing concern amongst jews, they must be terrorists!

                Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers Wows Occupiers

                Chicago: 10/25/2011 — Ayers Coaches #OccupyChicago, Callsg for School ‘Occupations’

                10/26/2011/ — Occupy Protests Have Jewish Leaders Concerned
                Wash DC:

                10/27/2011 — OccupyDC Leftists Provoke Police – Hang Flag on Top of DC Statue

            • Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers Wows Occupiers

              Chicago: 10/25/2011 — Ayers Coaches #OccupyChicago, Callsg for School ‘Occupations’

              10/26/2011/ — Occupy Protests Have Jewish Leaders Concerned

              Wash DC: 10/27/2011 — OccupyDC Leftists Provoke Police – Hang Flag on Top of DC Statue

              Wow, those are some bad ass kids, they had the audacity to hang a flag! Your 421 incidents, for the most part arent “incidents”, and the articles link to blogs such as Gateway Pundit, which due to the obviously strong bias, in no way could be considered journalism, and is at most an opinion piece. Think of it this way, is the stuff at MoveOn.org blog “journalism” or is it “opinion”?

        • Mr. Lion:

          Let’s consider an organization rife with rape: The U.S. Armed Forces:

          http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/09/rape-us-military

          http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-4872713.html

          It’s true that a lot of bad things went down in the Occupy camps – here in Portland, the camp was right next to the jail, so when people got out, they went right to the hippies with the free chow. In L.A., the cops would actually drive released criminals to the Occupy site and drop them off. Seriously. Here in Portland, the Occupiers actually caught a couple of perps and turned them over to the cops.

          For better or worse, the Occupy movement embraced a lot of mentally ill homeless sort of people. When these people acted out, they were reported, hence the high incidence of reported sexual assault. Note that the cops were watching these people every second. The notion that somehow leftists and populists are a bunch of rapists is absurd. You may be right about the mess, though here in Portland, it seems to be already cleaned up.

          • Hmm, so let’s play stats, shall we? There are roughly 3 million in the military today (active and reserve).

            The link you provided mentioned 2,974 reported “rapes and sexual assaults”. And remember, this is based on the attacks that are reported (at least some of which are false accusations). That’s an incidence rate of .1%. That is, one-tenth of a percent. The Pentagon said in 2008 that 80% of rapes go unreported. Well, that bumps your percent up to: .5%, which is half of a percent. Higher than the national population? Absolutely, and it’s terrible. But I’ll bet you a week’s pay that the incident rate in occupy camps is higher than that of the US military.

            • That would be .5% per year, if you assume that someone who is the military for a career, and has been there for 20 years, then they have a 10% chance of having been raped. Its just not female victims, DoD acknowledges there are plenty of male victims. Think about that, 1 in 10 career service members have or will be raped. Yet for some reason, for an organization full of rapists, manslaughters, murders, and sadists, people consider them to be good and upstanding people, and worship them as heros.

              Now what about the incidents of friendly fire or hazing, and how often they go unreported? What about the murder of civilians which is colloquially called collateral damage? I would feel far safer as a racist white guy in a Occupy Oakland/Detroit/Gary tent city then I would in an state side military barracks.

    • Whether that tip was sufficient to legitimate the conduct described depends on the credibility of the source of the tip indicated through reliable previous information or other indicia of credibility, the sufficiency of the description of the suspects, and the provision of adequate facts to suggest that a crime was afoot. It sounds more like they just rounded up some young folks who didn’t object. Wall Street is occupied, btw: Occupied trying to convince us they don’t view clients as muppets to be sheared, for example.

    • I agree with you about the Occupy group. They’re violent and many rapes have taken place, but I doubt very much weather Miami PD would even send a squad car if they received an anonymous tip about a rape or drug use.

  4. Perhaps my analysis is off target, but this situation is light years apart from actions of a true ‘police state’.

    An example of the latter is the event that happened in DC last year, where a veteran was ordered out of his home by Washington D.C. SWAT and arrested before an illegal search of his home was undertaken. The chief who ordered the raid and search allegedly was quoted to state that “he didn’t have time for any Constitution crap.”

    This story is a group of protesters who cooperated with nosy law enforcement. Cops being cops, they’ll ask questions any time they can. After all, some pretty bad guys historically have been caught based on the most casual of discussions. Thus if a cop asks permission to search your home, or your car, or request that you come to the station for a ‘chat’, it would behoove an aware citizen to decline such requests. If the police had a warrant , they wouldn’t be asking nicely so much as shoving an MP5 in your face just prior to one being cuffed.

  5. Is there nothing one could do to prevent a warrantless search? I mean, what if one of us was minding our own business and these Occupy guys showed up and they started searching apartments. That is none of my business, and certainly none of the officers business. I have arms in my house. I’m pretty sure we all do, with the exception of the few lookie loos and MikB of course.

    I would not comply with the officers request. I’m not exiting my apartment. I’m not allowing a search of my person or place of residence, and I most certainly would record the incident using a phone or camera.

    Did they break doors down? Did they ransack the place? The fact this wasn’t recorded until after they had been surrounded and seated on the perking lot perimeter is ridiculous.

    For a semi tech savvy group they sure dont know when to start recording.

    • Or maybe they know exactly when to start recording. And when to turn cameras off to avoid any bad PR.

  6. Only a matter of time before we have another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Its sad but I know if happens to a center or right leaning group the media will ignore it. Hopefully, this being an occupy group, some media scrutiny will applied. It really says something when a issue like this can unite just about ever shade of the political spectrum. I just hope no one gets shot.

  7. I keep forgetting which bunch of losers I’m supposed to root for. Screw it — a plague on both their houses.

  10. Robert, where did you get the notion that the “right” is opposed to the police state? Most people I know have great respect for and even affection for their oppressors. Where I live, Romney/Gingrich/Santorum voters worship anyone who wears a government issued costume.

  11. Finally, a voice of reason. I am a devout liberal, gun-loving American. I believe in the 2nd amendment, but I don’t believe in Republicans. I am not rich, therefore I cannot vote for those who protect the rich at the expense of everyone else.

    • Both Democrats and Republicans have no problems being bought out by corporate power. Neither one cares about the little guy.

    • al,

      The two big parties: Democrats AND Republicans are two opposite sides of the same baseless cheap metal coin. One gets out of bed on the Left side and the other on the Right side. Just as one example, during and just after the collapse of the last bubble 2008 it was revealed that four out of five of the top Congressional members who received the most monetary support from Wall Street and the Banking Industry were Democrats, not Republicans. Your liberal Democrat party is marginally leading and pushing America slightly more and faster into a police-nanny state. I could just as easily attack the Republican Party yet I’m focusing on the Democrat Party because of what you wrote. Wake-up; stop demonizing just one party and defending the other. That is immature. The two parties are the most dangerous and destructive organized criminal gangs in America.

  12. RF, I truly appreciate your effort at outreach, tongue-in-cheek though it may be (you tell me). I’m about to give up. TTAG is not a pro-2A website. It is a Right-wing site with a 2A focus.

    • I’m not sure you can say TTAG stands anywhere politically. We have over a dozen writers, over a hundred regular commentators and I do not edit either for their political perspective. Obviously, we attract a certain type of writer and commentator. Call it institutional bias. But there are plenty of left-leaning commentators hereabouts whose opinions are left unmolested. And ALL sides are welcome.

      More to the point, the editors, writers and most of the commentators are as solidly pro-2A as anyone can be. There are thousands of pro-2A articles and comments on this site. Literally. I’d like to get original anti-2A material here (as opposed to blogging gun control advocates’ opinions), but that outreach hasn’t been terribly successful. For various reasons.

      Anyway, if we’re missing something, please feel free to write it and submit it for publication. Ping [email protected].

      • TTAG does a great job (and I ought to get off my ass and write something), don’t get me wrong, I was speaking more of the general vibe of commentors. It’s more a comment on the 2A movement in general – I wish it could be a bigger tent. I appreciate that many here see the way that all branches of government are running roughshod over the entire constitution. For now, 2A is making progress, but 4A and 1A, not so much. I think more people are coming around to this holistic view, and moving away from the “as long as I’ve got my guns” attitude toward citizenship. The way things are going, the Left and the Right won’t have much to debate about. We fiddle while Rome burns.

        Forgive my grumpiness.

    • To be fair, RF does give a fair amount of leeway when it comes to non-right wing comments. I think i’m a perfect example of this, if you don’t belive me go back to Brad Kozak’s 9-11 anniversary article, and read my comments. There may be a disproportionate amount of right wing readers/commentators, but that is completely different.

      If comments dont make it up, its usually because of their crappy anti-spam system, that will frequently eat a comment without warning. You’ll need to do a binary search to figure out what is triggering it.

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