Our friends at Pittsburgh City Paper have roundup stories and a comprehensive blog section of coverage from the recent G-20 summit in their town (with some video, including this shot of police roughing up a protester). Much of the coverage focuses on the arrest of more than 100 people at a demonstration last Friday in the Oakland neighborhood near the University of Pittsburgh.
A web site called What Happened at Pitt?!?! has been launched by students there to focus attention on alleged police misconduct during the protest. As the web site asks, certainly rhetorically, "Why were we beaten? Why were we shot at? Why were we arrested? Why were we treated as criminals in our own neighborhood?" Students are holding a rally tonight called "Oakland Unites for First Amendment Rights."—-
It's clear from reading these reports that big city police departments continue to deal badly with these sorts of large-scale government meetings. Obviously they pass intelligence along to the next city that's hosting a economic summit meeting, but lessons never seem to be learned about striking the proper balance between securing the meeting area and allowing area residents to live, work and protest.
The scenes described remind me all too well of Cincinnati's own brush with economic summit police misbehavior, the TABD Conference in 2000.
