This is an excellent first hand report from the Boston Review by Jeanne Mansfield, one of the women maced by Deputy Inspector Bologna.
It seems she was a tourist visiting from out of town with her boyfriend and they received a very special greeting from the NYPD's welcome wagon. It gives some context to the events that I didn't have before from any of the "bona fide" press reports. The account of the beat downs of the African American man described in her article - and of the videographer who had the audacity to film the assault and ask for his name - is consistent with the "marching orders" I witnessed. No one was being allowed to question the police. The supervisors were all acting like Eric Cartman in South Park's "Die Hippie Die" episode.
From Mansfield's article:
. . . There was an anger in those white-shirt’s eyes that said, “You don’t matter.” And whether they were just scared or irrational or looking for a target for their rage, there was no excuse for their abuse of authority.
. . . it becomes clear that the white-shirts are a different species. We need to get out of there.
. . . A woman with two little girls in tow walks up to a cop at the end of the block and explains that they just need to get to ballet, but he won’t let them through. The woman seems to accept this, turns to the girls, thinks for a second, then marches straight to the edge of the fence at the corner of the building. A different officer sees them coming and, understanding their situation, lets them through. So Frank and I bolt for the same opening and escape.
. . . I had always thought that people who complained about police brutality must have done something to provoke it, that surely cops wouldn’t hurt people without a really good reason. But they do. We were on the curb, we were contained, we were unarmed. Pepper spray hurts like hell, and the experience only makes me wish I’d done something more to deserve it.
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