The headlines are all over New England media: Keene Police have released photos of suspects from the Pumpkin Fest 2014 riots. Inevitably, critics of liberty activists in Keene, and those who are confused and angry about Cop Block will tend to think liberty-oriented people are anti-police, because we so frequently criticize them for various things. It’s a common misunderstanding.
Many in the freedom movement, including myself, value the idea of protection services, which is what the police are supposed to be. While I’d prefer competition among protection agencies and consent-based funding of the agencies, while we have a monopoly provider, as we do today, I’d prefer they investigate real crimes, and I support them when they do.
Once upon a time the government’s police were referred to as peace officers, but now they are “law enforcement officers”, which is a whole different role and mindset.
During the Pumpkin Fest riots, peace officers would have acted to stop the violence (bottle throwing, fighting), property destruction (destroying street signs, tossing cars and dumpsters), and trespass (people going unwanted, onto private property). Law Enforcement Officers, on the other hand, arrest people for all kinds of nonsense things like open container, underage drinking, cannabis possession, and various other “malum prohibitum” victimless “crimes”. Every moment they spend harassing a young person for drinking or smoking is a moment they can’t be investigating actual crimes that have victims.
Should you, dear reader, want to assist in identifying those culpable of violence and destruction of property, here are the raw videos that I used to make the finished video news package you saw here a few days ago. The vids are uploaded in full 1080p so IDing people will be a little easier than by trying to use the 720p package I put out on the main Free Keene youtube channel. Click to see all the videos on Fr33manTVraw.
If you want to reach Joel Chidester at Keene police with an ID of one of the aggressors you see in the raw videos, you can call him at (more…)
Pumpkin Fest organizer Ruth Sterling made international headlines this weekend when during a live broadcast from her event on Cheshire TV by local newsman Jared Goodell, she stormed onto the set, grabbed at his microphone and threatened to take him off the air. With over 100,000 views and climbing, the original clip is one of the top five most popular videos of all time on the Free Keene youtube channel.
Sterling was interviewed this morning on WKBK by Dan Mitchell where she complained that the original viral clip did not show the context of what made her storm the set. If you recall from the clip, she alleged that Jared had been “inciting” people, “alarming” pumpkin fest attendees, and “self-promoting”. As you can see in this clip which shows what came before the original, he’s doing none of those things – he’s merely reporting what he’s heard and reading a statement from the president of Keene State College. All I’ve edited out of the following clip is the commercial break, which lasted for about 1 minute:
After I got off-the-air from my live Saturday radio program (on which we discussed the initial Pumpkin Fest 2014 riots), I headed back down to the college. At the time, there was a helicopter broadcasting a message to disperse or be arrested. I arrived at the gateway to Keene State College – Winchester St. to witness a huge throng of police marching down the street. I quickly pulled out my camera and began to record:
After walking around the nearest building on campus, in full view of the line of police, activists walked onto campus and right back over to Winchester St. We continued walking west on Winchester and no cops said anything to us there. However, we again went on campus and came back out on Madison St., on the west end of the college. Here there were several police standing around the intersection and one of them told me we couldn’t pass, despite college students walking down Winchester St. immediately behind them. (more…)
Some of the best independent video of the Pumpkin Fest 2014 riots that I’ve seen thus far is on the newly created “Pumpkin Fest” channel, which shows the scale of the mobs of partiers on various streets around the college during the day. Late in the footage night has fallen as the cameraman appears to be on the second story of a home on Winchester St. as he records a throng of police tromping in formation eastbound. I’ll have more from that scene from my vantage point at the traffic circle in a later post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIu8FNXx5aI
The Keene Sentinel’s Kaitlyn Coogan captures a mob of people on Winchester Street taking down signs. A line of armored police with pepperball guns light up the crowd and send them running down the street:
Once again, the college kids are rioting at PumpkinFest. There is raw video and unedited images posted at http://ban.jo/News/US-Canada/20141018/Riots-Break-Out-At-Keene-State-College-Keene/ It appears that police in riot gear have been positioned on Winchester St between Main St and Ralston St. Eye witnesses reported seeing college students throwing beer bottles on Baker St, and dozens of police in riot gear.
