It has been over three years since the face-fracturing beating of Christopher Micklovich by four off duty Manchester police officers, and today it was announced that there was ultimately an admission of culpability from the city. For $200,000, a federal civil rights lawsuit was withdrawn by the plaintiff, with city risk manager Harry Ntapalis revealing that the case was settled privately and was paid off in May of last year. The Union Leader has the story.
The Attorney General’s distasteful exoneration of the four officers, as well as the killing of James Breton in front of his daughter in May of 2011 was what inspired a police accountability rally at the former MPD station house on June 4 of that year. The demonstration against police violence became a demonstration of petty police violence, as around a dozen cameras were confiscated and eight people were kidnapped for offenses such as chalking, standing near chalk, and not following illegal orders fast enough. The Chalking 8 incident only proved the protesters’ point.
How Micklovich’s search for justice in his case snaked through the law enforcement bureaucracy before being resolved by the city further illustrates how detached from responsibility individuals in law enforcement are. Taxpayers are the source of both police salaries and plaintiff payoffs, yet legal immunity shields those tax recipients who are directly culpable from any restitution obligation.
T’was two days ago when the Merry Men, which at the time consisted of myself and Keene native Graham, were approached by a mysterious individual wielding a phone as a videocamera. Though he declines to introduce himself, he was prompt in uploading his video to his youtube channel, Dr David Berman/MusicProDave.
Discussion of the cell phone video occupied a good portion of last evening’s episode of Free Talk Live. For a confrontational encounter, I feel surprisingly relieved of responsibility to add much commentary to accompany what was digitally captured. Mr. Berman’s video, my own raw video, and the raw footage from Graham’s flipcam speak for themselves. The best illustration I have found thus far of the experience was uploaded by the Aqua Keene Parking Force, using all three angles and adding some additional videography skills into the mix.
An article about David’s video was published yesterday to Free Keene.
A couple months later, Kelly, Derrick J, and I teamed up with Miami photojournalist Carlos Miller and paid a visit to the court on official court business. Sheriff Foote refused to return calls from us, which is what he was demanding in his order before we’d be allowed on the public property for which we’re all forced to pay. All three of us were arrested and Carlos was threatened by Sheriff Caleb Dodson.
Due to facing multiple charges from multiple arrests, Derrick made the tough choice of taking a plea, but Kelly and I didn’t have the same weight of charges on us and we knew we were in the right and the trespass order was wrong, so we pressed on. County attorney David Lauren met with us and offered a pretty sweet plea deal – he’d drop the charge to a violation level (it was being charged as a Class A with up to a year in jail the possible penalty) offense and it’d be a $250 fine, suspended on condition of good behavior. I was out of jail on a nine-month suspended sentence from my last conviction and if I received another misdemeanor conviction I could go back to jail for the remaining nine months. Despite that looming threat, I refused the plea, as did Kelly, and the matter was to continue to trial.
Now, several months after that hearing, Keene district court’s judge Edward Burke has made the right decision. He has ruled in an order that the no-trespass orders, as applied to me and Kelly Voluntaryist, are unconstitutional and dismissed the cases against us! (more…)
The Keene police are coming after me for a violation level offense regarding not getting a driver’s license in NH after allegedly establishing “residency”. My arraignment on the charge is this week.
I will be filing the following:
Motion to Dismiss – Claiming right to revolution and pointing out that I am not a resident by their own definitions.
Motion to Recuse – From Brad Jardis’ Burke recusal kit, claiming Burke is biased against liberty activists and should recuse himself from the case.
Following the publication of Aqua Keene Parking Force, another video featuring similar graphic design has appeared on the Fr33manTVraw youtube channel. In this episode, Slavoj Žižek and Charlie Rose discuss the monstrosity of the Stalin regime in historical context. Zizek analyzes the suicidal nature of Stalinism and the implosion of the top-heavy, bureaucratic Central Committee.
The Fr33manTVraw channel recently received one of its largest uploads to date. The 82 minute video is the first third of a compilation of raw footage from our group’s first day on the ground for the NATO summit protests. The videos have been released first to the raw channel, and then to Free Concord’s youtube channel as they are edited and narrated to give the footage context. For those looking for the entire journey of the camera, the raw footage includes practically everything filmed. The previous day’s release, Day Zero, is just over nine minutes edited and just under ten raw. Within the coming weeks, a shortened, finished product will publish from the following day. In the meantime, the raw first segment of Day One: Boots on the Ground is live:
Yesterday truth-out.com posted an update on the NATO 3 case in Illinois, where three travelling protesters still remain caged on state-level charges of domestic terrorism after their apartment was raided by police days before the historic protest weekend.
It has been over three years since the face-fracturing beating of Christopher Micklovich by four off duty Manchester police officers, and today it was announced that there was ultimately an admission of culpability from the city. For $200,000, a federal civil rights lawsuit was withdrawn by the plaintiff, with city risk manager Harry Ntapalis revealing that the case was settled privately and was paid off in May of last year. The Union Leader has the story.
police violence became a demonstration of petty police violence, as around a dozen cameras were confiscated and eight people were kidnapped for offenses such as chalking, standing near chalk, and not following illegal orders fast enough. The Chalking 8 incident only proved the protesters’ point.
At the very beginning of 2012, several activists including myself were 
Shortly thereafter, heroic free-speech attorney 
