by George Rasley
Police in the Far-Left enclaves of Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon had to deal with riots created by violent Far Left so-called Anti-Fascist (Antifa) thugs over the weekend.
Now, according to our friends at chicksonright.com the Berkeley police department posted the arresting information via Twitter, with Department’s tweets including arrested individuals’ names, ages, city of residence, as well as the charge on which they were arrested.
According to the UK’s Guardian, the Berkeley PD said it had arrested 20 people on Sunday at an “alt-right” rally, citing many of them for “possession of a banned weapon” or “working with others to commit a crime.” Most, if not all, of the people arrested were counter protesters, according to lawyers and activists working with the “demonstrators.”
Fox News reported that Berkeley police characterized the riot as being caused by “an extremist element among a large group” that damaged 21 city vehicles, setting one on fire, and slashed their tires. The group also set fires in trash bins.
Keep in mind that in addition to sundry assaults and acts of vandalism, these thugs also trashed the local Marine Corps recruiting office (naturally no Marines were present). Videos taken during the “protest” also showed masked Antifa protesters smashing the windows of a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office and another demonstrator sucker-punching someone.
However, exposing their identities seems to have touched a cord with the usually masked thugs, who rely on covering their faces to protect them from being identified when they commit assault, arson, vandalism and various other crimes.
Here are a few samples of the now deleted Berkeley PD tweets:
Andres Gonzalez, 35, of Oakland, was arrested at Civic Center Park on five counts of carrying a banned weapon.
Caitlin Boyle, 27, of Oakland, was arrested for working with others to commit a crime.
Berkeley Police announced the arrests, including three Antifa thugs on weapons charges: Jason Wallach, 41, Kate Brenner, 69, and Kristen Edith Koster, 50. They also arrested Bella Podolsky, Javier Cruz-O’Connell, Ericka Sokolower-Shain, Jamie Hill, David Chou, Freddy Martinez, Maria Lewis, and Thomas Parker along with others.
Here’s the entire list of arrests from the Berkeley PD website.
As of early Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for the local district attorney told the Guardian that Berkeley police had not yet brought the cases to prosecutors for consideration.
“This is very disturbing,” Veena Dubal, a University of California law professor and former Berkeley police review commissioner told the UK’s Guardian. “It seems like a public-shaming exercise, which is not the role of the police department … They are making it really accessible for folks who might wish these people harm to locate them.”
Berkeley’s mayor, Jesse Arreguín, told the Guardian that he was not involved in the decision to publish mugshots and would not directly answer questions about whether he supported the choice. He said he planned to talk to police officials about it: “We need to look into this and discuss whether this is an appropriate practice going forward.”
According to the Guardian, before the rally, the city issued broad rules prohibiting “weapons” in the area and “anything … that can be used for a ‘riot’”. Officials also banned protesters from wearing masks. The enforcement of the new rules appeared to have driven many of the arrests.
“It really seemed to us like the Berkeley police department was there to … target the anti-fascist protesters,” said Jay Kim, executive director of the Leftist National Lawyers Guild’s local chapter (NLG), which is assisting those arrested. Police appeared to be taking in protesters “at random” and for arbitrary reasons, in some cases with spurious claims about weapons, she claimed.
A total of 21 people contacted the NLG, which confirmed the “vast majority” were anti-fascists, said Kim. Some were bailed out and others remained incarcerated. One person was arrested for bringing poles to put up a sign, according to Kim.
The UK Guardian’s Sam Levin, who appears to be all in for the Antifa thugs, and their cause, claimed that the Berkeley PD’s decision to post mugshots was akin to what the Guardian calls “the increasingly common rightwing tactic of ‘doxxing’ anti-fascists, meaning publishing people’s private information online as part of an intimidation effort.”
The Guardian seems happily ignorant of the fact that the origin of using public records to intimidate political opponents began with the Left’s campaign against those who signed the petition for California Proposition 8, the ballot initiative calling for marriage to be between one man and one woman.
In that case those who signed the petition were systematically hunted down and harassed, including getting them fired from their jobs.
“It’s clear that the cops have chosen sides and that they think of the left as their enemies,” said Sam Menefee-Libey, a Washington DC activist. “The cops are doing something that Nazis do all the time, which is dox people.”
So harassing people who have committed no crime is OK, but posting the mug shots of people who were actually arrested for allegedly committing real crimes – that’s off limits to the violent Left and their apologists.
All we can say is we hope “that the cops HAVE chosen sides” and decided that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that more doxxing of Antifa is the best way to stop this infection before the violence they advocate kills the body politic.
