Pittsburgh police reluctantly stifle dissent at G 20 meetings.

Reports have been coming over the Independent Media Center - Pittsburgh wire (IMC-PA), from the G-infinity coverage team website, indypgh.org, saying that police are being used to stifle dissent to the G20 meeting, a summit of global corporations and wealth-powered governments who gather annually to discuss the future of the global economy, which affects everyone - you and me - while blocking the public from participating.

Pittsburgh police have been consistently harassing the "Seeds of Peace Bus & Everybody's Kitchen," a bus-diving collective attending G20 opposition protests to provide food for the demonstrators. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit for an injunction this week after police revisited the collective several times, searching buses, confiscating buses and materials, arresting people on bogus charges, and all with no warrant, according to Fluxview.com's coverage via IMC-PA.

Vic Walczak, Legal Director with Pennsylvania ACLU, described "a pattern of harassment that goes back about 72 hours after a federal judge on Thursday issued an injunction against the City of Pittsburgh, ordering that they allow the Three Rivers Climate Convergence [3RCC] to be allowed to set up a demonstration at Point State Park."

"The City also, then, agreed to allow 3RCC to have a Sustainability Fair at Schenley Park during the day, uh, and ever since then the folks who are here to provide food support for the demonstrators have been harassed and ... we think their constitutional rights have been violated," Waczak said in a video interview.

The systematic harassment allegedly began on Friday night when a bus the police claimed to be blocking pedestrian traffic while it was parked on private property became the center of police attention. Reports from the wire indicate that police are using petty excuses to search and seize property without warrants repetitively at different locations, which all share one thing in common and that is their presumed participation in protests against the G20.

Residents have expressed dismay at the situation as police are taken away from their normal task of protecting the city from crime, and instead being tasked with disrupting protester logistics and infrastructure, such as voluntary and non-profit food and shelter providers.

Dan SullivanDan Sullivan, a Pittsburgh resident, was hassled by the police on the night of September 20, Sunday, while he sat in his living room. He explained that they entered his home without invitation and without a warrant, questioning him about the extension chord running from his house to his van.

"They were nice about it and everything ... but they asked me if I was from out of town, or if I knew people who were from out of town, and they asked me to identify myself in my own house," Sullivan said.

"I'm wondering: Who's going to protect us from the normal crime that goes on when all these police are preoccupied protecting us from the G20?" Sullivan said in an interview on indypgh.org. "If I were a burglar I would think that this would be ... the perfect couple of days to go do burglary because all the police are busy protecting dignitaries."

In a twist of deviation from the norm of police enthusiasm to participate in repression of dissent, Pittsburgh police officers have been noted in several reports as showing discontent with their operations themselves. They seem reluctant to carry out the task of disrupting dissent, and do not appear to be showing the enthusiasm or belligerence displayed by other police departments during such events to the same degree.

For example, the police who came to hassle Sullivan expressed that they were not thrilled to be doing what they were doing.

"I wish the city council just said [to the G20] 'we're flattered but no thank you' and one of the cops said, 'you and me both' ... I don't think they're any happier about this than I am," Sullivan explained.

Police, in the Flux Rostrum video that features the interview with Walczak, were sent to hassle one of the 'Seeds of Peace' groups again and again, never with any reasonable suspicion or warrant, or anything but gear, riot gear on some occasions.

They came and searched, asked questions and wrote tickets. Then, in the video footage, just as 'Seeds of Peace' activist Mike Bowersox was describing the last visit from the Pittsburgh Police, a column of motorcycle cops showed up and hassled them again, on camera.

After the 'Seeds of Peace' bus was evicted under pressure by one reluctant landowner they moved to a new location, another parcel of private property where they obtained another landowner's permission, and guess who showed up? More police.

In the video footage one interaction between police and food-providers showed police stopping a bus for being parked on the street. Several police cars are seen arriving in the footage, and one officer on the scene expressed a similar discontent with the task the City of Pittsburgh has given them, which came in the form of an excessive response to his call on a minor traffic issue, parking.

"You did'nt order all this," asked the person holding the video camera to one of the officers in charge on the scene, who replied "no."

"And I speak the King's English, you understand?" He said, hinting at his discomfort with making a huge scene out of a parking infraction.

"If you didn't order it, who did, sir?" The camera-person asked.

"People ... who are of questionable confidence ... and that's being as politically correct as I can be, and I'm a Republican," the officer replied.

The Pittsburgh council has been pressuring police and property owners to harass and evict, respectively, anyone planning to protest the G20 under the guise of their conducting dangerous activities of some kind. In reality they are food providers whose activity is simply cooking food to be eaten.

"Everything that is going on is suspect and really does not have a proper legal basis," Walczak argued in another interview on the same footage.

Police also arrived in excessive numbers, the same as they have with most of these incidents, on Sunday, at the Landslide Community Farm. The incident was reported by Falicia, a witness to the scene who described two simultaneous incidents. One was police conducting a search on the property, videotaping and photographing. The police said they were told the building was abandoned and those living there would be evicted by city inspectors. There was also, on another part of Landslide's property, police conducting allegedly illegal searches.

Landslide members did provide proof and tax information showing that the property is owned legally and is not abandoned property. After the ACLU legal observers arrived the reason for the police presence was changed to an issue regarding tires sitting on their land.

The scene was basically of a bunch of police vans and dozens of police flooding the property to inquire about a few tires that they couldn't determine on the spot were or were not some kind of code violation.

With police themselves showing discontent with their task and disbelief in their own reasoning in several incidents, the essence of the will to stifle dissent is attributable to City Council and their G20 guests' coordinators most of all.

Keep up with what is happening in the streets of Pittsburgh, including instant updates, video and audio footage, and interviews, all on the excellent interactive newswire set up with IMC-PA at indypgh.org/g20 all week long!