Ferguson, USA police arrest wheelchair user for videography

This video from the USA says about itself:

Heather (MissJupiter1957) shortly after being released from jail at the Ferguson Police Department on 2.9.15.

Ferguson: wheelchair user Heather De Mian arrested at six-month protest

Videographer who live-streams events in Ferguson taken to police station as people gather to commemorate shooting of Michael Brown

Jon Swaine in New York

Tuesday 10 February 2015 06.16 GMT

Police arrested a videographer in a wheelchair in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday night during a small demonstration to mark six months since an officer shot and killed Michael Brown.

Heather De Mian, who has livestreamed the months of protests over the death of Michael Brown, was among seven people detained by officers outside the Ferguson police department, according to observers.

Several photographs taken outside the department and posted to Twitter on Monday evening showed De Mian on the ground beside her wheelchair.

Another showed a police official appearing to take her wheelchair inside the headquarters.

Earlier in the evening De Mian had been broadcasting via UStream live from Canfield Drive, the residential side-street about two miles from the police department where Brown was shot by officer Darren Wilson following an altercation on 9 August.

People gathered at the station in support of De Mian, who was later released and gave her version of events:

After getting knocked out of w/c, cop stole my phone out of holder, & hit me in face, knocking glasses 10ft into street.

6:56 AM – 10 Feb 2015

It was not immediately clear what De Mian, who is better known to Ferguson activists by the screenname @MissJupiter1957, was accused of doing wrong. De Mian has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder of the body’s connective tissue.

Onlookers said some protesters were arrested for doing graffiti in chalk. Slogans about Wilson and tributes to Brown were photographed on a wall outside the police headquarters. Neither Ferguson’s police chief Thomas Jackson nor a spokesman for the department responded to a request for comment late on Monday.

Successive nights of clashes between officers in riot gear and protesters took place outside the police headquarters in November when a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson. The US Department of Justice has been conducting an inquiry into whether federal civil rights charges should be brought against Wilson. No charges are expected.

From the Los Angeles Times in the USA:

Missouri cities, including Ferguson, sued over ‘grotesque’ jail conditions

February 9, 2015

The city of Ferguson, Mo., and another northern St. Louis suburb have been accused of maintaining “grotesque” jail conditions for motorists locked up because they couldn’t pay fines for minor legal infractions, according to two federal class-action lawsuits.

The lawsuits against Ferguson and the city of Jennings describe conditions in which crowded cells are smeared with mucus, blood and fecal matter and inmates are denied basic hygiene supplies and medical care.

Some residents spend “three, four, five” weeks in the jails, not to serve a criminal sentence but because they can’t afford to pay a fine to get out, said Brendan D. Roediger of the St. Louis University School of Law.

“They’re not sitting [in jail] because they’ve been sentenced to jail for that long,” Roediger told the Los Angeles Times. “They’re sitting because they can’t pay to get out.”

Class Action Case Filed Against St. Louis and Jennings by Black Residents. The case is pursuing disproportionate tickets, jail and fines, the plaintiffs believe it a financially motivated, says Glen Ford – February 10, 2015: here.

Driving While Poor Is The New Driving While Black. Good Old Days Of Debtors Prison Making A Comeback In Ferguson, MO: here.

Ferguson alternative spring break offers college students chance to take action. Activist leaders in Missouri hoping to sign up 250 people for week of ‘community service and civic engagement’ as movement moves beyond protests and ‘die-ins’: here.

Ferguson Solidarity Tour in Britain: here.

Helen Redmond explains how the “war on drugs” put police departments on the path toward viewing themselves as occupying armies in Black and Latino communities: here.