Utah Party Raided: Civil Rights Violated

[Civrock]

And the type of drug you're on?

[bronto]

and a picture of you with all your raver gear on

[Croosch]

And the type of drug you're on?

I see you're still trying to be funny with you're dumbass comments...

and a picture of you with all your raver gear on

That I can do... if somebody gets a picture of me at my next party and puts it online I'll be glad to show you.

[X1|MARCO]

heh - i just don't know what to say - or think... really but um he has a point but in these situations people tend to set themselves up (example) in the video after camo guys take stage, the one kid flipps the camo guy a bird, heh... well you can bet he's one of the ass kicked ravers when its all said and done. See, even if you have freedoms and liberties... you must not flaunt them or take advantage of them or... YOU WILL LOSE THEM. For instance... I play gigs (rock) almost every weekend, from clubs to large events (8,000 - 12,000) never once has anything like that happened, and let me tell you... there were certainly illegal things goin on, but, wasnt flaunted. You know ive been standing outside a club on break, having a hootie before and the local cops pass or walk right by, hell even wave or stop to talk, and because we are acting like adults and not spoiled kids (that think they have bought their immunity with a $20 rave ticket) they leave us alone. Freedom is perceived and earned  - take that for granted and boom.

On the other hand Krush, it was a bit harsh... good luck

[Croosch]

The attack started when they dropped in from helicopters, not when the kid flipped him off. It would not have been brought to this level at a rock concert or in a club no matter how many drugs were being used was my main point.

All they would have had to do is ask the promoters to shut her down and they would have made it happen.

[Civrock]

And the point of the "attack" was to surprise the people and mak sure nobody can run away or hide "something".

[Croosch]

They sure got a big surprise when they were teargased and tackled by K-9 units... nobody deserves that, not even if you're on drugs... or rather, especially if you're on drugs, it'll only cause more chaos. Instead they send everybody home on a moments notice, even all the people who are still high... which is the worst thing they could have done.

[Civrock]

How naive are you?

[Croosch]

how is that being naive? so kids on drugs while driving is safe?

I know from experience that, if it comes down to shutting down a party, the best thing to do is stop the party and let the kids cool off before making their way home... instead they forced everybody out with teargas.

[Croosch]

The Salt Lake Tribune:

Ravers say cops were too rough making bust
Utah County: Sheriff defends the actions, denies wrongdoing
By Michael N. Westley

Partygoers at a rave in Spanish Fork Canyon that was busted by police Saturday night say officers used brutal and excessive force to clear the crowd.
   As many as 90 police officers from several agencies, including SWAT members and major crimes investigators, stormed the DJ-driven dance party around 11:30 p.m. dressed in full SWAT gear and holding automatic weapons.
   A helicopter announced the police presence as it crested a nearby hill and began shining a spotlight on the outdoor dance area, said 19-year-old Scott Benton of Logan.
   "The cops just came in wearing full Army [camouflage]. It was basically brute force," Benton said. "I had a gun put in my face and was told to get out of there."
   Standing in a crowd of people near the main stage, Alisha Matagi says she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was thrown to the ground, punched, kicked and handcuffed by police.
   "I did absolutely nothing wrong," she said. Matagi was arrested with about 60 other partyers. She was booked into the Utah County Jail on the suspicion of resisting arrest and failing to obey an officer, according to police records.
   About 1,000 people were cleared in less than a half-hour from the private ranch owned by the Childs family in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon, rave promoters said. Several party attendees told The Salt Lake Tribune that officers barked orders fraught with profanity, beat people to the ground and used their weapons to intimidate the crowd.
   A video of the opening moments of the bust, taken by Jeffrey Coombs and snatched from the ground by another partier as Coombs was tackled, shows the officers using force on individuals as they took over the crowd.
   Utah County Sheriff James Tracy said Monday that he had seen the video and called it an accurate representation of the bust.
   "I stand by everything that was done there that night. We did use some force. It was appropriate and necessary to take those who were fighting us into custody," Tracy said.
   He also said that no officers used profanity as they conversed with partiers, nor did they punch, kick, Mace or use tear gas on any of the attendees.
   "It's all a lie and we refute every word of that," said Tracy.
   But the video clearly shows an officer using profanity as he demands the music be turned off.
   "Turn that off. Turn that music off or I'll take your ass to jail," the officer can be heard saying to the DJ. In the video, the area where people had been dancing transforms into what looks like a battlefield with groups of officers surrounding ravers on the ground, guns drawn and assault dogs in tow.
   "I saw a girl tackled to the ground for no reason because she told them not to touch her. It was vicious," Benton said.
   Police said the party Saturday night was the third event held in Utah County during the past month. The all-night parties attract a host of illegal activities including drug use, theft, sexual assault and underage drinking, according to Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Darren Gilbert.
   Saturday's party, named Versus II, had been tracked by police for several weeks, Gilbert said. Police planned the bust when they discovered that the rave's promoters had not filed for a mass gathering permit through the County Commission office.

   
Rave Raid Video
See amateur video of the raid
.wmv file
.mov file


To have more than 250 at an event without that permit is a violation of the law, Gilbert said.
   Party promotor Brandon Fullmer said he purchased a mass gathering permit through the Utah County Health Department about three weeks ago. The purchase of that permit, which ensures water, sanitation and medical services, was confirmed by County Health employee Jay Stone.
   Fullmer did not know that a similar permit, which requires a security plan and event details, needed to be acquired.
   The sheriff had little sympathy for the promoters or those at the rave. "They did nothing more than ensure this was a venue for illegal drug use and consumption," Tracy said. Officers confiscated ecstasy, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine and mushrooms, he said.
   Among those arrested for drug possession were several security guards hired by Fullmer to patrol the event. Guards at security check points confiscated alcohol and drugs as ravers filed into the party, Fullmer said.
   "[Security guards] have no legal statutory authority to take and hold controlled substances. It's against the law for them to have them," Tracy said.

http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_2964938

[onwig]

You ever thought about the other side of it krush?,  those 90 police officers (who had orders) had to try and break 3000 people up... someone can do the maths ratio to that... most of those police officers probably had families, they have their lifes and other responsibiliities, to go into a rave where most of the young people would have been on drugs or mb not w/e, but anything could've happened, someone could have been carrying a gun, knife's etc etc, they had their reasons to break this thing up, they went in with heavy force, so what?

Krush, if you worked for that police force in like 5yrs time, and your job that night was to break 3000 people up and tell them to go home... how would you have tackled that situation? with a nice sign saying "Could everyone please go home, kthx, cya" oh and "Could all the dealers please line up here so we can arrest you".

 

[crypt]

I don't see why they couldn't hover in a helicopter over telling people to go home, if people weren't cooperating, then they could go in. At least let the innocent people that would cooperate clear out before using brute force.

[Croosch]

I don't see why they couldn't hover in a helicopter over telling people to go home, if people weren't cooperating, then they could go in. At least let the innocent people that would cooperate clear out before using brute force.

And that's the thing... this would have worked and this was my main arguement.

Krush, if you worked for that police force in like 5yrs time

Let's not even think that way, I'll be sure to never work for any branch of the US government.

how would you have tackled that situation? with a nice sign saying "Could everyone please go home, kthx, cya

No, I would have sent the Chief Deputy up to the producer and have him tell the producer that the party must be shut down now or we'll have to send the 90 members of the swat team in that are waiting outside.

oh and "Could all the dealers please line up here so we can arrest you".

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's not about the drugs, if it were about the drugs cops would be raiding Rock Concerts, Clubs and High Schools all over the country. Last time I was at the club I would say at least 40% of the people there were on ecstasy just by looking at them and I know of some who were on Marijuana... but the city makes money off the clubs, if they raid a club event they're losing money.

[onwig]

krush,.... i've never had any problems with you in the past... but seriously come on... there are worst things that will happen in your lifetime... one rave that got busted for some reason... not for the fun of it, but for some reason that they thought it needed to happen.... maybe i would have thought the same 8 years ago " all it was was 3000 18yr old's having fun, nothing wrong in that etc etc"  but i reallly really can't see 90 SWAT  team people busting something like this for no reason

No, I would have sent the Chief Deputy up to the producer and have him tell the producer that the party must be shut down now or we'll have to send the 90 members of the swat team in that are waiting outside.

yeah, any suprise tatic they had would have been lost by doing that

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's not about the drugs, if it were about the drugs cops would be raiding Rock Concerts, Clubs and High Schools all over the country. Last time I was at the club I would say at least 40% of the people there were on ecstasy just by looking at them and I know of some who were on Marijuana... but the city makes money off the clubs, if they raid a club event they're losing money.

40% of 3000 people is a lot of people doing drugs, and someone has to be supplying that... its just unfortunate that they decided to raid this concert... its probably not the first time they've done it, probably won't be the last.

anyway... i am off to bed, so i will have to catch the response in the morning.

[Croosch]

[This is all about history repeating itself. Think about it, Swing parties were the raves of their day.]


The strict regimentation of youth culture in Nazi Germany through the Hitler Youth led to the emergence of several underground protest movements, through which adolescents were able to better exert their independence. There were street gangs (Meuten) of working class youths, who borrowed elements from socialist and communist traditions to forge their own identities, and there were less politically motivated groups that such as the Edelweiss Pirates (Edelweißpiraten), who acted in defiance of Hitler Youth norms. A third group, consisting mainly of upper middle class youths, based their protest on their musical preferences, rejecting the völkisch music propagated by the Party for American jazz forms, especially Swing. While musical preferences are often a feature of youthful rebellion - as the history of rock and roll shows - jazz and especially Swing were particularly offensive to the Nazi hierarchy: not only did they promote sexual permissiveness, but they were also associated with the American enemy and worse, with the inferior African race. To the Nazis, jazz was "Negro music."


Of course, not all jazz was forbidden in Germany at the time. A milder, Germanized version was popular in clubs and shows throughout the Third Reich. [This is akin to the watered down techno used in the U.S. for commercials, and the like.] What German "Swing kids" did was restore the original tempos and messages, refashioning them in an uninhibited form of protest against the social regimentation they faced. A popular term that the Swing subculture used to define itself was Lottern, roughly translated as "sleaziness," indicating that the movement was no less interested in undermining the repressive sexual mores of the Nazi regime. Reports by Hitler Youth observers of Swing parties and jitterbug went into careful detail about the overtly sexual nature of both. One report describes as "moral depravity" the fact that Swing youth took pleasure in their sexuality.


Despite this, Swing was tolerated to some degree in Germany at least until 1940, when a Swing festival, held in Hamburg, attracted over 500 youths. Inevitably, however, the gathering was monitored closely by the rival Hitler Youth. When such gatherings were banned, [Enter the RAVE Act...] the Swing youth moved to more informal settings, [underground parties] and Swing clubs emerged in all the major cities of the Reich. One possible explanation for this is the socioeconomic background of the participants, who were mainly from the upper middle class. This was inevitable, as Swing culture required the participants to have access to the music, which was not played on German radio, so that extensive collections of phonograph recordings were essential. Similarly, to understand the lyrics of the predominantly American songs, it was necessary to have at least a rudimentary understanding of English. Relative wealth also fostered a distinctive style among the Swing youth, which was in some ways comparable to the zoot suit style popular in the United States at the time (see: Zoot Suit Riots). Boys usually wore long jackets, often checkered, shoes with crepe soles (for dancing), and flashy scarves. They almost always carried an umbrella, and added a dress shirt button with a semi-precious stone. Girls generally wore their hair long and loose and added excessive makeup. [Sounds like they were the Candy Ravers of their time.]


Though they were not overtly political - more likely, they were apolitical - Swing youth tended to reject the racism of Nazi society. The music they listened to was African American, and they were more open to accepting Jews into their circles. [Sounds like they were practising a form of "PLUR" before the term was invented.] Their behavior, described by many Nazis as "effete," ran counter to the Spartan militarism that the regime was trying to inculcate in its youth.


This was the cause of the eventual onslaught on the Swing youth. On January 2, 1942, Heinrich Himmler wrote to Reinhard Heydrich calling on him to clamp down on the ringleaders of the Swing movement, recommending a few years in a concentration camp with beatings and forced labor. The crackdown soon followed: clubs were raided and participants were hauled off to camps. The Swing youth movement was the subject of a feature film, Swing Kids (1993). [You should all rent this movie and watch it.]

[Croosch]

but i reallly really can't see 90 SWAT  team people busting something like this for no reason

I couldn't believe it either.

[MacMan]

Nice parallel krush. Takes guts to compare policies of then & now like that, with a core of truth that will hurt more than mere slander.

Why is it that in all the press releases i've read in the past hour (from the USA, on this rave, and on ID theory (Ramen!)), make my skin crawl with implied undertones and opinionated bullshit? Does the press filter out this propaganda when printing an article? Or does Joe Sixpack find skewed news in his paper every morning?

Is this too general, too stupid, or too something-else a question to be answered? If not, i wait anxiously.

P.S. as for sources: On my mind when writing this "editorial" is mostly the press release by S. Lake city's sherrif department, no link provided, find it if you want it.

[Croosch]

Edit: If you refuse to read everything else I quote in this topic, read this... Though everything else I've quoted were a) first hand accounts of what happened or b) news reports. This is the last article I'm quoting here just because I believe this article sums up perfectly how the law enforcement agency went outside their boundaries to shut down this particular party and many other parties of the sort in the past.

http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?...ticle&sid=63032

Quote:
No citizen should be subjected to criminal charges for a crime he might commit. This is a fundamental principle in our society: One does not take blame for what might happen, only for violations of the law that he actually commits.
Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy seems to see things differently.

In an interview with the Daily Herald on Wednesday, he indicated that he believes law enforcement has the authority to assume a violation will be committed, and officers may therefore go straight to writing a citation.


That is what happened Saturday night at an outdoor music concert and dance in Diamond Fork.

The event -- a rave -- was held on private property owned by Trudy Childs. An estimated 300 young adults attended the gathering, which was shut down at 11:30 p.m. by about 90 law enforcement officers in a massive show of force that included helicopters, dogs and assault rifles.

Some plainclothes officers with cell phones had mingled in the crowd and observed illegal drug activity, which has occurred at similar events. That -- combined with law enforcement's allegation that the gathering itself was illegal because proper county permits had not been obtained -- is what triggered the raid. SWAT teams stormed the crowd to make arrests, and many attendees, including the landowner, are now crying foul.

All the facts are not yet in with regard to criminal activity in the crowd. We expect to know more in the coming days. But we do have ample information to evaluate Tracy's claim that Childs had not obtained a necessary permit for the event.

The fact is, Childs did not need a permit.

Tracy protests that she did need one, but we believe he is wrong. Here's why:

A county ordinance specifies exactly the circumstances under which a mass gathering permit must be obtained from the Utah County Commission, and when a permit is not required. No person may host a gathering "of an actual or reasonably anticipated assembly of 250 or more people which continues or can reasonably be expected to continue for 12 or more consecutive hours" unless the host has a license, the ordinance reads.

The electronic beats at the rave began thumping at 9 p.m. Saturday. We cannot know exactly how long the party would have gone if police hadn't hammered down. But we do know a few things. We know, for example, that the promoter's agreement with the sound technicians was to end the show at 6:30 a.m. Sunday, as dawn approached. Privately contracted security personnel confirmed that they, too, were scheduled for that time period.

So the concert was intended for nine-and-a-half hours, well inside the 12-hour limit. It was a business proposition, and that was the deal.

In painting a picture that the gathering violated county public assembly codes, Tracy misrepresents not only the facts in Diamond Fork but distorts the proper role of law enforcement. We hope he understands his limitations as an officer of civil government.

Tracy said that authorities reasonably anticipated a crowd of thousands and expected partygoers to linger to 9 a.m. and beyond. "People are up all night partying hard and have a camping area," he said. "If you've been up since 9 o'clock the night before, we are assuming you're not going to jump right up and get out of there, and will exceed the 12-hour period."

Read that carefully again, with particular attention to "we are assuming." Tracy is saying that the 12-hour ordinance was violated because law enforcement, not the event host, anticipated the gathering would last more than 12 hours. This is an unjustified and even dangerous view.

It is not law enforcement's prerogative to enforce assumptions -- to hand out criminal or civil citations based on what might happen. Accusations must be made on the basis of actual observable acts, not on what a cop thinks will occur in the future.

Let's say a highway patrolman with a radar gun in a 60 mph zone clocks a driver at 59 mph. He cannot ticket that driver on the assumption that the car will soon be going much faster.

In short, the anticipation of a crowd of 250 for 12 hours as specified in the law must belong to the event host. If the host believes that a gathering will not exceed 12 hours, and he ensures that it does not (as was done in the case of the Diamond Fork rave), he is simply not required to obtain a permit.

No citizen of this country is required to impose more law upon himself than is specified by statute. And no county sheriff has a right to impose it, either.

This ordinance is written in the passive voice -- specifying an event "reasonably anticipated ... to continue" for 12 hours. It doesn't say who is to do the anticipating. Apparently Tracy believes it is he himself. But this is an implausible reading of the law. Such an interpretation would make the county sheriff the sole arbiter of which public gatherings require a permit and which do not. Tracy could prohibit anything he wanted, from a political rally to a knit-in or company picnic -- any gathering that is otherwise protected under the First Amendment's guarantee of the "right of the people peaceably to assemble."

Typically, in potentially embarrassing situations, law enforcement seems to reach for every thread of support it can find to justify its actions. It appears to us that Sheriff Tracy is reaching in just this way with arguments about permits for Saturday's rave. The organizers did get the required mass-gathering permits for on-site sanitation, and that's apparently all they really needed.

We understand that law enforcement is a difficult job. We also understand that some crimes were likely committed at the rave. But officers should not attempt to make their tough job easier by playing fast and loose with statutes, or by spinning the meaning of the law in hopes of achieving a favorable public relations effect.

[BTs_FahQ2]

hahahaha, i hope you come back to read this 5 years from now when you are an adult that owns property, respects authority and maybe has kids.  You will laugh and we will still be laughing at you.

[Croosch]

hahahaha, i hope you come back to read this 5 years from now when you are an adult that owns property, respects authority and maybe has kids.  You will laugh and we will still be laughing at you.

always so constructive with your worthless added comments

I've talked to and heard from plenty of parents who have jobs, own property and obviously have kids who think this is outrageous. My parents for one...

[me]waits for another worthless comment from Fah or Civic[/me]