I recently attended the Rage Against The Machine show in Denver,
Colorado on November 24th and was quite outraged by a senseless act of
police brutality which happened after the show. Rage had been offstage
for a good 20 minutes when myself and 4 other friends finally met up in
the lobby to buy our shirts and rave to eachother about how awesome the
show was when it happened.....
The 5 of us were standing in line to get a drink of water, with one
other person not in our group at the back of the line(I will refer to
him as "Bob"). Right as the person in front of me began to drink, the
police(who will be referred to as "pigs" for the rest of this letter)
began to sweep the lobby and clear the place out. When they got up to
the drinking fountain we were at, the person in the back of the
line(Bob) was finally up front and about to quench his thirst. Just as
he moved up to touch the fountain one of the pigs pushed him out of the
way and said "alright, everybody get out". Bob caught himself from
falling, and said "come on, I just want a drink of water". The same pig
pushed him a second time and said "no water for you, let's clear it
out". After being pushed for the 2nd time, Bob, obviously upset with
being pushed, said the words "motherfucker". The pig that had pushed him
got very upset at this and pushed him a 3rd time, and said "what the
hell did you say to me". At this point, myself and the rest of my
friends walking with me began to yell at the pigs saying "he just wanted
some water" or "what the hell are you doing, he just wanted water". Then
the pig pushed Bob up against a door to the Womens bathroom with 2 other
pigs behind him and said to Bob "you just made a big mistake", and then
pushed him into the bathroom with 2 other pigs following him. My friends
and I and some others in the crowd tried to intervene and get into the
bathroom to stop whatever was about to happen, but were pushed out of
the way by more pigs. One person in the crowd yelled "we've gotta get in
there and be his wittness" only to be replied to by a pig saying
"there's already enough witnesses in there". I continued slowly down the
lobby towards the exit, but turned around and walked slowly backwards
hoping to catch a glimpse of what was happening to Bob. About 45-60
seconds past when i saw Bob struggle to get out of the bathroom only to
be pushed back in and knocked to the ground and kicked by the 3 pigs
inside the bathroom. When I saw this I began yelling "what the hell is
going on, he's getting assaulted over there". Many other people in the
crowd noticed at that point and began yelling and trying to move over
towards him, but were stopped by the pigs who acted like nothing was
going on. I was forced outside of the venue before I could see anything
else happen, but what I had seen was enough.
As you can probably guess, I have no idea what "Bob's" real name is, but
that's where I was hoping you could help. I was hoping you could post
this in an attempt to find "Bob". I want him to know that there were a
lot of people that witnessed what happened to him. If he was taken into
custody and needs a witness to help get the charges dropped, or if he
feels that he needs to press charges or anything. I want to find this
person. He in know way deserved what happened to him. And the fact that
this was to happen after a Rage show just made it even worse.
Please post this anywhere you feel it will make an impact and help me
find Bob!
j.r. poston