Sounds like you need to have a lawyerish sounding letter delivered to their photo editor.

i find it funny that the term hardworking people is used in the same sentence as musicians, artists, philosophers, and intellectuals.

While I agree that it sucks and is not fair that people who were not involved in beating on cops got jacked up and charged with felonies, I still place the ultimate blame with the people who were fucking with the cops in the first place. GPD is pretty cool as police departments go, but, guess what? It's still made up of COPS. You know what the vast majority of cops worldwide will do when you fuck with them for no reason? They turn into unreasonable assholes at best, or bloodthirsty pitbulls at worst. There are seriously other places in this country where the same scenario would easily have ended with nightsticks to the dome.

So, even if I had all the love in the world for these kids with something to prove, and all the hatred in the world for GPD, I'd still be pissed at them. Their actions were essentially no different than chumming the water on a crowded beach or handing out flyers for a show with free beer to a pack of Nazi skinheads.

Incidentally, the original "don't tase me, bro" altercation involved UPD, a completely different beast than GPD. In this situation, UPD probably would have kirked out and called in the SWAT team, seeing as how they basically tased a kid for being annoying.

edit: I was gonna replace "pitbull" with "chow chow", but "pitbull" is more appropriate. Since pits don't actually have any inherent viciousness, the bloodthirsty ones are therefore all the more crazy and without limits. Thus, a bloodthirsty chow chow would actually be slightly less severe. Nonetheless, the implied spectrum still includes the category of bloodthirsty chow chow, a well as milder categories such as irritated cocker spaniel, or, perhaps, most appropriately, perturbed skunk or agitated electric eel. I suppose I could have been much more succint, and simply pointed out that fucking with cops is like pestering an unfriendly chow chow: you may not "deserve" whatever you get, but you sure do know it's gonna be bad news.

FUCK YOU.

I finally got around to watching this video, I didn't realize that that much of it was recorded. It was both interesting and depressing:

-The kids wailing on the cop, that was lame and disturbing, but they clearly were far from master pugilists. Even the kick was weak and poorly executed. Clearly, not a single one of them was prepared to go face-to-face against anyone, even with the numbers in their favor. Reminded me of liberal arts school hippies at a weed rally more than anything else. if any of you douchebags are reading this, then I'd just like to point out how thoroughly lame and un-punk you look on that video. You have truly squandered your fifteen minutes of fame.

-The cops initially involved are just kind of like, oh, shit, we gotta get out of here, and there are several people in the crowd doing a good job of holding people back and basically trying to squash the whole affair. The first cops on the scene seem to get that, as do most of the people initially in frame.

-The cops rushing to the "officer down" call, while still restrained, are decidedly more pig-headed and aggressive in their approach (the ones at the road blocks I encountered were even more so than the ones in the video). The funny thing is, they seem to be shoving and yelling at wave two of douchebags, people who somehow think that the thing to do in these situations is head TOWARDS the mass of police and sirens- in other words, they were either raised under a rock, or they somehow got confused and thought that they were in the midst of some third-world political unrest. If any of you happen to be reading this, then let me point out that you, too, come across looking like New Jersey deadheads trying drum up a police brutality case in the parking lot of the String Cheese Incident show.

-I am slightly amazed that the cops did NOTHING to address the fact that they were being filmed for that long.

-It is just so damn depressing to realize that you can have hundreds of people minding their own business and just generally staying the fuck back, and a dozen or more actively trying to ameliorate the situation, and all it takes is a few drunk morons screaming "fuck you" and doing the windmill to definitively ruin it for everyone else.

-Whoever filmed that did a first-rate job. The Cloverleaf-style close-up of their friend's wigged-out face was an especially nice touch.

I'm just horribly bummed that I can't have house shows anymore during Fest. At least, electric ones. I was doing so well with them! ah well, next year...maybe I can rent a warehouse for 1 night. Just don't want to have to pull any more punks off a cop.