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Accounts from Pointless Fest
by
People who were there | 08.14.2006
Two accounts of the arrests at Pointless Fest on Friday night, August 11th. This year, the seventh annual Pointless Fest, described by one concertgoer as "A birthday bash and one of the largest punk festivals on the East Coast," was shut down on Friday, August 11th around 10:00 p.m. after a police intervention in the second day of its four-day run. It is unclear whether the festival will continue next year. Below is the account of one of the festival attendees, Laura Loci. When reading this, please remember that this is not legal or sworn testimony -- these are responses and opinions of people based on what they experienced; if it helps, please insert the word "allegedly" before every verb. "Pointless Fest in Philadelphia this year witnessed an extreme use of excessive force from the police that resulted in a mini-riot, many arrests, and dozens of brutalized kids. The security at the Fest this year was run by the F.S.U. The purpose of security is to create a safe and comfortable environment and to deescalate situations, and this was not achieved. The F.S.U. is a hardcore gang with an established history of promoting and perpetrating violence, last night being another example. The specific situation of violence began with the security making misogynistic and threatening comments to women attendees at the show. A lot of people began to feel threatened and angry and discussed a course of action to confront the situation. It was first approached to Tony Pointless to bring to his attention the behavior of his security. There was no sympathy or response from Tony. After that around eight kids decided to confront the F.S.U security. They were all alone with the security in the parking lot behind the Festival. We heard the yelling and came around the corner. There was no mob. There were a lot of kids watching the confrontation. At this point one of the security retrieved some officers. In a very fast motion one F.S.U. security officer lunged at one of this kids and the kid drew back. Immediately from behind him a cop ran toward the kid with a gun drawn screaming at him to get down. The kid responded with, "Are you gonna shoot me?" and without response two cops with clubs threw the kid on a parked car and brutally and unmercifully clubbed the kid. Everyone was screaming to stop and one little girl ran towards them and before she got two feet away they turned and hit her square in the face. She immediately dropped unconscious. They continued to beat her. The cop who originally drew the gun had his club out swinging and running through the crowd yelling, "Who wants it?" and dropping kids left and right. They were a couple unarrests and many kids who held through the beating to drag their bloodied and unconscious friends out of more blows. Not one of the kids drew any weapons. A helicopter arrived and the entire perimeter of the area was surrounded by cops. I'm only talking about one of the areas of the raids. On every side of Pointless Fest, there were more beatings and arrests. The problem with security culture backfiring is that, a lot of our friends, we didn't even know their full names so we couldn't find out officially how many people were arrested." Another person who was there commented, "I didn't see much; I was hiding inside the Wawa and I saw kids running up Walnut Street and the cops were hitting them as they ran, kids trying to eat pizza. The cops were aggressively triying to beat people who were doing nothing but running away." |
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