Protester shocked by cop's shove

CodePink activist: 'I'm a little sore, but I'll make it'

By Paul A. Anthony, Special to the Rocky

Published August 28, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Photos By Paul Conrad / Special To The Rocky

CodePink demonstrator Alicia Forrest gets help from a fellow demonstrator after being shoved to the ground in an altercation with a Denver police officer on Tuesday morning.

CodePink member Alicia Forrest talks with reporters before being pulled away by a member of the Denver police.

The woman shown on video being shoved to the ground by a Denver police officer says the officer hit her four times with his baton in an incident she describes as unprovoked.

CodePink protester Alicia Forrest, 24, was released on $500 bail Tuesday night and has a court date for late September, she said Wednesday at an anti-war protest march through the middle of Denver.

"I'm a little sore," she said, "but I'll make it."

Forrest is a former fashion designer from Los Angeles.

She and others were asking officers why they were arresting another protester Tuesday afternoon outside Civic Center Park when the officer poked her twice with his baton. He then pushed her with the long side of the stick once, Forrest said, before yelling, "Back up, b----" and shoving her hard to the ground.

The final shove was captured by a Rocky videographer.

The video, which also showed Forrest minutes later being dragged away and arrested while talking to reporters, stirred controversy when it was posted to the Internet.

It cuts out between Forrest's landing on the ground and her arrest - a time during which Forrest said "I laid on the ground for a while," before getting up and starting to answer reporters' questions.

"I was taking photos (and) he kept hitting me with his baton," she said. "I was so shocked that he did that."

Forrest and CodePink said the officer was reassigned and can no longer interact with demonstrators, but that could not be immediately confirmed Wednesday.

Forrest was in jail about five hours, then spent another two hours talking with the Denver Police Department's Internal Affairs Division, she said.

"So many people were calling them after they saw the video," Forrest said, adding that this was the lone incident she had had with police during the convention.

"All of the police throughout this week have been pretty nice, and pretty cooperative," she said.

The city's independent monitor has said the incident should be reviewed based on the images caught on tape.

Staff writer Ryan Sabalow contributed to this report.

• August 28, 2008

  8:59 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  patchsl writes:

  Please shake a cop's hand today, and thank them for their service to our community, in spite of a minority who feel the need to confront and provoke.

• August 29, 2008

  4:16 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Phunk_E_Styles writes:

  He should be in prison. THIS IS ASSAULT. The officer could have detained her, put her in handcuffs and processed her according to the law but instead he used unnecessary force. She was using her constitutional right to assembly but he put it upon himself to be judge, jury and executioner which contradicts the basic fundamentals our country was founded on. This is not behavior I would expect from someone in a position of authority in our country.

• September 9, 2008

  10:23 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  quexalcote writes:

  Phunk_E_Styles says "she was using her constitutional right to assembly", yet that the officer could have detained her, put her in handcuffs, etc. For what? It seems like there might be a really big problem in this country if things have gotten to the point that even a person who seems to be sympathetic to dissent sees nothing wrong with cops harassing a person who's exercising their alleged constitutional rights. How many incidents like this would you need to see to convince you that this is exactly the kind of behavior you should expect to see from a person in a position of authority in this country?

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