Photo from Reason.com

When Scott Olsen was critically injured in an October 25 police clash with Occupy Oakland protestors, Americans wondered how a citizen, a Marine, could suffer such traumatic injuries in a protest setting. Olsen’s skull was fractured by a police weapon fired at close range.

There’s no meaningful timeline for when or how Oakland will fully answer questions about what happened that day. American media seems to lack the attention span to stick with the story. We might look to Europe. The Guardian UK, diligent in its coverage of the Olsen story, offered 10 questions the police and the City of Oakland must answer. Some were basic. What exactly was Mr. Olsen shot with?

Police claim to use “non-lethal” weapons. This can mean bean bag projectiles or rubber bullets. Video taken on the ground seems to show something much less innocuous; an OPD officer, in heavy gear, takes aim directly at Olsen. The young protestor is standing still, his back to the police. When he goes down, the same officer appears to throw an explosive at people trying to help him.

It’s no wonder the city wants to take its time and choose its response carefully.

Now another young man has gone down. Incredibly, he is also a U.S. Marine, also said to have done nothing to provoke police. Details about Kayvan Sabeghi are few at this moment. On the day after his injuries, he was in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. Witnesses say he was beaten by police while walking home from a restaurant.

How are police expected to behave and how much oversight is the public allowed? The Guardian articulated another concern: Did police from outside the city obey OPD rules of engagement? Are there forces on the ground in Oakland which work outside of the OPD and what rules, if any, do they follow?

In theory, there is nothing wrong with supplementing over-extended police departments with on-call personnel. If this is to be done, the Mayor should offer an open accounting of how many of these officers there are, where they come from, what kind of training they have and especially who they are accountable to. But we may wait a very long time for that kind of transparency.

In the WTO protests in Seattle 1999, there was widespread violence against activists. Seattle police faced a larger than expected group of protestors and underestimated the energy and scope of the anti-globalization movement. Much has been written about “The Battle For Seattle,” mostly in independent books and films well outside the most accessible media. Years later it is generally acknowledged as a significant overreach on the part of the city’s police. The media reports on Occupy as if there has never been popular protest in the United States. They seem to need a reminder that just a decade ago a Seattle Police Chief resigned over police brutality and the city’s popular mayor was voted out of office after presiding over the beating of hundreds of activists.

In Seattle, is it true police contacted colleagues in neighboring jurisdictions and brandished weapons not authorized for use against protestors? Were police from these neighboring departments on the ground in Seattle beating and detaining protestors on their own time? What were their roles and who did they report to? It’s difficult to say how much documentation exists on this issue. Contemporary news media seems to have little memory of these questions either. That’s why we need to ask them now.

Extrajudicial policing, by direct or indirect order, or under nobody’s orders at all, is a serious matter. When police in other countries respond to public and political issues with military-like force and under unclear jurisdiction, we call them paramilitaries. At its worst extreme, we call them death squads. When governments not in our favor use extrajudicial force against political groups, the US media cites it as a violation of human rights. In the current circumstances, the question seems off our radar completely. Whether you agree with the goals of the Occupy movement or not, we should all care about police accountability. It is when the lines blur between who has legitimate authority and who doesn’t that the most serious human rights abuses occur.

Oakland should not let these questions disappear into the files. Seattle planted the seeds for independent and citizen media documenting police abuse. The Occupy movement is ripening. Today, every individual is, in effect, a publisher, even a video producer. Information and image travel by cell phone faster than contemporary media can process it and faster than unchecked authority can evade it. Oakland authorities have chosen to take a pause in hopes the stories of police violence will go away, but eyewitness account and citizen video are already providing answers, speaking to Americans even if the police are not.

(Editor’s note: For as long as it takes, Fringe is giving over its blog to original work inspired by the Occupy protests. Send your essays, poetry, short stories, artwork, photography and whatever else you’ve got, including questions, to FringeTheMagazine@gmail.com. See guidelines here, and catch up with previous posts.)