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My account of what happened:

Please guys comment on this and spread it around as this is a blatant violation of basic civil rights. Freedom in America, hahaha BS.

You can read more at www.utrave.org

Last night at 10:00 PM I arrived at a party in the Spanish Fork canyon. I was excited to be there to listen to the great electronic artists that had traveled for to play for the crowd.

Before coming to the event I researched it extensively. The party was %100 percent legal and legit with all permits and necessary security required by law being acquired. The event was well organized, with garbage cans, porta potties, and rope lines blocking off parts of the area that you could no go into.

Now I want you to know that many people out there consider ravers a bunch of drug taking freaks. I also want you to know that that is a stereotype that is passed down through legions of undereducated parents, politicians, and media. There are many of us who are drug free party goers who attend these events for a pure love of the music.

So on to my point. At around 11:00 I was enjoying the good vibes and great music. Then at about 11:30 pm a helicopter began circling the party. Out of nowhere huge semis filled with national guard, swat, and the police rolled up. Soldiers came out of the bushes and rushed down to the party. Carrying M-16s, Ak-47s, nightsticks, and tazers. They proceeded to attack random people and push their might around on people who had done nothing wrong.

I saw about 7 people attacked (before being forced to leave). I saw two of them right in front of me. One was a guy who was walking around with a camcorder stunned at what was happening. A soldier told him to give him the camera now. The raver said no it is my camera. The soldier then proceeded to grab the camera, throw it to the ground and then began beating the kid. In the end they threw him to the ground violently an put their knee into his back while handcuffing him. All for wanting to keep his property. When I last saw him he was knocked out and unmoving.

Another girl next to me said to one of the soldiers that she didn\'t know how to get home as they had just arrested her friend. The soldier told her to walk home. My friend tried to grab her to bring her with us, but the soldier began yelling that she had touched him (which she hadn\'t). WIthin seconds, five soldiers had jumped on her and were literally beating the crap out of this innocent women. She was punched in the face, thrown to the ground, and kicked while down. All for worrying how to get home safely. She is now suing.

The soldiers proceeded to attack anyone with cameras or camcorders, obviously wanting to restrict the film that got out about it. This was not a legal attack, it was a blatant violation on our rights as American citizens. And the swat, police, politicians who authorized this, and the national guard knew this. That is why they were removing potential evidence.

We were treated as terrorists, innocent kids without weapons or even violent thoughts in their minds were manhandled, treated like terrorists, and forced to stop doing what we were by constitutional rights allowed to be doing. Our rights were completely removed from us. It was if we had visited the 1960s or communist China.

I hope for the sake of the American people that the news media does not let the lies of the government blind them to what truly happened last night. This could happen anywhere to anyone not just ravers, so AMERICA DON\'T LET THIS STAND!

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A great account from one of the booked djs:

http://www.404audio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14814

Please try and show some support. We can\'t let cops get away with this.

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I heard about this from one of my friends who was there (I live in tooele, a short drive, I coulda gone if I FELT like it ), he didn't get beaten AFAIK (he was still a little toasted ). Think it was covered on the news too, but theres no *real* accounts on there about what happened. It is pretty sh*tty about what happened, and it does seem that the police and weekend soldiers went WAY out of line with this. A similar thing has happened to me once when I saw a local band playing out of their personal building (in the middle of the west desert), a bunch of cops role up, they tell us its too loud (not that anyone else but us were there), then proceeded to tear down the stage and equipment and such. It seems their morales go before the law in this state.

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That sucks indeed. Can't wait until someone gets a video out. Alot more people on both sides probably would have gotten hurt alot worse if they did that in Georgia. You don't find many people who don't carry a gun(s) to such here I would probably go crazy if I seen them hitting a woman. I will not stand for it. A man who hits a woman is one of the lowest forms of a coward duty or not.

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http://homepage.mac.com/apexgrin/FileSharing2.html

This one has some of it... till it seems a soldier busts his camera up... (its a link to a quicktime and a wmp version)

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I watched the video. Looked like a rocking party while it lasted. The video I saw posted by Eric T only had one inappropriate beating. If there's more videos like this, start forwarding them to major news papers and tv networks.

There was probably some silly reason why they were there (maybe someone reported something false about the party), but the way the people got treated wasn't right.

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http://www.co.utah.ut.us/News/DeptNewsDetails.asp?ID=17759&WN_System=SHERIFF


Thats the police report for it... claims they didn't have a "Mass Gathering Permit", but yet the promoters said they have it. The police report dosen't say anything about the amount of force they used, such as running in guns blazing.

The promoters are supposed to be doing press conferences today, so we'll see how this turns out. Obviously that video only has about 1 minute or so of the actual weekend soldier occupation of the party, so i'd like to see one of much long length.

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That's awful. That's the side of America I don't like. (Who knows, they probably got your names off the same terrorist list that lists 2 babies).

It's obvious why they didn't want the guy filming! They'd want to prevent as much fuss as possible - I now hope that as much fuss as possible is created

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i'm glad i don't live in america, i'm so glad i don't live there.

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OMG! theres some kids NOT stealing cars and shoplifting, never mind the ASBO.... KILL EM! ....... KILL EM ALL!, force `em into these hoodies and give em a baseball bat each

you would think the police had something better to do with their time considering the crime rate in the US, then again, beating up a load of kids with the aid of the army would be much safer than dealing with drug dealers.

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I want to know what your po are doing with AK47s! Sounds like they were terrorists themselves in disguise.

I think you guys need to tackle this sort of thing at the source - your culture!

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Wow that really sucks.

Or lack of it

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that must be a country thing because im from nyc and i would have shot some of them

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Why did they have to send SWAT to a concert???

And yeah, every Raver I know takes drugs.

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Thats a blatant disregard for human rights and seeing things like this makes me feel justified in every crime ive ever committed that was non-violent...

Why such acts of unprovoked violence are tolerated is beyond me...

And as for the departments claim that there was a missing permit...that definitly doesnt give police officers the right to punch people in the face that arnt involved in the promotion...these were people who thought it was legal and who though it was ok to go...they dont need beat down and assualted and all that...

Police like this should be shot...

Brb my friend has an assualt rifle

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[EDIT]

HIS POST IS FULL OF LIES...some of the beating stories and everything, i'm sure are true.
But the news actually SHOWED the drugs they had there. They many illegal drugs including extacene (spelling?) and many others. Maybe the person who posted wasnt DOING the drugs himself, but there WAS drugs involved and when cops are raiding that many people, they HAVE to be extra careful when dealing with people, because they never know who's pretending to be innocent and crap and try to stab the cop or something. When the cops have athority (in this case they DID) to raid things like this...you MUST coropperate otherwise you might end up getting beat, it's something cops MUST do to keep themselves alive.

When you post lies like this, you are omitting truths, stirring up people to believe you...this is the same here...

stop lying, and deal with life...you go to illegal parties and get caught, you have to deal with the consequences

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I agree, i wouldn't be able to stand watching that either...

as far as what happened being a problem or not...i don't know...but i still agree with the above quote

BTW "Joel" are you "Jimmy"?

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no, "Peter_" I am not "Jimmy", i used to be "Darwin, but i changed it, but I do know "Jimmy", weither he likes to admit it or not.

And to clear things up a bit...I DONT nessisarily agree with the beating... I'm sure it might've been unnessisary, and i dont agree with that kind of violence unless it is 100% nessisary, and cops in utah are know for being a bit...power hungry...
but the party DID have weapons and drugs, as SHOWN on FILM by the media.

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You're right, there were drugs there. There are drugs everywhere, in your back yard, at the rap shows, at rock concerts. Why do they only attack the rave scene? Cause it is scary and different.

My post was not full of lies. There were people selling drugs at the party including many undercover police. However many of the people I saw get beat up were my friends and they were NOT on drugs.

I have never taken an illegal pill in my life, and I know many of the people there haven't either.

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Oh adn there was only one weapon there. It was apprehended from the land owners son. NOT an attendee of the show.

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moron...it's called a STING, they do those ALL the time...drug stores, gas stations, etc... why do they "only" attack those? because they are SELLING DRUGS AND THEY DONT WANT PEOPLE TO GET THEM ILLEGALLY. get over yourself, i dont care weither or not you have ever taken an illegal drug, or a LEGAL drug, you were at an ILLEGAL party, and it was YOUR and your friend's choices to go to that party, you have to accept the consequences of attending.

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Joel you are such a duch. I was not at an illegal party dumb F*CK. IT was %100 legal I saw the permits. I also saw and heard when the cops took the permit from the promoters hands(while he was showing it to them) and told him that no he did not have a permit.

And yes I know what it is retard. However they do not do 100 person attacks on other concerts with machine guns being pointed in peoples faces. They could have shut down the party with 6 cops like they've done before. They have stated they knew about the party before hand.

SO WHY DIDN'T THEY BLOCK OFF THE LOCATION BEFORE EVERYONE GOT THERE and avoid all the worthless violence and drugs that they wanted to prevent so badly?

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hhmmm...maybe you should try to produce a civilized argument instead of resulting to name calling

because they would go somewhere else and do it maybe?

they wanted to catch the people with drugs and punish them. it's horrible that they harmed other people in the process...

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this sounds like something that happened before.... arent there any rowdy NY negroes there? if not ill help you guys out j/k they'd probably beat my brains out

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Well he attacked me called me a liar, and he wasn't even there. They just barely shut down another party in SLC the week before by blocking off the rode. And we didn't go anywhere else. That was it it was over.

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hence the illegal drugs/weapons etc

not attacked...i said you were lying about the 100% legal bull crap you trying to get away with, when it was proved that it WASNT 100% legal because you had ILLEGAL drugs. thus, you are a liar.

and it's spelled ROAD

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You refuse to understand that no matter where you go there are going to be bad apples. People that ruin it for everyone else. There are illegal drugs being sold at schools. Why don't they raid them and beat people up? Because they're full of kids?

Well so was this party.

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That's exactly what i'm doing...closing my eyes to the world...
so what i get from your statement there, is that, since there are "bad apples" everywhere, we should just let them get away?

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If they raid and a place, let it be a school. Half the people there deserve it.

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Joel is not dutch. He's barely human. And that crap about the cops taking the permit, I know that's what you thought you saw on your extacy high, but it, in fact, did not happen. That sort of thing doesn't happen. I'll bet they actually told him it was no good, and not that "he did not have a permit" like some jedi mind trick.


I think what's going on here, is that you don't have a clue about how law enforcement works. They allow it to happen so they can catch the perpetrators in the act. Otherwise it would have continued somewhere else, another day, as peter suggested.

And about the beatings. A soldier will not harm someone unless provoked, and judging by the fact that all ravers are doped up, defiant hippies, I believe that these people got what they deserved.

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I would be surprised if you didn't get a newbie slap for that.

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Man you people need to learn to read. I was not on Exctasy. I've never done drugs. I've seen the permit. They have copies of the permit. They should have come in, with 5-10 cops without weapons drawn, and we would have dispersed. It has happened 100s of times before.

And read about the girl who got taken down. I was right next to her, she did nothing to the soldier yet she still got beat up. Sad but totally true. I listened to her conversation with him and saw exactly what happened.

But whatever. If you all want to keep on believing that you live in a perfect world, where everything the government tells you is true. Then go ahead. Don't be to suprised when you find out different.

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This wasn't a "break up the party" kind of thing, it was a sting, a DRUG BUST. They wanted to get as many of you low-lives as possible. People who deal drugs (and some who use) are dangerous people, so they need to take every precaution. 5-10 cops isn't going to cut it.


Yep, we live in a perfect world, full of druggies dancing like idiots in the woods. Tell me, where'd the need to have these parties in secluded areas come from? Why not rent an amphitheatre, warehouse or stadium like REAL musicians? Are you so ashamed of the crappy music, that you have to hide it at all costs? Is it because of the drugs? Or is it because, this isn't about music at all, but about being rebellious? I think that's what it is. You're just baiting for this sort of thing to happen, so you can publicize your agenda about the goverment's prejudice toward ravers. A prejudice which actually doesn't exist, because the goverment doesn't give a crap about you. Hence why they beat the crap OUT of you.

Now go listen to your mix records and cry to yo mamaaaa.

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I'm still not really getting why there are soldiers with AK47s involved in a small time drug bust at a dance music event.


Although, clearly it does exist with you, Mr tired old same ol' cliche guitar music man.

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You know, those army issue AK-47s, everyone gets those. It's just standard.

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That's moving with the times! Cutting edge tech.

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It's bad luck when raves get busted up. People are having a good time and then BOOM! IT'S TIME TO GET A BEATING for dancing. The police and the army are power mad thugs with licences to beat the crap out you usually just for being there. Over here in UK we've also had our share of bullying from forces>>>

Bloody Sunday >> In Northern Island about 20 innocent protesters people were shot dead by the British Army for...eh..marching.

Stone Henge >> A huge convoy of hippies travelled to stone henge every year somtime in sixties. One yaer they showed up to find the ancient site blocked off, of course the police had no other option but to beat the crap out of the hippies because they were uh...they were...looking angry. yeah.

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At the "down[n'out]town" five and ten

[edited]

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Don't you all realize that the police are humans right? Humans have emotions and get frustrated or annoyed sometimes don't they?

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It is their job not to.