[See updates below.]
The above video is of Jennifer Fox, an Occupy Seattle protester who says she had a miscarriage after she was pepper-sprayed and punched in the stomach by police at a recent protest. Dominic Holden reports:
"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'" At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.
Fox asked for medical attention—the now-famous photo by Josh Trujillo of her being carried to the ambulance is here (click to the second photo)—and was rushed to Harborview Medical Center, she says, where doctors performed an ultrasound and said that they "didn't see anything wrong with the baby at the time." Fox says she had also seen a physician at Harborview for prenatal care about five week before.
Fox did not provide Holden with any medical documentation to back any of this up, and as with all unconfirmed reports take this with a grain of salt:
I repeatedly asked Fox if she could provide any medical records that confirm the miscarriage or that the clash with police officers caused it. She did not have copies but says she asked her case worker at Harborview to provide her with records (I'll continue to ask for follow-up evidence and post if and when Fox provides those records). Harboview officials say they cannot provide any information, of course, except that medical records would mention those details. The Seattle Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The point is, I think, that the police have been operating pretty indiscriminately in their response to these protests. It doesn't matter if you're pregnant, elderly, or just sitting there, the cops have been responding to protests with overwhelming and entirely unnecessary force. This comes even as most Americans aren't sure what to make of Occupy Wall Street to begin with. Rather than clearing protests with overwhelming force, the police and the people who tell the police what to do could just wait it out. Let the snow and the cold do the heavy lifting.
Again, there's no saying that the miscarriage was a direct result of pepper-spray or the events at the protest, but it's certainly a possibility. So the question becomes, why have these protests become so violent?
Lauri Apple, at Gawker, says it well:
Now that every day brings a new video of some protester getting pepper-sprayed, beaten, or tear-gas canistered in the head, both law enforcement officials and city officials, not to mention the public at large, have begun to raise questions about what political protesting in America has become—and what those scenes of baton beatings and pepper-spraying say about the status of free speech. Accepting pepper spraying as "just the way it is" isn't only unnecessary—it's also no more correct than assuming that protests will come off with everyone hugging and trading brownie recipes. Somewhere between pepper-spray and patchouli is a middle ground, and that ground should be safe for pregnant women to sit on without risk.
There is a balance to be struck. If you go block roads and form human chains, you can expect to be arrested. This is the price of dissent in a civilized, liberal democracy. You expect to be dragged away by force to a police van and released a few hours later. What you should not expect is to be maced or beaten with batons.
Look, I understand that the cops here are put in a tough spot, and many are given ridiculous orders by their superiors. When we talk about police abuse, we're often talking about a failure of institutions and politicians to respond appropriately to a situation. I have nothing against a cop doing his or her job. But when that job exceeds what is humane or likely legal, how can you respond with anything short of condemnation? If the actions of police did lead to this girl's miscarriage, that's a real problem.
Update.
Dominic Holden has updated his initial report. I am reproducing those updates in full below:
UPDATE on Nov. 22 at 3:47 PM: Yesterday Jennifer Fox claimed (first on this blog and then to The Stranger) that she miscarried her fetus, three months into her pregnancy, five days after police pepper sprayed her at an Occupy Seattle protest. I repeatedly asked if she could provide any medical records to back up her claim—a claim that doctors at Harborview Medical Center said her clash with police caused the miscarriage—but she said she would be in touch with a case worker. Lacking a way to verify her claim (except asking for her records) I said I would follow up.
So I tracked Fox down today at the Occupy Seattle encampment at Seattle Central Community College. Had she contacted anyone at the hospital? “I can’t go to the hospital until Sunday or Monday,” she said. Fox said that she’s having a memorial service for her miscarried baby and one of her fellow occupiers is planning a candlelight vigil, which will consume her time until next week. Can't she get away to the hospital for an hour? “No.” I provided Fox a copy of a records release for the hospital, which she put into her coat, but again Fox said she couldn’t go request her records until next week. I offered her a ride to and from the hospital, but she again refused. I explained to Fox that, lacking any evidence of her claim, her story was increasingly subject to scrutiny.
While sources in general should be given the benefit of the doubt—even if they are homeless women—and there is no evidence that Fox isn't being entirety forthright, her story looks increasingly dubious.
It's worth pointing out that in the Seattlepi.com article last week, the reporter noted that Fox was two months pregnant, when she told me that she was three months pregnant at the time.
UPDATE on Nov. 22 at 4:18 PM: Acting on an anonymous tip, we heard that Seattle police found Fox in a house
sixnearly nine weeks ago. According to apolice report in which the names have been redacted, a suspect who appears to have a three-letter last name "said she is three months pregnant... and began crying when [a suspect] was arrested. [The person with a three-letter last name] began holding her stomach and screaming that it hurt." The woman was transferred to Harborview Medical Center. We are attempting to contact Fox to ask if she is the woman in the police report.SPD has now provided a statement, saying that no complaint has been filed in the original incident. Seattle police sergeant Sean Whitcomb says: "We are aware of a claim that a pregnant woman who attended the November 15 Occupy Seattle march has been treated for miscarriage. We are also aware that she has attributed the miscarriage to the use of pepper spray and physical contact by Seattle police officers. No formal complaint has been made. Consistent with standard procedure, the Office of Professional Accountability, or OPA, has initiated an internal investigation to look into the matter further. The OPA investigators will be actively searching for any information that will support this claim."
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