'Family Guy' Writer Arrested During Occupy L.A. Raid Shares His Anger In Vivid Account

Photo by STERLINGDAVISPHOTO via the LAist Featured Photos pool

One of the 292 people arrested the night of the Occupy L.A. raid has taken to his personal blog to recount the night's events, providing a face to the large pool of arrestees and painting a less than lauding picture of the LAPD. Patrick Meighan begins his post by summing himself up in one sentence. "My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom 'Family Guy,' and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica." Sounds like he has something he needs to get off his chest, doesn't it? Well, he does, and he unleashes in "My Occupy LA Arrest."

He details his 1am arrest on Wednesday, November 30 as being encircled by the LAPD with their "weapons drawn" while engaging in peaceful protest. Meighan says he watched as officers sliced open tents, dismantling them, "removing" tent occupiers and destroying and "scattering" tents' contents. Why does he mention this seemingly disorderly eviction method? Because the mainstream press reported the mess as "'30 tons of garbage' that was 'abandoned' by Occupy LA," writes Meighan.

Meighan goes on to describe how police handled protesters who refused to unlink their arms to facilitate arrests.

An LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.

Horrified, Meighan unlinked his arms voluntarily and told officers he would go peacefully. You would assume that meant he was swiftly handcuffed and escorted to a bus, but his story is much more violent. Meighan says, "I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms." When he reacted in pain, Meighan was thrown "face-first to the pavement" by the arresting officer. His face bled, his hands turned blue from too-tight cuffs and he is now suffering nerve damage in his right thumb and palm.

Meighan's account does not sound like "one of the finest moments in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department," as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in his statement, released on the Wednesday of the raid. This sounds like arrestees who are issuing formal complaints against the LAPD may actually have cases.

After a paddywagon ride to a parking garage in Parker Center, Meighan writes that arrestees were forced to kneel on the pavement of the garage for seven hours while handcuffed. Some people passed out. One man vomited. "The LAPD officers watched and did nothing," Meighan writes.

The jail situation after the raid was reported on heavily by the press, revealing that the few arrestees who actually could scrounge up the $5,000 bail amount were detained nonetheless for up to two days.

I’m lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.

Despite being "crammed into an into an eight-man jail cell along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters," sleeping next to a toilet and spending 25 hours in jail, Meighan is not angry that he was arrested. "I chose to get arrested," he admits. But he is mad that voracious thieves like Charles Prince - former Citigroup CEO - "are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards."

Read Meighan's account here for more details on his 25 hours of activism hell and his thoughts on Prince.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@laist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Lauren Lloyd in News on December 7, 2011 2:15 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Catoii

I don't get it. If the police tell you to move, and you refuse to move, they have no choice but to use force. When he locked arms with a hundred other people in the face of the police, what did he think they would do? He should just be thankful they didn't use tear gas or their batons.

No one has a constitutional right to set up camp anywhere they want and stay there for days and weeks on end. Saying that you're protesting something doesn't suddenly transform a crime into a constitutionally protected act. If so, then I could camp out on the beach all night as long as I stick a political sign in the sand next to my tent.

By all means, march on the sidewalks and in the park by day, wave your signs and shout your slogans all day long. But if there's no camping out or staying overnight allowed, then you've got to move on when the park closes. How hard is it to go home at night and return the next day for more protesting? The whole "Occupy" concept was ill-conceived to begin with. (Although I suspect it was intentional.)

exbaytriate

sorry, i saw vivid and i thought there were pornos somewhere.

Rich Pea

Would like to see an episode of Family Guy portraying this.... let's say Peter Griffin gets arrested by accidentally being in the wrong place at the wrong time (ergo an Occupy encampment) and he gets beat to shit by the crazy chicken character who is dressed in riot gear. dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

The Ugly American

So we're supposed to feel sorry for a gainfully-employed WGA member who probably makes upwards of 75K a year?

I doubt the average Angeleno would give this guy an ounce of sympathy let alone listen to this self-serving tale of woe.

Lindsay Lohan has spent more time in jail and never once whined about it like this little bitch.

pcloadletter

The Ugly American

misterirked

...

pgeller

The police in the US have been driven to this by the same tactics that we have allowed this to happen. The fear syndrome. First the war on drugs and the "fear" of what would happen if we did not militarize the police and give up a few minor inconsequential rights. Then the war on terror and the "fear" of our country destroyed by terrorists. For this we created Dept.of Homeland Security which then engulfed other agencies, militarized themselves and any other agency that might need SWAT gear, like the Dept. of Education, etc. plus we also gave up more rights. Can't support terrorism right? Now the police have been treating citizens like this and worse for all these reasons but now the police are afraid. What are they afraid of? Losing their jobs if they don't do what the politicians, AKA lackeys for the corporations, tell them to do, to shut down this civil disobedience before it escalates and really becomes a problem! I just hope that we don't go to the next step. I hope everyone realizes what THAT will be, but now I'm afraid.....

Kuneko

We HAVE to go to the next step. We must. The fate of the country rests on it, and I'm not saying that lightly.

pgeller

I hope not. To me the next step is armed not civil disobedience...

Gabriela Worrel

Thanks for posting, great story!

tomdog

Thanks for writing this up

peterpun

Fight Back

khagler

Sounds just like the kind of treatment that people have been receiving from the LAPD, and cops all over the country, for decades. It's just that those people had brown skin and didn't live on the west side and have blogs, so nobody cared.

Henry__Chinaski

Put them back in prison. And charge more bail this time!

pcloadletter

Yes, how dare they exercise their constitutional rights.

westlafadeaway

Get a job and take a shower Patrick! Oh wait the truth doesn't fit the narrative nevermind move along.

thenab

disgusting.

Joe D.

lapd's finest moment

Doran

A guy I know personally was also arrested that night. His account matches Meighan's very closely.

LindsayWilliamRoss

Same here, though the arrest circumstances differ; I know one of Meighan's cellmates, whose experience from the parking garage on is the same as detailed here. Also, Meighan doesn't mention it, but many of those arrested were not read their Miranda rights, and officers "filled in" the 409 charge on their paperwork later on.