Troops Raid Utah Rave With Guns & Gas

Sploid
Aug. 22, 2005

“Camouflaged troops” descended in helicopters on a Utah canyon Sunday night to bust up a permitted and insured rave party.

A horrific video recording of the police and military violence against hundreds of dance kids can be found here. (Mirror site here, courtesy of Eric Huntington at Modern Fix magazine.)

There are scores of reports of the police and troops sexually molesting teen-aged girls and savagely beating others who paid to attend the event.

A well-known deejay hired to perform at the show wrote this account:

At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said “Oh look, here comes big brother” to the person I was with. I wasn’t far off.

The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camouflage walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few “troops” rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone “get the fuck out of here or go to jail”. This is where it got really sticky.

No one resisted. That’s for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying …

Another deejay account is here:

As usual in police-state actions, the troops and cops seized any videotapes they could find and were particularly brutal when dealing with kids taking pictures of the attack.

An “official” version of the raid is here, in a Salt Lake City newspaper.

George W. Bush arrived in Salt Lake City this morning, where he delivered a speech demanding that Americans unquestioningly support his administration’s bloody occupation of Iraq.