The Informant

[UPDATED 11/1/11: A new video shot by Ernest Doty, one of the people who carried Scott Olsen to safety on October 25, offers yet another angle of the incident. In the video, an unidentified man who helped carry Olsen says police on the line used shotguns to fire beanbags at the crowd.]

As Marine veteran Scott Olsen’s health slowly improves after having his skull fractured by a projectile, most likely a police projectile, on the night of October 24, speculation continues to swirl about what hit Olsen and where it came from. In addition to Oakland Police, officers from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, Palo Alto Police Department, and California Highway Patrol were deployed as mutual aid at the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway.

Video from the skirmish line on Tuesday evening shows an officer holding a shotgun retreat from the front line of the barricade, then lob a flash-bang grenade into the crowd trying to help Olsen.

San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessy said in a phone interview that he is “99 percent sure” the officer who lobbed the flash-bang grenade was not SFSD personnel. “If you look at the video, the officer is holding a long-barreled rifle, pointing downwards. We didn’t have any long guns that night.” Hennessy also says SFSD deputies were not armed with flash-bang grenades that night.

The Palo Alto Police Department denied that its officers used flash-bang grenades, but confirmed that Palo Alto officers did fire pepperball rounds and CS gas at demonstrators. Sgt. Kara Apple said that the 16 officers from the Palo Alto Police contingent were armed with a type of CS gas that is thrown by hand and does not ignite or emit an explosion similar to the one that went off near Olsen’s rescuers.

Ernest Doty, a 32-year-old artist who saw Olsen fall to the ground after being hit with a projectile, says he believes the projectile was a bean bag round. “They’re a couple feet away, because he was by the fence, and they just opened fire and hit him [Olsen] and took him off his feet like a wrecking ball,” said Doty.

Ali Winston

An unidentified police officer armed with a shotgun stands behind a line of San Francisco Sheriff's deputies during the October 25th confrontation with Occupy Oakland demonstrators.

The British newspaper The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Jay Finneburgh, a photographer, recovered a beanbag near a pool of blood from the area where Olsen was wounded.

Sgt. Chris Bolton, chief of staff for Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, confirmed in an interview that OPD officers did fire drag-stabilized beanbag rounds from 12-gauge shotguns on October 25th. However, Bolton said that OPD has not determined the agency of the officer who fired the round at Olsen or the officer who threw a concussion grenade at people coming to the veteran’s aid. “We will use every available means to come to that conclusion,” Bolton said.

Sgt. J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that the Sheriff’s Special Response Unit deployed with weapons that fire 40 mm foam pellets, as well as hand-thrown CS gas. Dan Siegel, an adviser to Mayor Jean Quan, said he observed two officers, possibly Alameda County deputies knock a man off of his bike with projectiles fired from long rifles on the evening of October 25th. Sgt. Nelson confirmed that deputies did fire foam projectiles, but denied the use of flash-bang grenades by deputies. Regarding the officer who tossed a concussion grenade toward Olsen and his rescuers, Nelson said: “That is definitively not an Alameda County Sheriff’s uniform.”

Criminal investigations by the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County District Attorney’s office are ongoing.

[Below are a list of less-lethal munitions and a description of their capabilities initially obtained by Al Jazeera English. These documents were current as of July 2010, when the Oakland Police Department was preparing for protests around the verdict in the trial of ex-BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle]