Rage Against the Machine Reviews


Police Brutality at the Denver show, Nov. 24, 1999

I recently attended the Rage Against The Machine show in Denver, Colorado on November 24th and was quite outraged by a senseless act of police brutality which happened after the show. Rage had been offstage for a good 20 minutes when myself and 4 other friends finally met up in the lobby to buy our shirts and rave to eachother about how awesome the show was when it happened.....

The 5 of us were standing in line to get a drink of water, with one other person not in our group at the back of the line(I will refer to him as "Bob"). Right as the person in front of me began to drink, the police(who will be referred to as "pigs" for the rest of this letter) began to sweep the lobby and clear the place out. When they got up to the drinking fountain we were at, the person in the back of the line(Bob) was finally up front and about to quench his thirst. Just as he moved up to touch the fountain one of the pigs pushed him out of the way and said "alright, everybody get out". Bob caught himself from falling, and said "come on, I just want a drink of water". The same pig pushed him a second time and said "no water for you, let's clear it out". After being pushed for the 2nd time, Bob, obviously upset with being pushed, said the words "motherfucker". The pig that had pushed him got very upset at this and pushed him a 3rd time, and said "what the hell did you say to me". At this point, myself and the rest of my friends walking with me began to yell at the pigs saying "he just wanted some water" or "what the hell are you doing, he just wanted water". Then the pig pushed Bob up against a door to the Womens bathroom with 2 other pigs behind him and said to Bob "you just made a big mistake", and then pushed him into the bathroom with 2 other pigs following him. My friends and I and some others in the crowd tried to intervene and get into the bathroom to stop whatever was about to happen, but were pushed out of the way by more pigs. One person in the crowd yelled "we've gotta get in there and be his wittness" only to be replied to by a pig saying "there's already enough witnesses in there". I continued slowly down the lobby towards the exit, but turned around and walked slowly backwards hoping to catch a glimpse of what was happening to Bob. About 45-60 seconds past when i saw Bob struggle to get out of the bathroom only to be pushed back in and knocked to the ground and kicked by the 3 pigs inside the bathroom. When I saw this I began yelling "what the hell is going on, he's getting assaulted over there". Many other people in the crowd noticed at that point and began yelling and trying to move over towards him, but were stopped by the pigs who acted like nothing was going on. I was forced outside of the venue before I could see anything else happen, but what I had seen was enough.

As you can probably guess, I have no idea what "Bob's" real name is, but that's where I was hoping you could help. I was hoping you could post this in an attempt to find "Bob". I want him to know that there were a lot of people that witnessed what happened to him. If he was taken into custody and needs a witness to help get the charges dropped, or if he feels that he needs to press charges or anything. I want to find this person. He in know way deserved what happened to him. And the fact that this was to happen after a Rage show just made it even worse.

Please post this anywhere you feel it will make an impact and help me find Bob!

j.r. poston


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