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A Philadelphia police officer has been caught on video allegedly punching a woman in the face after she appeared to throw water on him during the city's Puerto Rican Day Parade over the weekend.

Video of the incident dated Sept. 30, 2012 was uploaded by YouTube user Gisela Valentin on Sunday.

The clip shows the unnamed woman tossing water in the air in the direction of a group of police officers. A second person also throws water in their direction.

One officer in a white shirt runs over to the woman and punches her in the face as she's walking away, laying her flat on her back.

"Oh, s--t!" a bystander can be heard saying.

The woman is immediately handcuffed as other officers create a perimeter around the scene. The woman can be seen bleeding from her mouth as an officer in a blue shirt leads her away.

"Over 1,500 participants, including performers, local celebrities, youth groups" gathered in Philadelphia on Sunday to celebrate Puerto Rican and Latino heritage, according to the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation.

(h/t: Hyperlocal, International Digital Times)

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur spoke to journalists Tim Pool, Amber Lyon and Andrew Gumbel about the latest updates on the protests in Anaheim over the weekend, during which 9 more arrests were made as tensions between the police and local residents continues to rise.

Here's more from Gumbel's reporting at The Guardian: Anaheim officials scramble to contain public anger as protests escalate:

Looting and vandalism mar demonstrations against spate of police shootings, exacerbating city's stark race divisions

Officials in Anaheim, the southern California home to Disneyland, are scrambling to contain public anger over a rash of police shootings of young Latino men and pleaded for calm following a fourth night of street demonstrations marred by vandalism and looting.

Members of a 1,000-strong crowd broke windows and set fire to garbage skips in downtown Anaheim on Tuesday night, leading to hours of clashes with police, who responded with pepper spray and rubber bullets and made at least 24 arrests. The demonstrators said they were expressing frustration at what is widely seen as indifference by the city's all-white leadership to the majority Latino population.

The immediate catalyst for the protests was the death of 25-year-old Manuel Diaz on Saturday afternoon. According to media reports, he was shot twice by police in a residential neighborhood – the first time in the leg and then, once he was on the ground, in the head. He was apparently unarmed.

The Anaheim police had already been the target of weekly protests by bereaved relatives of earlier shootings victims, who have accused them in court filings of operating "like a death squad" and taking aim more or less at random at anyone they suspected of belonging to a street gang. When a second man was shot dead on Sunday, public anger grew only stronger. Read on...

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From Democracy Now: Anaheim Police Kill 2 Latinos, Wound Protesting Residents:

Police in the California city of Anaheim are facing allegations of murder and brutality after fatally shooting two Latino men over the weekend and firing rubber bullets at crowds of protesters. On Saturday, Anaheim police shot and killed 24-year-old Manuel Diaz after he reportedly ran away from a group of officers who confronted him in an alleyway. Diaz was unarmed. One witness reported that Diaz had his back to the officers when he was shot in the buttocks. Police then allegedly fired another bullet through his head as he fell to the ground. Two of Diaz’s sisters demanded justice for their slain brother.

Correna Chavez: "Once they even shot him in the leg, and he went down, the cop continued and shot him in the head. Like, what is that about? My brother did not have a weapon on him at all."

Lupe Diaz: "These cops need to know what they’ve done to us, to our family, especially my mom. And we’re going to speak for him, and we’re going to bring this to justice."

Hours after Diaz’s death, a chaotic scene broke out when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a crowd of local residents protesting the shooting. A number of people were wounded, included several children. Video was taken of a police dog rushing a man trying to protect his infant child. More than 24 hours after Diaz’s death, police shot dead another Latino resident in Anaheim, Joel Acevedo. Police say Acevedo was suspected in a car robbery. The circumstances around his death remain unconfirmed.

And here's more with some updates from Raw Story: California police fire into crowd of women and children during near-riot:

A near-riot broke out in Anaheim, California on Saturday after a police shooting left one man dead and angry witnesses began throwing bottles at police offers. Police responded by firing bean bags and rubber bullets into a crowd of terrified women and children and even loosed a police dog on one woman and her baby.

Residents, who have recently been complaining about alleged police violence, told KCAL 9 News that Manuel Diaz was running away from police who had attempted to speak with him when he was shot from behind with a bullet that hit him in the buttocks. He fell to his knees and was struck in the head by another bullet. Police handcuffed the motionless man and he was taken to the hospital, where he died three hours later. [...]

Update: On Sunday afternoon, protesters gathered in the lobby of the Anaheim Police Department chanting “No justice, no peace” and “Justice for Manuel.”

The demonstration came at the same time as a police press conference, during which it was announced that two officers involved in the fatal shooting have been placed on paid leave, pending a full investigation of the incident. Police Chief John Walter also indicated that the dog which rushed into the crowd biting people had accidentally escaped from a police vehicle.

“We are extremely sorry for the people who were bit,” Welter stated. “The city will be responsible for all medical bills associated with the dog. The canine officer responsible for the dog is devastated by this.”

More at our sister site Occupy America here: Anaheim Police Open Fire on Innocent Men, Women & Children.

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Here we go again with yet another segment on Fox where they're downplaying the use of pepper spray on the Occupy UC Davis protesters. This time, it was Sean Hannity and his guests, Fox Business' Charles Payne and frequent Fox guest, Margaret Hoover.

Even though all of them admitted that it looked like an excessive amount of the spray being used on the students, Payne played the same game as Megyn Kelly did on O'Reilly's show, saying that the military grade pepper spray must have been watered down because the students didn't appear to react badly enough to it in the clip. They also implied that they did something to provoke the over-reaction and brutality inflicted on them by the police.

Hannity, who famously refused to take up Keith's Olbermann's request for him to be waterboarded after Hannity said he'd consent to undergo the procedure to prove it's not torture as a fundraiser for the troops, didn't think the action by the police "crossed the line."

At least none of them called it "a food product, essentially" this time.

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Megyn Kelly gave an interview to TVNewser who asked her about her comments which have caused such a stir on Bill O'Reilly's show that the pepper spray used on the UC Davis protesters is "a food product, essentially." Kelly's explanation for the comment boils down to claiming she was taken out of context and that if anyone watches the full clip, they won't believe she was trying to diminish what happened to the students.

Megyn Kelly Explains her Description of Pepper Spray as ‘A Food Product, Essentially’:

Discussing the weekend pepper spray incident at UC Davis, Kelly began by explaining what pepper spray is. “It’s a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially,” said Kelly.

That was enough of a headline for Kelly to be pilloried on blogs and news sites. The comment even got the Taiwanese animation treatment.

Today, Kelly explains it this way: “[O'Reilly] wanted me to tell him what is in pepper spray, so I told him what the active ingredient is. That’s all I meant to convey… not that I meant it’s a snack!”

Kelly, who has carried around pepper spray herself “for years” didn’t expect the blow-back that came with the comments. “I think what happened was people didn’t watch the whole segment and assumed I was diminishing it. In no way did I mean to diminish what was happening.” [...]

“I think it would be clear if you watch the four minutes of TV,” Kelly tells TVNewser.

I posted the entire segment here at Video Cafe which can be seen again above and she and O'Reilly spent the better part of the segment doing exactly what Kelly denied here, downplaying the effects of the pepper spray and justifying its use on the students.

Change.org has a petition out now for those upset with Kelly's statements on the air you can sign here -- Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly: Eat or drink a full dose of pepper spray on national television.

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Leave it to Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly to downplay the use of pepper spray and harm that was inflicted against non-violent protesters this past Friday at the University of California, Davis campus that we covered over at our Occupy America site here and here and the overwhelming and non-violent response by the students that we covered here at Video Cafe with the Chancellor Linda Katehi's walk of shame with thousands of students lining the roadways as she left the campus.

Kelly went so far as to describe the pepper spray as "a food product, essentially" and both she and O'Reilly justified the officers excessive use of force by claiming that they possibly felt threatened by the number of students surrounding them and they also claimed that they were legally within their rights to spray them because the students were resisting arrest. They also told O'Reilly's audience that pepper spraying someone would be less harmful to the protesters than trying to just physically remove them from the premises and that somehow the police were going to be in a less threatening environment with trying to arrest them after they made multiple rounds with the pepper spray on the students than they would have before they took that action, which I find completely ridiculous since their actions obviously incited the crowd in a way just trying to physically remove them would not have.

They also ignored that the students were still roughed up even after they were sprayed and that many of them had the spray shot down their throats at close range. And they lied and said no one was hospitalized when in fact actuality, two of them were.

Bravo Fox for yet another segment making sure that your viewers are only less informed than those who don't watch any news at all. Uncle Rupert must be so proud.

For anyone that thinks we should take lightly the militarization of our police forces across the country or the use of pepper spray, I'd just ask that they go read Digby's piece on it here -- Police, pain and peppers.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz talked to Occupy Wall Street protester Jesse LaGreca about the police brutality at the Occupy UC Davis protests and what it means for the movement. Once again LaGreca did a good job expressing the concerns of those out there protesting, the problems we have with income disparity in the United States and the fact that too many of our politicians seem to want to do nothing but take this country back to the days before the civil rights movement or when there were any labor protections in place for American workers.

Transcript via MSNBC:

SCHULTZ: The violence on the campus of U.C.-Davis happened because of camping. Students were staging a protest in solidarity with the other occupy movements. They put tents on the quad. Police were there to remove the tents. Sound familiar, doesn`t it?

This is what`s happening all over the country, in New York, in Oakland, in Portland. The U.C.-Davis chancellor was just following the blueprint for breaking up the Occupy movements.

I`m joined now by Jesse LaGreca, protester, activist and freelance journalist. What do you make of what you saw on that tape?

JESSE LAGRECA, OWS PROTESTER: It`s absolutely deplorable, you know? To me it makes me feel like peasants -- the cost of living is going up, your paychecks are getting decreased, your wages are declining. And if you don`t like it, I have a can of pepper spray for you. It`s something that all of us should be shocked and disturbed by.

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Ed Schultz talked to Van Jones and Laura Flanders about the coordinated crackdowns we saw in cities across the country of the Occupy movement camps, the most notable of which was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's clearing of Zuccotti Park.

As they noted, it's likely that the recent move by the mayors across the country is going to do nothing but strengthen the movement and spread it out. They also discussed the futility of more aggressive police action against the protesters just two days before the already organized International Day of Action scheduled for November 17th.

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After Keith Olbermann running us through some of the recent news on various Occupy protests across the country, AlterNet's Joshua Holland joined the set of Countdown to discuss the latest from Occupy Oakland, where police are threatening to again evict the protesters there and whether the shooting nearby was being used as an excuse to justify the eviction.

HOLLAND: It's entirely possible that he had stayed there a couple of nights before. I spoke with three eyewitnesses who said that the fight started outside the camp, kind of moved through the camp and then this tragedy happened on the far end of the camp.

You know, this is the hundred and first homicide in Oakland this year and it's a real tragedy. I spoke to people out there who were saying that another young man had been shot to death, just caddy-corner from the incident last night and there were no news vans, there were no helicopters overhead. So I think that this is being used as a premise by City Hall officials to evict the camp, but you know, these problems run deep in the community.

They're social problems that aren't going to be addressed by evicting the occupation.

OLBERMANN: Give us a sense, because I don't think everybody knows the geography of downtown Oakland, about just what kind of area we're talking about and how unlikely it is that there would be a shooting that had no connection to the camp, so close to the camp, or how likely it might be.

HOLLAND: Well again, this is the fifth... this is the city with the fifth highest violent crime rate in the United States. It isn't downtown Oakland. It's not a residential area. It's mostly office buildings around. But, you know, again, we've heard that these things happen all the time. Somebody told me yesterday that if this had taken place in west Oakland, the body would still be sitting there hours after the fact.

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Countdown's David Shuster talked to The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt who broke this story of yet another Iraq War veteran being the victim of police brutality at the Occupy Oakland protests -- Occupy Oakland: second Iraq war veteran injured after police clashes:

Kayvan Sabehgi in intensive care with a lacerated spleen after protests in Oakland, a week after Scott Olsen was hurt. He says police beat him with batons

A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries after clashes between police and Occupy movement protesters in Oakland.

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

On Wednesday night, police used teargas and non-lethal projectiles to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland.

Sabehgi told the Guardian from hospital he was walking alone along 14th Street in central Oakland – away from the main area of clashes – when he was injured.

C&L's Occupy America has decided to start raising money to help pay for costs and other treatments Scott Olsen might need to aid in his recovery with Occupy America's Scott Olsen Solidarity Fund. As Michael Moore proclaimed the other day up in Oakland: "We are all Scott Olsen!"

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