> The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/marie-colv...
I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to exit that spiral of violence. But right now it looks like this won't happen. It's a shame.
If the state acts harder against protesters, journalists and civilian bystanders it will only fuel their anger. Leading to more violence, used by the state to issue a even worse crackdown than now. And so on and so on.
The only hope that I have is, that other politicians from all parties will stand up against that.
[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/05/31/us-law-e...
https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/01/cop-put-baton-george-floyd-pr...
EDIT: Ok, downvoted for inductive reasoning, here is data point.
https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1267883609886728193...
It's a case of officers committing perjury as to the events that occurred to figuratively put a weapon into the scene.
The DAs slides https://twitter.com/wsbtv/status/1267843835889156097/photo/1
https://www.policemag.com/342098/the-2016-police-presidentia...
192 total press freedom violations
—31+ arrests
—131 assaults (108 by police, 23 by others)
—30 equipment or newsroom damage.
Assault category breakdown:
45 physical attacks (30 by police)
30 tear gassings
17 pepper sprayings
46 rubber bullet/projectiles
https://twitter.com/uspresstracker/status/126787802436572365...
Wikipedia shows >5,000 arrests overall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests. Which I bet means journalists were arrested way less, than an average protesting folk.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/29/cnn-reporters-cover...
Another case where a reporter shows his credentials and gets arrested anyway. Attorney General acknowledges that the action was improper.
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/how-we-live/2020/06/01/...
Majority blue areas will see more Democrat police, majority red (rural) will see more Republican sheriffs.
This is born out by the data I was able to find, but I can't vouch for the veracity: http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
Sheriffs and State Troopers are very majority Republican, police are barely majority Democrat.
I suspect that if we had individual data per region, the affiliation would track with the local politics, maybe with +2 R across the board, or something like that.
That's institutionalized malice aforethought in my book.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xvzwp/baltimore-cops-car...
https://laist.com/2020/05/31/reporters_injured_protests_poli...
It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point for people to take police brutality at least somewhat seriously.
I'm mistaken for being pro-police and anti-BLM merely because I'm against the looting and rioting. I've always had the stance that the police in their current form are state-sanctioned street gangs.
https://twitter.com/alexiszotos/status/1068260482807676931
The more the merrier! Its gonna get IGNORANT tonight! But it's gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of those shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!
They did all this amidst a huge public outcry, what do you think happens to some poor schmuck when no camera is around.
Like this[2] and this[3].........
EDIT: Here is one where the cop force the poor guy to grab his baton and leave his fingerprints so he can accuse him of whatever he wants[4].
EDIT2: What do you know "his death [Floyd's] is on their hands [protesters and looters] as much as it is those officers"[5]
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/us/video-george-floyd-contrad...
[1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/george-floyd-au...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/07/27/...
[3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-woman-shot-killed...
https://bjssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002...
The reason I changed it is that "U.S. police have attacked journalists more than 110 times since May 28" is more baity. First you've got the aggressive verb "attacked". And then you've got the specific facts and figures (100 times, May 28). Why do these things make a title more baity? I don't know, but they are somehow active ingredients in the psychology of titles, which is why headline writers use them. I think of them as sharp edges. If you throw a spiky thing into a crowd, it gets more attention than a beach ball—but the quality of attention is not conducive to a reflective discussion on the internet (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). People react to the sharp bits.
It's in HN's interest to rewrite baity titles (indeed the site guidelines request it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) but this is 1000x more important on inflammatory topics of the moment, like this one. We want HN to discuss this, but we want to support the discussion to stay in the intended spirit of the site: thoughtful, respectful, curious conversation. The material is provocative enough, and a title doesn't need sharp edges to make readers here care about the topic.
To clear up a misconception that sometimes arises: I'm not saying the statement in the sharper title is false. Obviously it's legitimate to use an aggressive verb to describe an aggressive action, and if the facts and figures are true then it's obviously legitimate to make a factual statement with them. As a reader I have zero problem with that title. But the moderator perspective is different: the question for a moderator, on HN at least, is always: what is the prospective effect on forthcoming discussion? Or to put it pseudotechnically: given choice A vs. choice B, what is the diff between the probability distribution of threads that A is a prefix of, vs. threads that B is a prefix of? (This is just a metaphor, but it reflects how we think about this. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for more.) In the case of these two alternative titles, experience has shown that there's a significant difference in probable outcomes, and titles are by far the biggest influence on threads, so it's potentially a big deal.
Any news reports of people posing as reporters might be suppressed by newsrooms themselves as to not encourage copycats or get the idea out there that reporters might not be reporters, that is entirely unsubstantiated conjecture though.
Others have already shown examples, however here is an news article covering some incidents: https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-asks-evidence-individuals-incit...
I have so far not seen any evidence of the opposite taking place, I would certainly appreciate some counter examples.
On the question of political topics on HN, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, if you think HN has gotten more political lately. The principles haven't changed in 10+ years, although we've learned to do a better job of applying them.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1267449066947932163?s...
https://twitter.com/JordonLee/status/1267600319522971649?s=2...
The moderation question is always: what serves intellectual curiosity? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Once a topic becomes repeated enough, there's a power-law-style dropoff in how interesting it is (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), except to people who have a strong identification with one side of an argument, and that sort of interest isn't intellectual curiosity, it's loyalty to a cause. That may be an admirable quality in many ways, but it's not a good fit for this site.
Nationalistic flamewar, which is the theme you're referring to, definitely falls in this category. That doesn't mean that "anti ccp" stories don't get attention here—they certainly do. Just not enough to satisfy the warriors, and rightly so, since warriors want every story that serves their cause to be on HN's front page.
See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how we handle major ongoing topics.
Edit: it looks like we've had a similar conversation before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427, which makes me think that your "for some reason" is an insinuation of the sort the site guidelines specifically ask people not to post: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please don't do that here.
Someone at a protest was stabbed. Police was called to arrest the stabber and take the victim to hospital. They were actually leaving when some people started throwing rocks and bottles at them.
Source:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zk9oFDJ3Ocbz80Z1ISSW...
And of course there was the case of the riots at the CNN headquarters.
But I think this clearly & quantitatively shows that in general actions against journalists are initiated by the police force, which I don't find surprising.
I tried to explain that above, and linked to past explanations of the same points. If you want to take a look at those past explanations, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be curious to know what it is. Perhaps it would be helpful to describe what these links contain more explicitly:
(1) We try to optimize HN for intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(2) Curiosity and repetition don't go well together: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
(3) With submissions on a MOT (major ongoing topic), the main thing we look for is SNI (significant new information): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
As far as I can tell, the complete answer to your question follows from those three points.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/04/zachary-hamm...
“When flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs, the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to the United States flag’s right.”
> "Ending Qualified Immunity Act," which would allow civil lawsuits against police, a recourse that the Supreme Court has all but done away with.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/01/us/politics/01reu...
That plus the laundry list of obvious issues with criminal justice that any defense attorney could list off hand.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Police-Davenport-officer...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/federal-law-enforcement-officer-k...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-man-killed-by-cops-who-d...
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Police-Retired...
https://www.ibtimes.com/george-floyd-las-vegas-protests-1-po...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/top-detroit-news-most-arre...
----
Maybe there are more, and I think it's fortunate that the deaths don't appear to be excessively high. But I would still argue these people might not be dead or in critical condition if the rule of law wasn't out of control. I'm no fan of police, but that doesn't mean I don't think about how some kids may have lost a parent.
Warning: there is a lot of disturbing content there.
https://old.reddit.com/r/2020policebrutality
Are both accumulating quite a lot of evidence that police are using force recklessly and capriciously under the color of law without consequences.
The pink umbrella bit was clipped out of the riot started by police in Seattle on Monday - instead the news agencies started showing footage after pepper spray was deployed.
In Canada, the CBC cut a video right before a police van physically drove its way through a crowd. [1] Anyone else doing that would be described as vehicular assault, possibly attempted manslaughter.
The press isn't holding the police accountable for any of this. It's pushing a narrative that "The appropriate amount of force was used against rioters", without showing the inappropriate use of force that started the riot.
[1] https://twitter.com/_llebrun/status/1267209166545981445?s=20...
See for example https://unicornriot.ninja/ which was on the ground, live streaming from the early days of the protest in Minneapolis.
Unfortunately, some senior "dog whistle" politicians have labeled protesters "thugs" and "looters" and have called for "shooting" and "no quarter." These loose words are dangerous and may be unlawful: https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-death/republican-senato...
As a result of these statements, some armed enforcers including police, National Guard, and U.S. military may interpret these bellicose pronouncements as a declaration of war or a granting of letters of marque and reprisal against protesters and their property.
Good leadership would call for toning down the rhetoric but leadership appears to be in short supply. Gefickt, we are.
https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904
> Politicians who cross the MPD find slowdowns in their wards. After the first time I cut money from the proposed police budget, I had an uptick in calls taking forever to get a response, and MPD officers telling business owners to call their councilman about why it took so long.
I came around to prison abolition once I realized it was a goal that was meant to be achieved piece by piece.
Cash bail. That's one piece. None of those people need to be in jail. They haven't been convicted of a crime and they overwhelmingly show up for their court date if released. The only thing they can't afford is their bail and that is used to get them to plead to crimes without the police having to prove anything. That's 470k people on any given night. *
Drug possession. Like to smoke weed? Well, that's your choice and no need to throw you in jail over it like 1.4 million people each year.
The other pieces are more radical or require replacement programs or just don't even have proposed solutions. But just above are two pieces of the incarceration system that the many people will agree could just be turned off.
So, if you turn those off, what's the staffing change in police departments and correctional facilities? We're not talking about firing for performance (yet), this is just run of the mill right sizing. Gotta be efficient--can't give people jobs as a handout.
What if you kept going down this line of reasoning. What if you ended racial profiling? Across the country black motorists are 20% more likely to be pulled over. Either black people are being targeted (the consensus) or white people are being given a free pass (my personal experience is that this is also happening). So either hire more police to pull over white people more often. We are doing hella drugs, driving drunk all the time, texting while driving, etc. Or, more along the lines of what everyone wants, there could be a 20% reduction in the staffing of highway patrol.
I think if the will of the people was respected, police departments would probably be reduced by 25% across the country. Certainly in NYC, which has one of the highest cops per capita in the world even though we have the highest density and cops shouldn't have to walk far to do their jobs.
If it were my policy though, probably 50% of police could be eliminated.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics
* https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/us/police-stops-race-stanford...
In what timeline are you talking about? Women's Suffrage definitely had protests turn violent. Here[1] is source about documenting this violence, and I went through the trouble of finding a source published 2 years ago in order to counter any narrative that it's "convenient" for today's issues. History has a way of whitewashing and romanticizing what were difficult fights for rights.
Large protests turn violent, and I'm not surprised that, with record unemployment as well, that looting is being amplified as well.
Besides, in any case, it's long established that peaceful protests don't even work. A man can't even kneel during a sports game without his protest being diminished.
[1] https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragettes-viol...
It was not by accident[1] - remember the police force was on the wrong side of that consensus. Strategically, allowing and even encouraging[2][3] violence is a winning move for the police (as long as their members are relatively safe) - both to punish the communities who have seemingly "turned against the police" and to change the narrative so that the same communities beg the police to save them from the violence.
1. Twitter thread on how the Minneapolis police is on "strike" https://twitter.com/lynnellmick/status/1266489804444721152
2. https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1267670804696895488
3. https://twitter.com/realDavidOnline/status/12673136333918699...
"Despite some "confusion," Lansing police had no complaints about any ambulance being locked in traffic during an emergency, said Robert Merritt, a spokesman for the Lansing Police Department. When ambulances on non-emergency runs were in traffic, "rally participants slowly cleared a path," he said."
[1] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/0...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
Oakland has had a Democratic mayor since 1977. California routinely has a super-majority of Democrats in the state legislature, and the last Republican Federal Senator from the state left office almost 30 years ago. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the second paragraph after mentioning the “fraught” relationship between black residents and the Oakland PD should have something to do with those Democrats who have direct executive and legislative control over the city and state, who are directly in charge of hiring/firing police chiefs and operating the state level internal affairs bureaus, and who set police department budgets and make the laws. And maybe the (admittedly deplorable) coded language a Republican Senator thousands of miles away uses belongs many paragraphs below that.
[1] Interesting fact. Oakland and Louisville are ranked similarly (188 versus 194) on Urban Institute’s “economic inclusiveness” index: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/97981/...
Also, a lack of media coverage for a thing doesn't mean it doesn't happen, nor does rampant media coverage mean a thing is common. Remember the summer of the shark? [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_the_Shark
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the... - Main reddit thread, with aerial footage of the incident, as well as lots of other sources in the comments
* https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/ - Livestream of 30+ minutes leading up to the incident. The interesting stuff starts at 26' in, but he gives a lot of good context on the protest leading up to then. The livestreamer was at the front line when they started pepper spraying, and in fact you can even see him in the aerial footage as he's next to a pink umbrella that makes a good landmark. It's very clear from ground eye view the violence was deliberately premeditated and coordinated by SPD and not in response to any immediate threat. No orders to disperse, or do anything else for that matter, are given prior to pepper spray, teargas, and flashbangs.
* https://mobile.twitter.com/izaacmellow/status/12676798206006... - Official SPD story claiming incident is a "riot" and was forced on them: " Crowd has thrown rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers and is attempting to breach barricades one block from the East Precinct."
I don't think you can watch these videos and come to the conclusion that at least in this instance, it's not the protesters rioting but rather the police. Then they're officially lying about it.
Edit: formatting
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867219130/george-floyd-indepe...
> In charging documents released last week, prosecutors said that preliminary results from an autopsy "revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."
>However the new report from the medical examiner did not include such language.
Ideas include: -Banning police unions -Having a federal agency to discipline police (outside the purview of local politics)
I haven't heard this idea elsewhere but I like the idea of us addressing from the top down the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world at 698 per 1,000 currently. This is something like 10x some comparable countries, and at least 3x any country we consider "free" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...). We can make a top down decision to change this by making a hard "200 incarcerated per 100,000" cap at the state level. Dec 31st of each year, each state with over 200 per 100,000 prisoners has to release prisoners until they are below the threshold.
I am not saying it is a simple problem, but any other solution ideas?
The “politically convenient group” seems to be anyone being destructive, like ...
https://twitter.com/SARAHKSTUDIO/status/1267371809084567554/...
... white women?
The sum of causing unnecessary damage and turning a blind eye to vandalism at least gives me confidence that there is a desire by many police officers to see property destroyed.
From that I can only guess at what the reasoning might be, but given that we’ve seen this method of undermining protests in the past, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume racist intent until there is evidence that begins to support an alternative conclusion.
I'm not saying it's productive or a good thing, I'm just saying that's what it feels like.
People are only going to stand and watch their fellow citizens get shot point blank in the face with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and rubber bullets for so long.
Law Enforcement are denying people their right to demonstrate, and I feel like people are going to fight hard to keep it.
EDIT: I mean, watch this [1]. Those look like Police who are desperately trying to maintain control with the only means they know how - violence.
Do you think everyone will continue to just watch them swing batons like the first few seconds and do nothing?
[1] https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1267968926761312256
1 out of 4 initially involved people has been charged. People who did the initial coverup are still untouched. One chief of police was fired by a mayor. Firing someone for helping with murder or current attack on unarmed civilians is a joke and bringing that up will only make people more angry. (Fired cops often go straight into security jobs)
Re. mental illness issues, have a read: https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/2016-12-07/how-c...
> Cops aren't generally worried about open carry nuts
Yeah. Turns out it's not about just any people having guns. Black Panthers and all...
Local news reporting tries to explain what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m01s
"What you've been seeing is basically a cat and mouse game all night. The police have been here with a huge show of force, but they can't stop people, because they don't know that they've necessarily been looting. And so they're waiting for somebody to do something, police move onto the next block, and then someone does something."
I don't know one way or another whether this is the whole truth, but it appears to play a significant role according to the reporter.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
> "To see this - traffic blocking the main intersection of a level 1 trauma centre, blocking the entrance and exit to our hospital. Blocking patients from receiving care that they need, makes me angry. It hurts. It hurts a lot," said one healthcare worker on Facebook.
> WLNS reports another posting: "You are currently blocking ambulances, physicians and caregivers from making it to work to care for the sick and relieve the exhausted workers.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Quotes a local news story: https://www.wlns.com/news/health/coronavirus/capitol-protest...
> Sparrow spokesperson John Foren said there are no access problems and ambulances can “get in and out. There’s no problem.”
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/0...
https://soundcloud.com/the-daily-beast-politics/trump-audio
I can’t stress how useful it is to hear this context first hand yourself.
Extraordinary enough? A birds eye view, of a protest that was peaceful for hours, until police grab for an umbrella, and start attacking the crowd.
Here's an ant's eye view of the same event, by the way. @26:30 - the gas masks arrive, @28:20 - the gas masks take their place in the line, @30:00 - the umbrella gets grabbed, and the crowd gets attacked.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1022002103584874...
The justice dept definition as updated in 2012 would include this. I don’t know how that plays out in state law, but what I’ve read points to that being the definition for state charges too. Doesn’t help when it’s not enforced, which is clearly the case here since the officer didn’t have to register as a sex offender either.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition...
https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...
Primary, by power of observation. But OK, I'll make this as vague and 100% foolproof as I can, to start: there are people who dress in black, and masks, and destroy stuff and commit violence at protests. That's from actual observation. It's not just 1-2, there are groups of them. That's my personal observation from being at 2 protests with such groups.
Now, combine that with all the sources references in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc
Along with many, many, many dozens of media reports like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr0i6piW_ak
I'm able to discern a certain pattern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5C38kayWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sKN2vOtZM
https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gvc5pt
https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gvimlx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RokxrLLBjKA
And many more examples are available...
By your definition, black people using or destroying a whites-only bathroom as a form of protest would be off limits. I'd recommend some time away from the keyboard and do some reading about protest and the cultural history of same. As a very basic starting point, you might consider reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest in its entirety.
Hard to evaluate the accuracy of that story.
But it's also hard to dismiss it out of hand, given known true police behaviour. A very common view from the public is that cops are totally capable of that kind of behaviour. And whether the story about the cop setting the first fire is true our not, the believability of the story is as much a problem as the possible truth of the story.
https://eurweb.com/2020/05/29/jacob-pederson-minneapolis-pol...
Yeah, I smell a pattern too...
1. Rubber bullets kill when they are used in the exact opposite way they were intended. They are not meant to be fired at people's heads. If used, they should be fired at the legs to incapacitate. This is covered in training. I very much doubt it's an accident that they wind up hitting someone in the temple.
2. I did not explicitly authorize escalation between my city police and protestors. If you want to know what works when it comes to preventing riots and looting, read: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro... I watched in my city as protestors were turned into rioters because the police reaction to the middle finger and some naughty language was riot gear and tear gas.
3. You're very confused. You explicitly say we should not confuse protestors with rioters, and then go on to say that rioting and looting is being done by people "within the protest movement". You can't have it both ways. What you don't seem to understand is that it can simultaneously be the case that there are people who are committing "crimes" to have their voices heard, and people who are committing crimes because it's an opportune time to commit them. What you fail to recognize, is that we may disagree about what a crime even is societally. And to wit, that is exactly what we're disagreeing about right now. By strict legal definition, looting is a crime. However, the motivation for the crime colors it. If someone was starving and stole a loaf of bread it would be a crime, but the motivations for that crime color it. I would not, for instance, tear gas a starving person for stealing a loaf of bread.
-- In the end, your version of "clear-eyed" is code for "whatever I deem to be the valid laws of this society", not necessarily what is truly just.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/small-town-police-chief-killed-off...
Actually, there are dozens of different videos showing police being badly beaten as they attempt to stop vandalism. They just don't make the news as this isn't "progressive".
https://abcnews.go.com/US/small-town-police-chief-killed-off...
https://www.insider.com/george-floyd-protests-violence-again...
You do see a difference in the protests, right? The protests against lockdowns didn't include looting, arson, rape, murder, and multiple murdered police.
Here, have a small sample,
Black pawn shop employee murdered by looters for TVs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhG0v9pDycM
"You said black lives matter.. look what you did to my store"
https://mobile.twitter.com/Mus1yMustafa/status/1267874483840...
Destroying store and beating unarmed woman and her husband
Restaurant manager beaten and stomped for trying to defend his workplace
Stopping, beating and stomping a truck driver while protesters yell to kill him
Protesters attack a media member and then pummel him
Police officer beaten on the streets
Car runs over a cop
Protesters set homeless man’s belongings on fire
Throwing fireworks at the cops
Chasing and beating guy with red had
I can keep going. It is utterly dispicable. There's a long long list of videos with these "peaceful protestors" in action. Everyone has a camera, and all of this is available for you to see, if you only choose to see it.
This was your hypothetical, but it’s actually reality. Protest is protest. It’s for the whole society to decide what are valid forms of it, at every level.
[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-move...
This was staged by infowars. I cannot be arsed to look at all of your videos.
The right wing lockdown protests had a strong smell of AstroTurf about them:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/coronavirus-p...
The autopsy was purposely vague so as to give as much leeway as possible to the police.
Here's a video of the Seattle police instigating violence: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...
A cop felt so threatened by a pink umbrella that he just had to have it, at all costs.
I've been watching (and attending) a lot of the Portland protests and it's the same story here. Peaceful protesters, violent police. They're all fully geared and armed, and yet feel threatened by water bottles being thrown at them. They feel so threatened by the people that just having protesters get close to a fence around the Justice Center will cause police to start firing rubber bullets, flash bangs, smoke bombs, and tear gas at unarmed and unprotected protesters. Police feel so threatened by unarmed protesters that they now need the help of fully-armed, fully-geared, completely decked-out national guard. This is an embarrassment for police.
Not that any of this is a surprise, anyway. A police officer felt so threatened by an unarmed, handcuffed black man that the had to murder the unarmed, handcuffed black man.
Oh well, I guess black lives don't actually matter to you then, because the video I lead with is a real black man who really died.
https://fox6now.com/2020/06/02/police-retired-st-louis-polic...
There is a big disconnect between the crime statistics in Germany, that show low crime levels by international standards and recent reductions in crime levels, and what the German public believe about the prevalence of crime in Germany due to alarmist tabloid reporting.
Cf. e.g., https://www.dw.com/en/crime-in-germany-drops-10-percent-in-2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_Zero
https://www.joincampaignzero.org/s/CampaignZero-Policing.pdf
They seem like sensible policy positions for reducing violence and misconduct by police.
Edit: I mean, come on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eVPKpBKGCE
I agree. But that's not the whole story; perhaps not even the main story here. "Police act like laws don't apply to them because of Qualified Immunity": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23373329
Thanks to HN commenter @yyyk ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382006 ), we learn that in 1967, the Supreme Court held that:
- "Few doctrines were more solidly established at common law than the immunity of judges from liability for damages for acts committed within their judicial jurisdiction... "
- "This immunity applies even when the judge is accused of acting maliciously and corruptly... " and - "... the immunity of legislators for acts within the legislative role was not abolished. The immunity of judges for acts within the judicial role is equally well established... "
- "The common law has never granted police officers an absolute and unqualified immunity" but "... a police officer is not charged with predicting the future course of constitutional law... " and "the defense of good faith and probable cause... available to the officers in the common-law action for false arrest and imprisonment, is also available to them in the action under § 1983 [Civil action for deprivation of rights]."
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Ray/Opinion_of_the...
After which followed a cascade of case law that granted police officers, and others similarly anointed, a "qualified immunity" to trials (including pre-trial discovery): https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity
Oakland lies within the ambit of the U.S. Supreme Court so, as long as qualified immunity remains the law of the land, local officials have limited ability to change a long-standing police culture of impunity.
> coded language a Republican Senator thousands of miles away uses belongs many paragraphs below that.
I disagree. Thanks to telecommunications, social media, and other new-fangled technologies, powerful and influential persons can cause action at a distance of thousands of miles. "Thousands of miles away" is meaningless in instances in which powerful persons can transmit or impose effects tens of thousands of miles away.
Edit: formatting
https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...
What I advocate for is a series of measures where trained members of the community, as a job, are in charge of primarily, defusing conflict, secondarily, preventing crime, and as a last resort, enforcing community standards and laws. No arrest quotas, limited jail, no cash bail, no mandatory minimum sentencing. This sounds like what I hear police are like in other places, but existing police power structures are powerful and resistant to reform, so wholesale replacement appears to be the best tactic.
https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...
https://www.insider.com/nypd-cruisers-ram-down-protesters-vi...
- https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/services/law-enforcement/perm....
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23398553
Thank you either way.
I think that we should publish short-sleeve mug photos of all these groups, because both anarchists and white supremacists often have identifying tattoos. Let there be light. The more transparency the better.
But unless I manage to convince myself that, somehow, police agent provocateurs or white supremacists were staging riots and destruction at Trump's inauguration (see video below[1], there are many others from those riots by mainstream media outlets), then my prior is currently that most of the people engaging in these tactics are the same people who have done it for the past 2-3 decades, which I've witnessed in person.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr0i6piW_ak
To clarify, are you suggesting that all this the riots, looting, and assaults are being done by agents provocateurs? Most of them? Some of them? Just that one autozone?
jcims didn't say that he would be "Driving a car into a crowd..." as you state.
Clearly, if rioters begin beating a car and breaking windows the driver has the option of surviving by driving to preserve life, limb and property.
jascii says>"mentally training yourself to make that a "valid option" can be extremely dangerous."<
Have you ever been surrounded by a mob or mobs while driving a vehicle? We're discussing it here, so you've now at least considered (and possibly once experienced) such a situation: otherwise how could you claim that such an option can be, as you state, "extremely dangerous"?
Tell us your valuable experiences, please.
BTW there's plenty on this topic previously on the innertubes:
https://urbansurvivalsite.com/caught-riot-driving/
https://www.quora.com/What-are-my-legal-options-if-my-car-is...