I have been to a few rallies/vigils/marches lately and all incidences of violence that I have witnessed either in person or through media has been instigated by the police. As far as I know,every documented case where a formerly peaceful crowd turns into chaos has been started with police shooting pepperspray, teargas, or whatever into the crowd.
I find it really hard to not come to the conclusion that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.
People protest peacefully, and police shoot tear gas into the crowd and attack whomever they can get their hands on.
I’ll admit, the outright brutality I saw in-person in Oakland was worse than what I’ve seen here in the recent days.
In Oakland, the police would purposely corral protestors into groups and literally beat the shit out of them. I saw this in-person multiple times. In Seattle, I haven’t seen that sort of corral behavior. However, police do shoot tear gas completely unprovoked and fire rubber bullets and mace without concern.
In both places, no looting was occurring at the main scene of the protests. In both cases, numerous videos show police breaking windows themselves.
In any case, it’s all the same: in a country that parades its freedom, people of color can’t protest without the president calling for them to be roughed up, and without the police willingly complying.
This has been a long time coming, too. In the last few years, many police departments around the country have thrown their hands up and publicly stated they won't be bothering with most property crimes. The way they see it, the only crimes worth their time involve people not committing real crimes at all or crimes involving guns or knives. Anyone who doesn't get why people don't trust the police has been living under a rock. This goes beyond just racism.
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...
1. They are given rubber bullets and mace without any form of de-escalation training, so they just use the tools they have at their disposal.
2. Just like any kind of organism, the police force needs to preserve itself and make sure it is necessary. The military doesn't like peace, and the police cannot thrive with peaceful protests. They do what they see fit to make themselves irreplaceable.
From what I've seen, teargas and mace are used after a small minority of protesters become violent and the crowd is lawfully ordered to disperse.
I can't say if these are the right tactics, but I have not seen police use these things for no obvious reason.
The one situation where this wasn't the case is when peaceful protesters were blocking one of the two roads that was going to be used to transport multiple heads of state off of a peninsula after high level discussions. I assume this was due to some security consideration, but I don't know. The crowd was passive.
But when will people take a step back and start asking themselves; who profits on this turmoil?
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.
Is that believable? Sure, but locking arms is also a common thing during protests. The road was already blocked off and cars weren't going through. Also, they fired CS into crowds of protesters blocks away, claiming that they think the protesters are coordinating by secure communications and instantaneously turning violent across the city. Most of it seems like bullshit, and even if it's all true, locking arms on one side of a closed street is not at all unusual. They should have arrested the one guy hitting the glass and let the protest continue.
By the way, they used this event to justify the curfews that haven't been raised since then.
They want the story to be about rioters so they're letting them riot. It's a way to shift the public opinion (same way some cops have been seen breaking car and store windows).
Seems fairly accurate. I'm just annoyed that many people can't grasp that awful police behavior and awful behavior from other actors are not mutually exclusive. There is lots of unjustified police violence and provocations against perfectly peaceful protestors. There is also systematic vandalism and arson by people who aren't peaceful protestors. And there is massive amounts of opportunistic vandalism and looting. All three can and do co-exist.
This is not a two-sided conflict. More like three- or four- sided mess.
Realizing how angry the people are and how massively outnumbered they are they've decided to come out hard with violence in an attempt to squash the protests, which makes sense.
I don't think it would take much for the people to overcome the Law Enforcement with their overwhelming numbers. Once the news gets around that it's happened in one place, that will embolden others to do the same. I just hope it doesn't get wickedly violent if it happens.
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.
I don't believe you.
The umbrella guy breaking the AutoZone window with a hammer has no connection to any police department. Someone made that up on social media and people shared it because that's what people do.
The only video I know of showing officers breaking a window is out of Seattle. It shows officers responding to a burglary in progress at a Target store. The officers had to chip away at the already broken glass windows so they could safely get in. (The burglars had broken the glass to get inside.) Once inside, the responding officers found and arrested the three burglars they had come for.
People crowded around the vehicles and starting throwing things at them. While I would expect police to have more restraint/less fear than they did, that wasn’t the police starting violence. I would expect almost anyone to have the same reaction they did.
There was another NYC incident that people were up in arms about without context and it turns out one of the police had been hit in the head with a brick.
(I say 'individuals', not 'protestors', because the latter are peaceful people. The instigators are rioters and looters, a small minority of the people hiding within the former group.)
The other 25% has been initial violent action from the police. Things like shooting gas and charging forward when protestors were simply standing still.
In my neighborhood, the event organizer wasn't even from my city and she was doing everything she could to get the crowd angry at police. Many of the others who spoke were calmer, more reasonable, more positive, sincere, etc, but she was trying to get people ramped up. The police weren't at the protest originally and she tried to use the lack of police presence to anger people ("look, the police don't even care about protecting you!") and then they merely showed up and it was the other way around ("the police are here to stop us!"). Seemed like she was trying to agitate people into provoking the police. Even still, the protest was generally peaceful on both sides; as far as I know, there was no police violence nor rioting/looting/etc. Proud of my hood.
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.
That doesn't make sense, unless they wanted the driver and other people in a not airtight emergency vehicle to end up in the gas cloud as well...
Not showing up can be a tactical decision: you don't have to generate more bad press and more cries about police brutality and you also don't need to quasi-officially hand over the area to the looters.
The state's power isn't real as in "we can crush you", it rests only in everybody's fear of the state being able to crush them. If there's a chance that the state has to back down, not seeking the confrontation sounds like a smart choice to me, even if it comes at the price of a day or two of looting.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/04/zachary-hamm...
EDIT: I will also note that this, among other events, was used to justify calling for a curfew in town, and today, the mayor and police chief have condemned their own police officers for deploying tear gas on peaceful protests prior to the start of the curfews last night, and then putting forward a false justification (admitted by the police chief to have been a false justification, to be clear) for doing so.
I mean, we know the black bloc and similar groups engages in these tactics, they've been doing it since Seattle WTO 1999. I've seen it in person to protests I've been to (as a protester). It's very hard for me to believe that all of a sudden those people are no longer active in protests, and their place has been taken by (insert your politically-convenient group here).
(shows a video of it happening)
"This isn't widespread"
So how many videos do you need to see? 2? 10? 15???
Your argument can't possibly be "Because they didn't want to escalate" or "They didn't want people to think they're violent" when they did escalate and were violent elsewhere.
I am in full agreement that it was tactical - it allows them to punish a neighborhood and to shift the story.
Giving your comment the benefit of the doubt, that does not address the fact that a while platoon of police officers witnessed a fellow police officer vandalize public property without any reason or justification, and they didn't even flinched or complained or even frowned upon that brand of unprovoked abuse.
That's pretty much one of the central points of the whole protest.
They have no (personal) reason to stop the looting, and at the same time, occupying their attention, the opportunity to strike out at that (very personal) threat.
Two weeks ago a San Diego police deputy was released from jail after serving only six months after sexually assaulting (why forced oral sex is not rape I’m not sure) 16 women that had called the police for help. He does not have to register as a sexual offender.
Protesting is legal and a protest without a disturbance is not a protest, so arresting people causing a disturbance while shutting down non-violent disturbances is disappointing.
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.
I'd say holding the protestors responsible for it is a bit missleading.
It's ironic that the people trying their best to change that are also the ones who are most closely aligned with the victims of police brutality, politically speaking. One of many things I don't understand.
The question they should ask is, why did the party turn from the people who put it into power and become beholden to public employee unions which encompass police, fire, education, if not regular government employees. Easy answer, the support where the money comes from. People decry corporate money in politics but this money is more poisonous because of its out sized influence because of pressure they can put on any politician who tries to stand up to them; just go google stories of these unions protesting in the streets of the homes of politicians making moves against them, they have bought billboards and even homes nearby to put pressure down.
TL,DR : This is all about money. The politicians have been more than willing to turn a blind eye to police malfeasance; if not problems in fire departments and education; because the money is too good and the groups involved have very big influence over the citizenry.
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.
How do you know this? What's the process by which you established this as a known thing?
And how is it ironic? When has the second amendment ever done anything for victims of police brutality? How often has widespread gun ownership been used as an excuse for excessive police force?
But like I said, I don't understand any of this. Maybe others can offer some insight.
Do you have any concrete examples in your situation in Sweden?
If the lawful order was give, was it because criminals were using the peaceful protest as cover?
I have seen dozens if not over a hundred videos of the police acting inappropriately over the last few days. I have only seen a single video in which any of them were stopped or reprimanded by another cop and that one "good cop" was a woman of color. If this inappropriate behavior is done by such a small percentage of the police force and is frowned on by all the other good cops, why is there so little evidence of police policing themselves?
I would also keep an eye on that officer to see if there were more violations.
I would not break formation and try to handcuff another officer in the moment, because it would be strategically unwise.
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...
Or would you correct someone and say that isn’t happening, and when confronted with a video of someone somewhere doing a bad thing, inform them of the fact that a few cherry picked anecdotes do not represent the activity of the broader population?
You don’t have to answer.
I don’t know your view on the matter, but somehow I doubt that seeing videos will do anything to change your view on the matter anyway. I say this because in a thread about police brutality, you cherry-pick an argument counter to what videos have already shown.
I do hope the continuing videos showcasing police brutality, during protests OF police brutality, do something to convince people that it is a very real problem.
You don't have to condone it. The question is whether it's appropriate to escalate to violence to stop it. And it clearly isn't, even from the very narrow perspective of the police. The phone video shot two days ago energized the huge protests yesterday, who ended up getting gassed out of a church in DC so the president could hold up a bible, which is driving literally millions more people into the streets.
Let them do their thing, and everyone will get bored. Yes, it's a dick move to block an intersection. But we don't tear gas routine assholes, right?
In practical terms, they already do it and US law allows them prosecutorial discretion.
Never thought of it this way before, but this train of thought strongly resonates with me and makes sense. Thanks for posting it.
Not that this means a sovereign state may choose to make violent self-defense legal, for example, without any risk to its sovereignty, provided it's still the force deciding whether a given instance was legal and backing up those rulings with threat of or actual violence. It's the unchallenged (un-successfully challenged, at any rate) arbiter of what is and is not permissible violence.
The police are the primary point of contact between the citizenry and the state monopoly on violence when it is most acutely exercised (rather than merely threatened or practiced more softly), so framing this as the police personally having (been invested with) that monopoly, in the context of a meeting on the street between non-police citizens and the police, seems reasonable to me.
A state that finds itself unable to claim or maintain its monopoly on violence is at serious risk of loss of sovereignty, usually to whichever group is having success challenging that claim. Understanding how that balance sits can be a way to insight into the de facto power structure of a governmental system—for example, the de jure sovereign power of a state might be the civil government, but if it effectively operates at the pleasure of a military bureaucracy that has demonstrated the ability to topple the civil government and maintains a tacit threat to do same again in the future, then at best the civil government shares sovereignty with the military bureaucracy, and at worst it's a kind of puppet-state of the actual sovereign power (this, specifically, is why strong standing armies are seen as a risky tool for a state to keep—rather than increasing the power or control of the supposed sovereign, they can easily turn to challenging it very effectively). Turkey's operated this way, at times. Egypt, too. Not that uncommon an arrangement, the de facto sovereignty resting less securely with the de jure rulers than one might suppose.
Looking elsewhere in the thread, reports of police deliberately failing to use their (threat of or actual) force to uphold the law in the districts of politicians who've tried to do something they don't like (reduce their funding)—assuming they get away with it and aren't brought to-heel (apparently they have not been)—is another example of a force-bearing arm of the state threatening the sovereignty of the civil government.
[EDIT] on a more personal note, I'm highly skeptical of the utility of widespread private ownership of small arms as a means of keeping the state in check. I've not seen them to be a significant factor in successful resistance against a state, and especially not against one's own state. For one thing they're plenty likely to be used to enforce tyranny or perpetrate injustice on behalf of the government, officially or unofficially (often the latter—see the post-reconstruction South for a close-to-home example) and for another they seem to be neither necessary nor sufficient for armed insurrection to succeed. The critical factor seems to be overt or covert support by part or all of an actual military, whether foreign or one's own, to provide materiel and direct support (e.g. no-fly zones, factions of the army joining the rebels in a civil war, that sort of thing). I see them as a distraction. I wish the left would stop talking about them because it just drives some people away and they've made little progress on restricting firearm ownership anyway, but I also don't see them as somehow key to preserving liberty, simply because they seem secondary at best in any successful rebellion I'm aware of (except maybe against very weak states with tiny militaries that fail to levy more loyal soldiers before the shooting starts, but that's not, you know, the US, at all).
From what I've heard , they aren't even using the rubber bullets they way they are designed, but instead in a more dangerous way. Incompetence or maliciousness, take your pick. I wager its a bit of both.
My biggest takeaway is local events translate to global action in the crowd (police or protestors). And it leads to all this misunderstanding. "What I was just standing here. Why are you pushing me?". Because jackass, a group of people 10 feet away from you threw rocks and bottles at the police. Sorry you got shoved but shit happens.
Below are my unorganized thoughts. Just wanted to get them out.
---
There were like 100k people at 2:30 (maybe more I didn't count I'm just guessing). These people were mostly peaceful. The worst thing they did was chant obscenities about the police and jump on the cars of bystanders. Not the worst thing in the world but not the nicest way to protest either. I don't hold it against them.
By 6ish there were maybe 10 or 20 thousand hardcore protestors remaining. The people legitimately concerned about police brutality but not clinically-insane-enough-to-march-for-four-hours-saying-the-same-thing-to-no-one-in-particular went home.
These diehards are mostly a bunch of power tripping assholes. "Fuck 12", "ACAB", "Pigs", running up to the police line and trying to 'punk' them out. Just stupid. The weaker and frailer they are the more it seemed they had to say. They know they have all the power when they're with the crowd. Its simultaneously the most pathetic and the most terrifying thing you've ever seen because one of these cracked out weirdos is probably going to try to light your building on fire soon.
And then the fires start. Police cars, a 7-11, doesn't matter. The protestors block the street when firefighters roll up to put it out. They eventually move but I couldn't tell you why. Big shoutout to CFD for being total badasses. I wasn't about to walk out in the crowd even if I were disguised as a "protestor". They make their way to the fire, get it out ASAP and roll out before the crowd has a chance to completely engulf them. Though I never saw the bulk of the crowd leave the police lines.
I have to criticize CPD a little here. I was legitimately concerned my wife and I were going to burn to death in our apartment. I didn't have faith that the CPD could prevent someone from lighting my building on fire.
Thankfully it never came to that.
The police were completely outnumbered and were generally powerless to do anything when the crowd was in its full force. There were people with hammers breaking up the sidewalk to use chunks of debris as weapons against the police. The police just stood there unable or unwilling to prevent it.
In my mind, the police were present to A). soak up as much of the crowds rage as possible and B). prevent the really heinous shit from going down. I'm not talking murder. I'm talking burning an apartment building down with all the people inside heinous. Several murders happened behind the crowds (i.e. bad people are using the crowd as a human shield to do whatever they want). The police didn't (maybe couldn't) budge. Even if they did try to prevent it the crowd would have raged at their intrusion into "their" space.
After curfew the cops went on the offensive. The police began to march. Pushing the remaining "protestors" further and further south outside of the loop. This involved rubber bullets and I assume tear gas but I couldn't actually see this part. Along the way the rioters looted every business (aside from the Crocs store hilariously enough) from Wacker all the way to Roosevelt. I assume they looted further down but I didn't feel like walking any further through the ruins of my city.
That's basically it.
I think if we banned police from getting near these protests at all / only getting involved with people causing physical violence, it would be a great step to actually minimizing the exact things the curfews are intended to address.
"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...
All most of the protestors want to do is protest, ie partake in some of their 1st amendment rights. So the protestors "overrun" the police and then what? Continue to stand in the street chanting?
This feels like straight projection, and focusing on the few people taking advantage of the situation by looting etc. The police could solve that in a heartbeat by deploying small units into the protest crowds and working with the peaceful protestors, but first they'd have to give up on the goal of disrupting legitimate protests.
All I see is crazed fighting from them. Wide eyed with fear, wild swinging, just indiscriminate violence. Is property damage bad? Sure. But good lord stolen Nikes are so inconsequential to what I'm seeing from the police right now.
I am not a bleeding heart liberal, nor am I some apparently crazed republican. I just don't like seeing my fellow Americans getting killed and beaten. The fact that they are totally immune from prosecution and oversight makes the power dynamic of it all that much more infuriating.
Police are on a common radio channel and coordinate their actions. Protesters aren't. If one protester takes violent action, most protesters may be unaware but all police will be. What you see as an unprovoked, violent response may actually have been provoked by something you simply weren't close enough to witness.
This explanation is pure speculation. However, if true, it does prompt us to ask if police can find ways to localize their responses better. i.e. If violent response is necessary in a specific location, is there a way to make police relatively far from that location aware of it without signalling imminent personal danger to them, thereby priming them to over-respond to whatever is happening at their location?
e.g. Instead of just hearing "They've pulled out knives!" over the radio, they might have a corresponding heads-up display showing where that message came from and where they themselves are in relation to that.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
We don't have the right to block traffic to promote our political opinions.
When protestors block traffic, if the city decides they have to go, and they won't - in those situations, it's the protesters who are 'instigating', not the police.
NRA 2cnd amendment protestors, pro/anti-abortion protestors, anti-capitalist - whatever we want it doesn't matter. If the protest violates the local or regional ordinance, and the city asks protesters to move (and they do in many cases allow the protesters to stay) - they have to move, if they don't move, it's not the police's fault that they are literally required by us, the community, to move people.
Edit: I would like to invite anyone to define exactly under what conditions people think they have the right to stop traffic at major intersections for hours on end, other than of course signalling to the city beforehand.
Referring to looters as 'looters' is not problematic.
Calling for shootings, using code-words like 'thugs' and referring to peaceful protesters as 'looters' is a problem - but let's not lose context here: there are riots and rioters are bad news.
I think in these ugly times it's even more important to be cool and clear about things.
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/...
We don't have violent riots after every election, for one thing.
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
Also, city coroner made one claim, the coroner hired by the family made a different one, the claim that somehow the coroner hired by the family is 'correct' is just flat out inappropriate. Personally, I'm slightly more inclined to believe the city coroner, and that there were probably some complications. When the victim initially came out of his vehicle, it seems he fell to the ground in a manner that didn't seem to be due to a struggle, which would indicate something was wrong, physically, already at that time, obviously exacerbated by the police brutality.
> that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.
The police is composed of a bunch of individuals. It is highly unlikely that there is any kind of conspiracy to set the narrative of excessive violence by being...excessively violent? It doesn't even logically follow.
Never mind that you always see them as law enforcement and not a service to the community.
However, when a civilian acts inappropriately there are legal consequences. When a police office acts inappropriately there are few legal consequences and they are very-very-rarely enforced.
I'll ask the question differently,
"Is destruction of property what you expect from rioters?" Yes, 1% or less of rioters are going to be stupid. "Should they be reprimanded?" Sadly yes, and we have specialized government entities that can utilize appropriate-force to reprimand them.
"Is destruction of property what you expect from police?" No, not even from the 1% or less that want to be stupid. That is unacceptable, their job is to protect and serve. Even from each other. "Should they be reprimanded?" Yes! but we as civilians have no legal way to do this, and even the "good cops" have no good way to do this.
What are your answers to these questions lawnchair_larry?
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.
When peaceful protests have failed to affect change and police brutality (especially for POC) is continuing unabated.
Is removing anti-riot barricades ‘looting’ if protesters remove them from the street and out of the control of authorities in order to exercise their right to protest?
Branding someone a rioter empowers the utterer and subjugates the one deemed rioting in your framing. You seem to think it is justified to use violence against someone because of how you perceive their actions, even if they don’t hurt people, only property. There is a subtle but distinct difference. Using force to defend yourself and others has a long precedent and is largely uncontroversial in a public context such as this. However, a citizen in public generally can’t engage someone who is running away from them as they are not in imminent danger. Unless you think they are immediately returning with a weapon, you have to let them go once they get away or chase them and perform a citizen’s arrest. Shooting a fleeing person is frowned upon by the courts. Only police have that authority.
Why then are citizens taking it upon themselves to prevent looting and rioting? Defending businesses and private property from the inside and the entryway is one thing. Chasing fleeing ‘looters’ is a situation for disaster. Besides mistaken identity, which is already causing defenders and protesters who fought looters to be detained by police while actual looters escape, there are problems with armed individuals running into crowds of undifferentiable groups of protesters, looters, and rioters. How will the defenders know when to stop beating people up? How will they know if the protester defending the person next to them from collateral damage isn’t another looter? They will see what they want to see in the situation, on both sides.
Violence is not the way. I just don’t see how property damage is a mortal harm that justifies what I’m seeing. It may not be justified to damage the property, but as an individual or small group of defenders, there is no proportionality of response that makes sense against a large group of people. To start the fight is to lose on all sides. The protest will end when it ends. Lives shouldn’t end through protest, or through its consequences. One was enough to start this one. There’s a reason people do it, even if it may have knock-on effects. That’s the point. To shutdown protest because of its intended and unintended consequences is to make a means test for our constitutional rights. It’s not tolerated well in the streets or in the courtroom.
The defenders are unknowingly or knowingly participating in a counter-protest movement against the current legitimate George Floyd protests. It is being promoted through dog whistles by the right wing. It’s actually really obvious that authoritarians aren’t wasting this crisis. They start as many fires as they put out. I’m including rioters in that last part.
Failing to respond to looting damages the state's legitimacy. Responding to looting and failing to stop it damages the state's legitimacy. Even responding to looting and successfully stopping it damages the state's legitimacy, because mass looting signals that looting has become more acceptable.
Right. Maybe that's why you aren't a police officer.
> I would not break formation and try to handcuff another officer in the moment
Maybe you should be a police officer.
> because it would be strategically unwise
Things need to change now.
When the police can demonstrate they are able to rein each other in, we can all go home and celebrate.
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.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Social media is clogged with live footage from the protests. Can you find a single video of an ambulance being stopped by protests?
The irony of your comment is that the likelihood of an ambulance being close to a protest is linked to the extreme violence that the police is using to attack and repress protests against police violence.
"The police have been acting, and continue to act, with impunity. This needs to change ASAP".
If you genuinely missed that, then we're letting you know this is the problem. And it's a widespread problem across many countries.
If you're intentionally being dishonest, then piss off.
If people don't want their intersections blocked by crows of people day after day, then they should consider the extent to which their interests are compatible with the interests of the protesters, and if necessary and reasonable, consider joining the protesters to help them achieve their goal sooner. If seventy percent of the US population were protesting, the protests wouldn't last that long - unlike in Hong Kong.
I remember thinking, America is in for it now, the Rubicon has been crossed. Since then politically motivated violence has been embraced and celebrated by many luminaries. Welcome to the normal.
Even Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground cannot help you if you are being attacked or harassed by the police.
I'm anti-gun, but as I understand it, the second amendment only "helps" against state actors if the population as a whole is willing to overthrow the current government. At that point what "is legal" changes, like when George Washington's troops took America from the UK and wrote the constitution.
However, from a legal standpoint (i.e. based on the current government), the police has a "monopoly on lawful use of force".
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
Not in recent memory, and certainly not as a regular occurrence.
>Also after sports games.
Ok, you got me there.
Is destruction of property what you expect from civilians?
Yes, sadly, 1% or less[1] of civilians are are going to be stupid and riot instead. And that is unacceptable.
Should they be reprimanded?
Absolutely. And we have specialized government entities that can utilize appropriate-force to reprimand them.
Is unwarranted destruction of property what you expect from police?
Yes, sadly, 1% or less[1] of police are going to be stupid and abusive. That is unacceptable, their job is to protect and serve. Even from each other.
Should they be reprimanded?
Yes! but we as civilians have no legal way to do this, and even the "good cops" have no good way to do this.
[1] We do not have data for either of these figures, so 1% is being used as a placeholder, and is not meant literally. I suspect that the percentage of criminals in the general population is far bigger than the number of police who destroy property for no reason, but I admit that I have no data for that.
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.
It's not clear whether arms stockpiles would have the same impact on a modern war, but they might.
"Sorry for this lengthy message but here goes: My ancestors are African and Native American. My African ancestors were taken from Africa, brought here to America, beat and killed, and forced to be slaves since the late 1600s. Of course as slaves you have no rights, so my great-great grandmother was raped, which is how my my branch of the family came about. So I actually have white and black ancestors. The Civil War occurred, which most people think the north fought to help free slaves, but actually the north just didn't want the south to have slaves anymore because it was giving the south an economic advantage - not because they wanted to free black people. And although the north won, no one told slaves in the south this for many years, so they had no idea because they were not allowed to read. But eventually the word was spread and black people learned that they were technically free, but they could not own land, so they had no where to go. A few more benevolent slave masters gave some land to the slaves because, like my ancestors they were raped by the slave master and therefore the kids were part-family. This is why you see different shades of black people in America. My grandfather (born 1920) was forced to flee Texas as a young boy in fear for his life. He could've been another Emit Till. If you don't know who Emit Till is, please, please just search the name. It will break your heart (Also sidenote: the woman who was the cause of the Emit Till murder announced on her deathbed that she lied about it all). Moving along...so my grandfather moved to Detroit where things were just a little better for black people. He was the only black person in his engineering program at Michigan State, and endured brutality and abuse for just trying to get an education. Then we had WW2 where he was not allowed to vote or have rights, but served as a Tuskegee Airman, a troup of all black pilots who literally saved America's ass from Germany. If it were not for the Tuskegee Airman, we would have lost WW2. But he comes back after the war, and still has no rights, no freedoms. Blacks and whites were segregated and when black people made our own financial district and economy it was burned to the ground because it threatened white capitalism (see 1921 burning of black wallstreet in Tulsa Oklahoma). And then Jim Crow laws were put into place. Basically this meant that white people could legally discriminate against black people, which also included violent acts without repercussions. POLICE were created during this time to literally "police" black people because the slave masters did not have control anymore. So police did the slave master's dirty work and it was still legal. This is why people are protesting against police brutality with a focus on black lives. Because the police were specifically created to take our lives, but not the lives of others. And you can see this today, for example George Floyd. So when people say "all lives matter" it is just another way of covering up the real reason police were created, and it hurts that 400 years later we are still trying to get justice, within a country that we literally built with our black hands. We are the economy, which is why when we created our own economy, it rocked the US economy so much that they burned it down. We have tried to march peacefully, we have tried to kneel peacefully, we have tried to protest peacefully, and it has gotten us nowhere. So that is why many people feel that the only option left to make our voices heard is to hurt the economy. And that's what the rioting and looting is about. I'm not saying I condone it, but believe me, I understand it. Also if you have been following any of it, the vast majority of people being violent and breaking things are not black people, but actually white supremacists who dress up as protesters. They are trying to make black people seem violent so that the police take violent action against the protestors. Things are never as simple as they seem, so you have to know the history to understand the full scope if the situation, and guess what....they took the real history out of the textbooks! So yes, this is a heavy time for black people and I hope you all can start to understand why this is happening. Thank you for reading and being open-minded."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Branding someone a rioter empowers the utterer and subjugates the one deemed rioting in your framing" - a 'riot' is not a 'framing' - it's for the most part an objective fact. People trying to protest are not rioters, people smashing stores are rioters.
No doubt the press and various people will try to 'frame' in one direction or the other, but there's no escaping reality.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Chasing fleeing ‘looters’ is a situation for disaster" of course it is, it's crazy irrational, and I hope that would be illegal everywhere, though I'm not sure. I also would hope that nobody would frame that as 'defending one's property' because it's not.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "I just don’t see how property damage is a mortal harm that justifies what I’m seeing."
Now this is a really meaty question. I agree with you, and I think most people would agree - however - in these cases the police are not using mortal aggression. There are literally riots and looting all over the country, and the police are using pepper spray, shields etc. - there were lethal responses where shots were fired (and FYI police and civilians have died amidst the riots). Also - things like rubber bullets can kill, but that's due to a probabilistic problem, not any kind of intention. Maybe the police should not use those things, but it's more of a very specific question about safety.
>>>>>>>>> "The defenders are unknowingly or knowingly participating in a counter-protest movement against the current legitimate George Floyd protests. "
There are a few things to unpack here:
'The defenders' if you mean police, then they are very lawfully authorized by you and I, the community, to move the rioters and looters out of the area, arrest them etc.. We should not for a second confuse them with some crazy folks with guns or weapons attacking protestors, that's clearly immoral and illegal. And we should also not confuse 'protesters' with 'rioters'.
As far as 'right-wing narrative' - although that is true, if anyone can't see that that there is a massive and systematic 'social narrative' (left wing?) being driven by millions of participants, even those who should be neutral, is living in a bubble.
Most importantly - there is rioting and looting. This is not being done by the police, or by some secret Russians, this is being done by people within the protest movement and it's clearly wrong. It's definitely happening and it's absolutely reasonable to point that out, and to do so is not to necessarily support some kind of narrative.
In fact, to not characterize rioters and looters as such, would be an offense against the truth, just as characterizing protesters standing on a corner with signs as 'rioters' would be as well.
Because there are a lot of people driving narratives of some kind or another (pretty much every political force and most in the press), doesn't mean we're entitled to just 'go with it', we have a responsibility to try to stay 'clear-eyed', perhaps more than ever.
Could you please help us understand your position on “Should abusive officers be reprimanded?”
And if we agree they should be reprimanded, what are your thought on how we build that system?
The system where we the civilians who witness or are victims of the abuse and other “good cops” who witness the abuse, can get legal ways to highlight and reprimand those few abusive police officers[0]?
[0] such that the person/people accusing (with evidence) the abusive police without worrying other police officers will “hold it against” the accuser.
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...
None of you have provided any reasonably objective definition of what could constitute an otherwise illegal, and sometimes violent protest.
These responses sound a lot like right-wing NRA 2cnd Amendment people barricading in buildings with guns and police surrounding them kind of rhetoric.
All three of the responses (at the time of my response) purport arbitrary definitions of self-determined, extra-judicial action - essentially vigilantism.
Literally, people inventing some cause and then taking over public property, sometimes causing damage, or worse.
If you accept your own definitions of 'legitimate cause' - I'm afraid you're really not going to like what a lot of other Americans would like to protest, just as violently.
If people are going to protest, especially when things can get violent, they're going to have to do so in a way that's not entirely disruptive -> like gather in a park, otherwise, it's just not going to work out.
We don't get to invent the law, no matter how passionate we are about something.
There are just a ton of better ways to create change that are totally within civil and legal framework, and there are many good examples to follow. And especially the rioting is probably counter-productive in almost every sense of the terms.
> 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...
Yes, they should have backed up. My point is that they were attacked first, nothing else. It was kind of a play stupid games scenario - if you do that to someone chances are they’re going to freak out and at best be unpredictable.
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...
Constructively, maybe if the protestors do "overrun" the cops, then the protestors could setup a new justice system, arrest the criminal conspiracies, and try them under RICO. If there were enough protestors willing to work this justice system, it could even be a good time for cities to say farewell to the incumbent union and hire the new system to keep order instead.
But practically yes I agree things will get ugly if we keep going down this path. But since the police are over the line by aggressing against basic American values, the only peaceful resolution is for them to simply stand down and stop attacking protests. I don't see any other option that wouldn't be bargaining with totalitarianism.
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...
I walked down third street until I reached the point where the riot police set up a barricade and didn't allow the protesters further. It was really a peaceful scene where the police were setup, and I thought it was being handled very professionally with the goal to not incite violence (There were also 6 police helicopters circling the area) Everywhere the police were not there was looting.
The amount of misinformation being circulated is staggering.
https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...
Since 2001, police have taken more American lives than all other terrorist activities combined.
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.
I'd like to see about 4-5 of such videos. The more the merrier. I'm totally open to changing my mind.
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...
Police escalate conflict simply by showing up, especially in riot gear.
Yes, in almost all but the most extreme of cases. (And the people who make that determination are called "judges" not "cops".)
Should reprimanded cops continue to be cops?
No, in all but the most trivial and excusable cases. (And the people who make that determination should also be called judges not cops.)
If you get given a badge and a gun, and job that demand people to people to respect your authority, you not only get held to a higher standard than those of us without, but you also put your livelihood at stake if you choose to behave in a "stupid or abusive" manner.
It's abundantly clear to people outside the US that the cop who killed George Floyd needs to be fired and prosecuted for murder, the three cops who stood there and let him do it need to be fired and prosecuted for accessory to murder, and those four cops chain of command also needs to be investigated for culpability and almost certainly fired if not prosecuted as well. It seems unbelievable that some US citizens think otherwise. I expect that from cop unions, who've proven themselves time and time again to be completely devoid of humanity or morals, but find it unthinkable that anyone else can't see it clearly as evil thuggery from people who society has to demand better from. All four need to never be in any position of authority again. At least one of them needs to be in jail for life.
(He claimed that in the context of property damage, which hides the actual implications of that carelessness, because it wasn't police property damage that triggered this current unrest...)
I _strongly_ disagree. A cop committing assault or murder, while on the job, is a thing society needs to take great care does not happen. It's abhorrent to me to take a "shit happens" attitude to cop killings.
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...
The county coroner's report was technically true in a way meant to imply a false result.
Floyd didn't die from lack of airflow, he died because the knee stopped blood flow to the brain, that is the brain couldn't receive Oxygen despite the body being able to breath.
The county coroner carefully checked that Floyd could breathe, but not blood flow to the brain. Once asphyxia was ruled out (not really, since strangulation is not the only way to get it), the coroner was free to imply whatever was comfortable to the police.
I wonder how many other autopsies done by the same coroner were also misleading, and whether other cases will need a retrial.
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.
Question to Americans: if the police really are acting this badly, why aren't y'all exercising your second amendment rights to defend yourselves? My naive understanding as a foreigner is that it's exactly what the second amendment is supposed to be for: protecting yourselves from an oppressive government. If the current situation doesn't warrant it, what situation would?
If the police were not there my life would have been at imminent risk. And if the police show up their lives are at imminent risk. So the cops have to show up and they have to wear riot gear.
I've had to live with months of protest downtown. People protesting to release prisoners because of coronavirus. People protesting to lift the coronavirus lock downs. In those cases there was no riot gear. Minimal police presence. When Friday's protest came around it immediately felt different. The people were much more angry and much more hostile.
People were looking at the Minneapolis riots with envy. People were shouting about the righteous cause of riots and looting. "Its the language of the unheard." Despite noble protestations that they were only going to loot the wealthy corporations with fat insurance contracts, they ended up looting everything. They ended up shooting each other far from police lines. They ended up burning police cars that were parked far away from police lines. They lit buildings on fire that could have very easily spread to neighboring apartment buildings.
You said:
> nothing about CPDs behavior looked like "keep people safe"
I disagree. "People" are more than just the rioters. They are rioters. They are residents in the immediate area. They are residents outside the immediate area who were spared the carnage by virtue of CPD's actions.
You can talk all you want about "subtle escalations". But truth be told anything the "authorities" do will be considered an escalation because the mob is not rational. It is primed to perceive anything and everything as a reason to execute its collective will.
Just today, an interstate was shut down unexpectedly because of protesters. What about everyone who was trapped on that highway and could not move, let alone reroute?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/small-town-police-chief-killed-off...
Not surprisingly, your straw man is just as bad. Nobody said or implied anything remotely close to a “shit happens” attitude. Did you just not read the next sentence or something?
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...
I urge HNers to read that article you posted and decide for themselves if it's credible.
Then, read the wikipedia article I posted, refer to the sources at the end, google around, and decide for yourself.
And yeah, I read (and just reread) your next sentence, and it still reads as a "shit happens" attitude to me.
As I read it, you're saying there's nothing we can possibly do to ensure that rate of "stupid and abusive" cops is any lower than the rate of "stupid and rioting" civilians. (Or the most optimistic reading of it I can see is that you think we can't do any better a job of ensuring a lower rate of stupid and abusive cops than we have now.)
I think we need to do a _way_ better job of screening cop applicants before giving them a badge and gun, and hold them to a way higher standard that is currently the case.
An agent provocateur will always, except where it is physically impossible such as when no one of the right race is available for a group distinguished by race, outwardly appear as a textbook member of the targeted group. That's kind of central to the idea.
Why would anyone make a video of stopped traffic?
I'm pointing out that _cops_ do it.
And they absolutely need to be held to a higher standard than "the public", because we give them guns and state sanctioned use-of-force. They cannot do their job without respect of their authority, and they do not have that respect, and they are doing the exact opposite thing of winning it back.
While not condoning the "textbook black bloc" actions, I can see why 2 centuries of systematic oppression might lead some people in some sections of society to think there are no other options.
I have no explanation for the current police behaviour that's more sympathetic than cynical South Park quotes. And if _that's_ how they want to be portrayed? Well, I guess they're achieving it...
(And as I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, I too have doubts about the veracity of that article I posted - but it's at least in mu mind, more than plausible. And _that_ is a serious problem. I too urge HNers to decide for themselves if they trust their local police force to think none of them would ever use unnecessary force, or go agent provocateur. If you have any doubt, you have a big problem.)
(Fascinating trivia: California allowed open carry until the Mulford Act in 1967 restricted it -- directly in response to the Black Panthers practicing it. The Act was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, with the explicit support of the National Rifle Association.)
Anyways, if you're trapped in traffic and not moving, there's not much else for you to do besides get out your phone and take some video.
It's very easy to attribute actions to the police, since they very commonly wear easy-to-identify uniforms and it's illegal to impersonate them. The video above was of a uniformed police officer in the company of maybe a hundred others. It's the literal job of police to stop crimes, so if you see an officer commuting a crime and his colleagues see and don't intervene, you can assume some level of assent to the officer's criminal activity.
Even if you found a video of a looter/arsonist, how do you know they're a protester at all? If they are a protester, how do you establish what their faction is (BLM, anarchist anti-capitalist, Neo-nazi agitator, etc.)? How do you judge the attitudes of the other protesters to to their actions, given protesters aren't equipped to enforce the law and don't have the mandate to do so?
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...
For example it is not up to the government to define what constitutes an acceptable peaceful protest.
When you get to the point where the government defines what is and what is not an acceptable protest then you no longer have a free democracy society.
I agree that we should expect better from the police and authorities in return, but also that we accept their use of limited force (even when not physically harmful) when necessary as the means to do so.
I personally lean towards presumably the same direction as you: that police should first and foremost be held to a higher standard before their legitimacy is accepted. However, I think it's not that far from the views of some that see their role in this conflict as imposing harsh law and order.
Because that is a fever dream. The reality is that if you use a firearm on the police you get killed on the spot or it turns into a siege and you are killed some time later.
Germany has an issue with criminal clans from the Middle East, our law enforcement system isn't equipped to deal with them and our laws in general aren't either. The approach is pretty much "try not to engage", because while it's damaging to have "extended families" with hundreds of members where basically everyone of them has a criminal record, the other option is either locking up everybody (terrible idea in Germany) or trying to reason with them and failing (showing the state tried to handle it but failed). Not engaging is just the cheapest option and does the least amount of damage (I'm not suggesting that's necessarily true for the situation in the US, I don't know it well enough).
If the Leviathan shows its teeth and the problem doesn't go away, it has to bite. If it doesn't, everybody will see that the teeth aren't that sharp any more, and that will encourage more challengers.
> The state's power is not just fear alone, it's legitimacy.
For the people that don't require laws and punishment to behave morally, yes. For those that do, they obviously don't care about legitimacy or that looting (or any crime) is wrong, otherwise they wouldn't commit it. It's only those people that any society needs to worry about, and it's only those people that the state needs to convince that it is stronger than them.
If you believe these looters are doing so for justice, then know that the people who killed Floyd will be tried for their crimes and that you can not cast all law enforcement officers with the same stone. The people that pinned down Floyd all should be punished, but if you believe all of america’s officers are the same, isn’t that like condemning all blacks when one commits murder? However, if you believe that there is systematic racism in law enforcement, wouldn’t it be healthier to petition for change peacefully and specifically instead of fucking up the city because someone was murdered?
People are more important than property, I‘m sure you‘ll say, so then I can rob you and torch your home? Of course not. If these recent flashes of theft and vandalism can be justified, please enlighten me.
Also, a new bill is being introduced to end Qualified Immunity. What are the reasons for protest at the moment?
But that's effectively what doing nothing does. The state has teeth (the police) and it doesn't bite.
That's a completely unambiguous signal to both criminals and law-abiding citizens. And the results of this policy anywhere in the world is the problems have just grown in size and gotten worse.
> because while it's damaging to have "extended families" with hundreds of members where basically everyone of them has a criminal record
Remember when these "extended families" were an order of magnitude smaller and we applied the same policy of non-intervention? And look what that got us!
When are we finally going to apply the only acceptable course of action?
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.
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...
Just from personal experience in ca. 2012, the Binghamton, NY PD has openly threatened to plant drugs on us following a a noise complaint.
We talked to officers trying to cooperate but as we weren't following ORDERS such as "Don't scratch your arm right now!" the cops escalated and one took out a tazer. We were all white btw. and as a European I couldn't believe those cops. We calmly talked and suddenly we face a tazer? Because those authoritarian scumbags didn't want to hold a conversation with the people THEY confronted? Over a noise complaint?
Something is super wrong in the US when it comes to police. Maybe start educating them before letting them lose on society. It helps.
If it's documented, it should be easy to produce documentation backing that claim, because to me that sounds incredibly unlikely.
Everyone now considers general violence and looting as legitimate actions in response to a crime committed by one police officer.
Floyd's death was a tragedy and Derek (the police officer) responsible must pay heavily for it - a 2nd or 3rd degree murder conviction should be handed down to set an example. That case should be scrutinised heavily - and it will be.
But I really don't understand why other people must suffer for one person's crime. The larger focus should be on the US police needing remedial training. Call up congressmen, call up senators. Rioting on the streets doesn't solve anything.
I simply don't agree with the massive general violence and looting going on at the moment. That must be stopped. And police officers attempting to do so are being beaten to death. Some are also being shot while trying to prevent looting. I disagree that all police should pay for one person's crime.
"Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.
A profound judgment of today’s riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, ‘If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.’
The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society."
Kind of, but not really. If you send the police to confront the looters, you are showing your teeth, you're saying "this will stop right here and right now, or else". You have to have a plan for the "or else" part.
If you don't send the police, you're not saying anything. Everybody is aware that the police exists, but unless you assert your power, there is no challenge.
This is obviously not a possible long-term strategy, because not having any power and never asserting the power you have are functionally the same. I don't think that anybody assumes the rioting will be a long-term problem though, so that may not be an issue.
> When are we finally going to apply the only acceptable course of action?
We won't. We're doing harm-reduction, both on a society level and, for politicians, on an individual level (and for management in large companies). Kick the can down the road. Attacking the big problems before they become unavoidable isn't something our systems are set up to do, not causing disturbances is incentivized, be that in law enforcement, dealing with dead industries surviving only on subsidies, education, pollution and emissions, health care, public infrastructure etc pp. "Spending $5m on that bridge now will save us lots of money in the future" isn't what the public sees - it's "they want to waste $5m on a perfectly fine bridge".
Edit: I mean, come on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eVPKpBKGCE
I believe that's the case already, Ergo, racism.
If peaceful placards and singing kumbaya really did work effectively , for black people in particular all over the world, we'd have a very different discussion. Police brutality is an extension of the governments very existence - "legitimate" violence - which is turned up to war-time levels when minorities are concerned. All this is smoke an mirrors to the contempt of a man being killed by law enforcement officer in a way that would make Ted Bundy blush.
It seems whenever black people protest, the narrative seems to be of barbarians storming the city gates. An "over-reaction" if you will. Is it? The message of the protest is clear, if a tree falls - the ground will shake. Is that unreasonable?
People have done tests with white people and black people open carrying in exactly the same way. Black open carriers got a very different police response.
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
Protests and looting are a symptom of much deeper ills.
Also,
> you would be hard pressed to find a law that oppresses anyone by race. Racist laws? No. Classicist laws? Yes.
With all due respect, this position exposes a lack of understanding of US history, and I'm not just talking about slavery or the civil rights act.
Some things to Google if you want to open that Pandora's jar:
- Redlining
- Poll taxes
- Nixon starting "War on Drugs" to target black communities
- Federal exclusion of black families from New Deal homebuying programs
Many of the laws and policies that have targeted black people specifically are also classist through a certain lens, but when you look closer it's usually targeting poor people because poor Americans are disproportionately black.
It's that blocking traffic is a material, aggressive escalation of a protest that could have very negative ramifications to the cause. Not only does it really really piss people off, it puts human bodies in direct conflict with vehicles and could potentially block travel to someone that needs urgent medical attention.
If that's your jam then go for it. For my part, if i am in a vehicle with family and we are in a traffic jam due to a protest, i'm going to be in an agitated state...not because of the delay but because of the inability to escape. I'll wait it out, but if people start attacking my car and breaking windows, i'm hitting the gas till i see daylight. That innate sense of how i would respond and is why i think people should approach blocking traffic with caution.
But I feel compelled to object to your seeming attitude that things would work themselves out without the need to protest.
I strongly believe that two wrongs don't make a right. But one wrong observed in silence is tragic.
You question the reason for protest when there is some bill being introduced. I posit that the bill would not exist without the protests. I also remind you that a horrible, terrible war was fought to end inequality over 150 years ago. I remind you that the civil rights movement was more than 50 years ago. Why protest when those already solved all the problems?
We must always be willing to step up against injustice. It is not a one and done proposition.
This in no way excuses people who are just taking the opportunity to steal a TV. Or who mistakenly channel their emotions by destroying or injuring.
But more to my point, police are not judges, lawyers, or most important, juries. They don’t decide what is just. They just deliver those suspected of lawbreaking to the judicial system, which determines guilt or innocence under the law. As far as the legal system is concerned, everyone has presumption of innocence. The way you are characterizing people as looters or rioters is to say that what they are doing is unlawful, but that’s just like your opinion, man. One person’s rioter is another person’s edgy protesting neighbor. It’s for the courts to decide which behavior is law-abiding. If they aren’t convicted, they were not found to be in violation of the law, yet. It’s strange for you to presume they would found guilty just because you disagree with their actions. Sounds authoritarian to me and not in step with our justice system or the times.
Because people like you are hell bent on smearing the protests, resorting even to come up with made-up accusations like ambulances stuck in traffic, and any evidence would provide some support to those claims.
But apparently even that is hard to come by. So here we are, stuck with fabrications and imaginary "what if" scenarios.
Work is an escalation that could literally cost lives..
If you think this is one man, think again. Give me a city and I can give you the unarmed black person killed by police - Dallas, it's Botham Jean. Miami, it's Trayvon Martin. New York, it's Dwayne Brown. Years and years and so little done.
And now, people are now in the streets in reaction to police violence against people in the streets. If you see protesters being shot with tear gas for the crime of kneeling and shouting, people are going to come out and make their voices heard.
And this is working. Minneapolis Ward 3's district commissioner is calling for police abolition. For once, for absolute once, the media is actually on the side of the protesters, because once they got over the shock, they saw their own being attacked by police just as much. So before you say it doesn't solve anything, look at what it's already accomplished, and look what it can accomplish soon.
And I didn't hear anyone make the argument any of those things should be banned to prevent the potential loss of life from someone trying to get to a hospital while not in an ambulance.
It really seems like an isolated demand for safety.
side comment: Loving the downvotes for a legitimate point. When did hacker news turn into reddit?
But police abolition is not going to solve anything for you folks. It will mean an extraordinary increase in crime. I have lived in multiple nations and a strict police is better than police who do nothing. You will be at the mercy of crime lords. And no business store owner will open a shop in a police-free district.
All these rioters for freedom and dignity are fine on the TV. When people are on the wrong side of the mob, they change their minds pretty quick.
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...
Maybe you think all this won't happen. I have lived in poor and powerless communities earlier in life and seen all these things happen without a proper police presence. I had my sister assaulted when I was young and was unable to do anything about it. I despise 'community policing'. The cliques it creates is far worse than the full hammer of the full armed forces.
Anyways, I wish USA the best of luck. I really hope the looting and rioting in NY stops soon.
He's isn't "firing [himself] up.." as you say, he's thinking out what could possibly happen and considering what his options are.
If you wait until you're in such a situation (people are breaking into your car and threatening to harm the occupants) you simply don't have sufficient time to think out those options - you must think and prepare ahead of time. For those who live in places where riots or firefight break out regularly, this is the proper and usual way to prepare.
FWIW in most of the USA it isn't homicide if you kill an attacker(s), provided you are defending life or limb of yourself, others and/or your property.
- https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/services/law-enforcement/perm....
Theoretical grandstanding over an unlikely hypothetical scenario to condemn protesters is being obtuse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23398553
Thank you either way.
This looting causes a lot of personal damage, people are losing their life savings and livelihoods, and nobody seems to care.
I see a lot of rhetoric and populism trying to side-step the issue and it really needs to be clear - there's a very wide gap between 'protesting' and 'looting' and they are not 'shades of the same thing'.
Also, I'm not sure if it's legal or appropriate to even 'protest' out in the open, on highways or streets - I think these things need to move to controlled ares, like in front of city hall or in parks, but that's a slightly different matter.
I'm also not entirely condemning people 'caught up in a riot' as I understand these things happen in social waves, and people would be doing things they might not otherwise. It's not a big moral condemnation, it's an articulation of reality.
I'm actually sympathetic to the protesters overall, but I lose sympathy quickly when I see it out of hand. I also think we need to be sympathetic to the police, and accept that we, as citizens are giving them a nary impossible task - which is to use force to move people out of an area, and then somehow remain within perfect contraints at all times. Some of the police actions are beyond unreasonable and they should go to jail, but I'm not even sure that it's systematic. What can we expect by sending 5000 officers in to physically move aggressive, often violent people out of the way. Punches will fly in some cases. Batons, purposeful harm with weapons, irresponsible use of fire arms - this is too much obviously and has to be punished.
I'm really happy to show support for reforming police actions, but I'm not going to take sides in a 'civic street war'.
What's happening now is just shameful for almost every party.
Supporting protestors and civil unrest doesn't mean you support violence, but I'm not a naive child that thinks great change happens without bad things accompanying it.
If you had read the comment carefully instead of rapidly responding with a "rebuttal" based on your ideology, you might have realized that.
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?
Protest and looting are shades of the same idea. If you don't care about us taking up space in your streets, maybe you may care about being deprived of your corporate assets. Corporations aren't people. People are people. If harming corporations leads to an increase in human rights, that is a net gain for society. To question whether the cost is too high like you do shows you care more for property, capital, and the people who wield these asset classes, than you do for those who have cause to protest. Just because you don't share their cause célèbre does not invalidate it.
Reasonable people can disagree. It's impossible to be reasonable or disagree if you're killing someone or being killed. The police actions up to this point have been unreasonable, and so the response of the public is currently outside the scope of actions that can have a reasonableness standard applied to them. Protest is inherently justified by the Constitution. The response to police brutality and lack of internal reform proves the police think they are right to kill people and don't need to change. That's why the protests continue. To stop protesting now would be to negotiate with terrorists. The protests must continue as long and until the police come to the table with protesters and stakeholders, and they all negotiate a solution.
And planning does matter, because when events are planned, proper detours can be set up with signage.
This is not theoretical grandstanding, this is recognizing a potential threat.
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...
That's just lawlessness.
There's not way to make up the rules as we go along, using the 'winds of the day' and what's happening on the news to determine what's a legit protest and what is not.
We do decide collectively what's what by using laws and policies. We make those, we make them clear, and then we apply them.
It seems as though you can't block traffic at a busy intersection 'because' - and so whatever the protest is today, it's not right.
We can't make up as we go along, that's chaos.
People can protest in parks, in front of city hall etc. - that works, it's peaceful and within civil framework.
You haven’t responded to my legal arguments and justifications. You are moving the goalposts and doubling down. Please keep on point or I will not have any substantial points to respond to.
My main point is protest is what protest does: force the issue. The methods of protest are varied and of disproportionate impact to society. If protest is to succeed, social impact must be calibrated to the received response to protester demands. If no response or negative response is received, increase social impact to belligerent parties and the general public, if necessary. Protest without corresponding social impact is ineffectual at forcing the issue but can be effective in virtue-signaling, which can create a virtuous loop of increasing awareness and support, and increasing numbers of protesters.
I replied "I don't believe you."
You responded by showing one video. I'm still waiting.
Sounds like that might be changing for the better, given what transpired in the Breonna Taylor incident. I understand they just dropped the charges against her boyfriend, who shot at the police when they broke in.
However, I think that the situation is so difficult, that society is incapable of finding a real helpful solution and as injustice keeps being comitted by police across the country, the emotions find a channel to break out.
How long can they violently treat citizens without consequences? The negative energy just seems to burst out here and it appears to be the natural consequence (which doesn't make the looting right, but maybe explains the negative energy a little bit).