Just because something makes you feel bad for society doesn’t mean the actions at an individual basis are purely malicious or unreasonable.
There’s been an unbelievable amount of violence perpetrated by police these last few weeks. You cannot stand by this argument if you’ve been watching the footage.
Which is quite an indictment considering the protestors can be joined by, as you noted, and random opportunist or provocateur.
There’s no way you can say with a straight face that the police have committed more acts of violence and destruction than the rioters.
This shit is seriously broken.
Police are, in fact, given far too many duties. They deal with traffic violations, drunkenness, domestic violence, homelessness, property crimes, public emergencies, and many more things. Most of their time is spent on systemic problems in society that they cannot usefully intervene in, but only obscure with fines, arrests, and talking-to. These are tasks that call for more specialization, and therefore a more stratified set of enforcement tools than the average cop gets.
The system makes the cops bad. We spend a lot on them; several U.S. cities spend more on their police than entire countries do on their military. Spending hasn't changed the outcomes. This is why the term "police abolishment" has come into parlance; a full reform of enforcement requires a larger set of concepts than "police".
How many cops does it take to realize that their bullying would eventually backfire? How many judges doesn it take to realize that killer cops getting scott free is going to eventually backfire badly? I hope that they learn their lesson this time and hope it’s going to sting badly
Our taxes pay their salaries, and our taxes also pay their legal settlements and fees when they get caught up killing unarmed black men and women. They live in a system fundamentally devoid of accountability. They deploy tools like tears gas and poorly tested “less lethal” ammunition that still has the ability to permanently and critically injure targets. No amount of violence against peaceful protestors should be tolerated. The police exist to protect the public, not treat them like enemy combatants.
Let's stop using abstract passive words like "deploy", and say what the police are actually doing - opening fire on crowds of protestors. I guess they're being nice by using ammo other than lead bullets like at Kent State, but fundamentally they're still shooting projectiles and innocent people are still being killed and maimed.
By this logic, the George Floyd death shouldn’t even be a controversy because the public at large commits more crime in aggregate than the police do.
There are many examples of unprovoked police violence nationwide. No amount of looting and rioting justifies unprovoked attacks on peaceful protesters.
This isn't a game, there is no score.
If a crowd of 1000 people has one person throw a brick at the police. I think it’s well within their rights to tear gas the entire group to disperse them.
I think police will see some funding decreases is some places and lots of discussions about police demilitarization are currently taking place. That can have consequences.
I think their morale is also affected and it’s horrible that because of some bad/unprofessional officers other good ones have to suffer the bad image. This may help some good internal change as well. One can hope at least
This is exactly what far right provocateurs want, to embed themselves inside legitimate protests and misbehave so that all are punished. Does that seem appropriate?
Also, both cases of brutality I described above happened in broad daylight. Please tell me how this specific incident[0] represents appropriate conduct by the police.
And yes sometimes cops are just dicks on a power trip.
This is an utterly unethical and immoral point of view. If one person commits a crime, a group should never be punished for it. This is collective punishment, and it (along with tear gas) is prohibited under the Geneva conventions.
The tear-gassing specifically isn't to punish anyone. It is because their commanders think the situation is unsafe and that order needs to be restored. The crowd, by its presence, is creating a safety hazard where people might assault the police.
There are very fine lines involved, but there is a point where there isn't a reasonable expectation that the police should break ranks and move into a potential violent mob to arrest an individual. That would be asking them to take on too much risk. It isn't going to violate the Geneva Conventions.
The main counterargument is how would that help? The violent cop would still be violent. If the police were abolished they'd sign up as a violent gang member, and if a new not-police body is created they'd sign up to that instead.
There is always a most-violent gang on the streets; we just call them the police if they are state-sponsored and ask them to follow the law rather than their own opinions. Defunding the police won't help that dynamic.
I don't know about the USA but in Ireland the original standing police force ( the RIC ) was responsible for census duties, farm inspections, tax collection and many other rural duties up until the 1920s. What police forces do now, focused on crime, is only a subset of their original conception as servants of the polis ( society ).
It is rather the other way around there: The situation is made dangerous by presence of the police, the solution is the police pulling back.
Seems pretty clear to me.
At the end of the day, their actions are what matters, not their intent. If they harm you, someone not participating in the action they intend to lawfully suppress, then their action was an overreach.
What if we were talking about bullets, instead of gas? We’d never assert that indiscriminately firing into a crowd is warranted. Just because tear gas isn’t (often) lethal doesn’t really make it different; it’s an indiscriminate, unjustified use of force against arbitrary groups of people.
You’re right, of course, that there are limits and we wouldn’t expect the police to take on unlimited amounts of risk, but don’t get too lost in the theoretical here - the protests are not unruly mobs and are not anywhere near they hypothetical levels you’re talking about.
If someone in a crowd is throws a brick at them, and the crowd has up to that point been a united slogan-chanting sign-waving entity I am on board with the police treating the entire crowd as hostile. It is not acceptable to throw a brick at the police. Or anything else for that matter.
I can see a good argument that if someone throws a brick the police should be as targeted as possible in responding. But it could easily be the point where a crowd disintegrates into an unruly mob and the police would have my total support for not being optimistic and trying to push into the crowd hoping it works out OK. Once a brick is in the air, the crowd is an unruly mob. Bricks are not a civilised tool of discourse.
Yes, you're correct. But they're far from the only people who have jobs dealing with profoundly uncooperative people, and we do not accept violence from other professionals regardless of what they encounter from the public. I believe that police work is something of an exception, but only a limited exception: by and large I expect (and demand!) that they handle stressful situations without resorting to violence whenever possible, even if that is uncomfortable or stressful to them.
> I can see a good argument that if someone throws a brick the police should be as targeted as possible in responding. But it could easily be the point where a crowd disintegrates into an unruly mob and the police would have my total support for not being optimistic and trying to push into the crowd hoping it works out OK.
This is important to talk about - I think what myself and others are calling for is a targeted response by police, and what we've seen over the past few days in America is that the responses are overwhelmingly not targeted, nor are the appropriate. (Not to mention the fact that there is now ample video evidence of police responding with force when there was absolutely no danger whatsoever).
Essentially, it seems as though the police are taking the second part of your assertion to heart - that it's okay to just be indiscriminate when there's danger - but vastly over-applying it and labeling completely benign interactions as "dangerous", and using that to justify their use of force.
Again - I invite you to consider this through less of a theoretical framework, but through the lens of what we're seeing unfold in front of us: police aren't treating legitimately dangerous mobs with justified violence; rather they are treating all protestors as if they are an unruly mob and applying violence indiscriminately. And that is a very large problem.
> If someone in a crowd is throws a brick at them
As a parting note, there is really not much brick-throwing going on. And given the demonstrated propensity of the police in America to lie (despite video evidence), please treat their claims that people are throwing bricks with extreme suspicion.
By not showing up you're aiding and abetting the actions of the small minority of corrupt police officers who murder minorities in the street because they know they can get away with it.