>tl;dw: Man was tagging over someone else's art, Raz and group approach and separate him from crowd, chasing him for two blocks. He begins to film them with his phone, they take it from him. He tries to get it back and they attack him, kicking him in the head and breaking his glasses. At one point, Raz threatens to shoot the man. They then begin to gaslight him that it was all his fault. Audio only for most of the end, because woman in Raz' crew filming puts the phone in her pocket while the stream continues. [1]
So it took about 3 days for this anarchist utopia to demonstrate exactly why police exist.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_...
This guy and his crew beat up and threatened to kill someone for a petty crime. What does that have to do with the police existing "too much"?
EDIT: Replaced a term for a more neutral one.
Yes, but not current american police. What is demonstrated here is that unchecked power is bad, which is pretty close to what the american police currently seems to have, leading to crimes like the one that started the whole protest.
How do explain all the people that have those things Raz didn’t and are still assholes?
What we really need is a system of accountability and control over police. Police should be as accountable for their actions and mistakes as every other citizen (equality under the law!), or at least that's the idea.
We can start by:
- getting rid of police unions that hide information and do stuff like have police be judged by three of their peers, one picked by the accused, and prevent police from getting fired.
- get rid of qualified immunity
And so on.
Many, myself included, would argue that they're basically out of control right now. Just look at the sequence of events that unfolds almost to the letter after every unjustified police killing. At best the outcome is the cop involved resigns and quietly goes to work for another police department a few months down the line or retires with full benefits.
Defund of course means a million things to a million people but a lot of what I'm hearing is about moving the armed police response to the minority of roles where it's needed. The amount of time you need an armed officer is a tiny fraction of the times they're there and they're not trained for the vast majority of the actual work they do. Under this defund is about taking the glut of resources allocated to cops and moving it to people better trained to deal with the kind of mental health, mediation, etc tasks that take up the bulk of police's actual time.
I would say, though, that our US police are more controlled than what's going on in the CHAZ, however slightly in some ways.
Are you pro individual gun ownership?
The second amendment exists in the US Constitution, first and foremost to balance the power between a populous and would-be tyrants.
There is little incentive to attempt tyranny when the result can be predicted so easily.
Also, don’t underestimate the power of 100 million people wielding guns. The world has yet to ever witness a force 1/10th as great and well-armed as the American populous.
Just like vocal anarchists make the left look bad, the freedom-loving libertarian side is marred by the vocal authoritarians; esp when they feel threatened.
So the solution for police not being regulated enough, is for the people to take up arms against them?
Rather than fixing the regulations?
With a sparsely-armed populace, it's easy for the occupying force to roll through without much conflict or challenging decisions.
Winning occurs through attrition of the occupiers, which, unlike Vietnam, can't just "back out".
What CHAZ shows us is that there is perhaps a middle ground between "asking" and "taking up arms," but if none of the demands are met, I don't know that there are many other steps left.
In fact it looks like in some places the cries to defund the police are finally being heard and actioned. I hope there are more, as this is a radical act and not just a legislative tweak. It's clear that a fundamental rebalancing of the relationship between police and society is needed, starting with talking away their weapons, and total de-escalation of police violence and their effective immunity to the consequences of their racist actions.
I hope "CHAZ" isn't a last step before open, armed conflict, because if it does go that way the public mood is going to shift in a millisecond to enforcement. Just like I hope here in the UK we don't see people pull down statues of Churchill - he was a racist asshole, but he was also the leader that brought us through WWII, and the population of this country aren't ready to stop venerating the latter because of the former yet.
I'm also not sure what "winning" looks like for either side when that starts.
History has shown us over and over and over that an unarmed populace will either A) be subject to unchecked violence by its overlords, or B) be successfully invaded by new and less desirable overlords.
Secondly, “fixing the regulations” is not necessary; what is necessary is enforcing the already existing regulations.
That's exactly what caused all of these protests.
> At what point are adults responsible for their own actions?
It's constantly of interest to me how much "free will" actually exists. The more research comes out about environmental factors, the more we realize that people who suffer {home, food, employment, physical} insecurity exhibit symptoms as if they had a lower IQ and stress which is correlated with increased mental illness, stress, blood pressure, and other health problems.
It also strikes me that the current legal corrections system really only works if we, as individuals, have significant ability to decide not to commit a crime as opposed to it being the most likely destiny based on our current {personal, environmental} state.
Which is why the UK gets invaded every other week?
Seems an overly reductive viewpoint.