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De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

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Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#281

Post by autokad »

komali2 wrote: post #131
lsh123 wrote: post #121

Could we please stop calling “protesters” all the people looting jewelry stores, Target, Nike, etc? These are not protesters, these are looters. Police should use any means at their disposal to protect lives and property from looters and rioters.

Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? If you care so much, how about petition your local police force to dump their tear gas at the range and stop firing on peaceful protesters, turning a lot of sitting people into a riot.

> "until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people?"

Can we please stop making this just about race and recognize we have a general police brutality issue? You do realize cops kill just as many whites as they do blacks. The same police that killed George Floyd also killed Justine Damond.

When you rationalize away the white people who also have been killed, you polarize the issue and give justification to those who are committing violence and looting.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#282

Post by sdkjfhskjfh »

ineedasername wrote: post #170
markdown wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ideal protest in my eyes is a peaceful, effective one. This is the US; you only get to pick one of those.

Hardly. The civil rights movement is an excellent example of civil opposition done peacefully and effectively. It helped that there were many strong leaders in that movement across the country. Right now the energy is chaotic and undirected, without a strong voice of leadership to act as both the vanguard of the protests as well as the negotiators of change.

The civil rights movement had a substantial amount of violence and change only started to happen because there was a very serious threat of it escalating. Purely peaceful protesting has almost never worked and most of the examples people cite (India's independence, anti-apartheid etc.) include a large amount of historical revisionism.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#283

Post by rowawey »

OR: If the police were more Sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show and less Captain America meets Commando.

This is what happens when frightened, under-trained, under-experienced, over-militarized, desensitized "police" optimize for the wrong thing and defeat their fundamental mission by becoming an military occupation force of psychopathic a__holes who don't interact with "civilians" except to harass people, rather than a community service of human f__king beings.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#284

Post by renewiltord »

sojournerc wrote: post #229
renewiltord wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Police and the US public see the police as enforcers in a caste system where the public is at the bottom, the enforcers are on top of them, with the lords above them. So the police aren't on the side of the public because they see the public as chaotic animals, to be managed lest they descend into anarchy. That's the general view and you can see that in The Thin Blue Line. In the UK, you can make fun of the police…

There are many corners of this country that offer what you describe but they aren't on a map. Not even rural areas necessarily. The US remains a diverse and rich place, despite all efforts to distill its culture to a sound bite.

Well, hopefully one day I'll find those places, but so far across NC, CO, and CA it's all majority authoritarians wherever I look. It's not that life is hard for me. It's great. It's just that there are lots of authoritarians everywhere and that's harming my worldview.

If you don't want to spread it too wide, I'd welcome a tip. renewiltord@protonmail.com

If you feel like you'd rather not share, I understand that too.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#285

Post by briefcomment »

silverreads wrote: post #243
ineedasername wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the effectiveness of peaceful protests over the past 20 years, violent ones are even less likely to see change. Those already on the fence or against the issue will just use it as an opportunity to dismiss it all as thugs interested in chaos, no matter that the majority are peaceful.

Can't dismiss it now. Every major corporation and most congressional lawmakers are now pushing for reform. Especially worth looking at Rep. Joyce Beatty who is a 70 year old black woman who got peppersprayed with the protesters. An elected lawmaker was attacked by the cops. Think about it.

Looting and violence give them a path to dismiss it. It's risking the ground gained through mass protests.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#286

Post by JohnBooty »

kuzimoto wrote: post #206
komali2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down? Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard. You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.

> You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them. When you commit a crime and violate someone's freemdoms (the primary being right to life, liberty, property), you forfeit your own. When you kill someone and take their life, you steal or destroy property, you are now in debt to society. By living in a society you agre…

    Protest in a way that doesn't harm others.
It hasn't been working, bud.

Also the government might try to go after you legally or kill you even if you do things peacefully. See: COINTELPRO, Aaron Swartz, etc.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#287

Post by shigawire »

alexashka wrote: post #233

It takes just a few rotten apples on the side of the protestors to make it go violent. It also takes just a few rotten apples on the side of the police to make it go violent. Protesting is largely a modern witch hunt. It lets people blow off some steam, rather ineffectively in the modern protest case, because you don't get to burn anyone alive at the end of it. Enough people long for that witch hunt finale, and that'…

>It's never going to fix actual systemic issues, but perhaps burning witches is good enough, given our history, and going in circles indefinitely is the way of this species.

Counter point - the Civil Rights Act of 1968. People pay attention when they are forced to. I won't pass a moral judgement as it's not my place, but nothing will change until force is applied. I think that is the lesson history teaches.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#288

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

komali2 wrote: post #131
lsh123 wrote: post #121

Could we please stop calling “protesters” all the people looting jewelry stores, Target, Nike, etc? These are not protesters, these are looters. Police should use any means at their disposal to protect lives and property from looters and rioters.

Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? If you care so much, how about petition your local police force to dump their tear gas at the range and stop firing on peaceful protesters, turning a lot of sitting people into a riot.

No, we can't. There's simply no stable state where cities are abandoned to looters for weeks. Someone will inevitably deploy force to reestablish control, and if that someone isn't the government then there's gonna be a lot more indiscriminate killing.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#289

Post by dionidium »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #100
nostromo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Police commanders ... WANT mayhem" That's what I responded to. I'm curious if you truly think the people that I listed want to see their home towns on fire.

Most Police Don’t Live In The Cities They Serve: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-police-dont-live-i... Chicago: 88% of police live in city St Louis: 59% Atlanta: 14% Minneapolis: 10% (white officers: 5%) Seattle: 12% Oakland: 9% Also, certainly in Minneapolis—and likely elsewhere—the police chief doesn't seem to have nearly as much control over rank and file officers as the union head does. This story gives…

I'm a broken record on this, but this is yet another example demonstrating that it's basically impossible to compare cities along political borders. "Chicago" covers 234 sq/mi at the center of Chicago, whereas "Minneapolis" covers about 54 sq/mi of the center of Minneapolis, so an officer in Minneapolis and one in Chicago could be living and working in nearly identical environments -- they may, for example, both be living in an old, majority white inner-ring suburb a couple miles from Downtown and policing a majority black area they have no history in -- and the Chicago officer would be counted as living in Chicago, but the Minneapolis officer would not be counted as living in Minneapolis.

Their day-to-day experiences, their relationship to the communities they serve, their physical distance from Downtown, the built environment of their own neighborhoods, the socio-economic make-up of their friends and family -- and on and on and on -- could be practically identical, but we'd count them differently in your list.

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