Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations. 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…
Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
471–480 of 835 posts
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#472Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations. 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…
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to set any narrative, just giving my own data point, no one should extrapolate this more broadly. 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…
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anybody remember the Clinton administration, when the popular cry was "Charlton Heston is my president!" and "The purpose of the Right to Bear Arms isn't for hunting, it is so that politicians fear the people!" Yeah, I don't either. Yes, rioting isn't free speech. Unfortunately, nothing short of rioting seems to work---the people in question are poor and already at the bottom of the social pile, so their options seem…
But rioting doesn’t work. The first comprehensive study of riots was just done at Princeton and riots are found to result in crackdowns, not reform. Occupy Wallstreet, Ferguson riots, 1968 riots, LA Riots, Camden riots, all had opposite the intended effect. Democrats already had the African American vote and the cities. Rioting will swing the suburbs back to Republicans, completing the cycle again.
This all will not end well.
P.s. Were there significant riots with the Occupy thing? I seem to recall it being mostly quiet (and completely ineffectual).
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#474Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations. 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…
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.
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no reason why it can't be "black people being killed by cops like this MUST stop" and "the rioting and looting MUST stop." Buried in your reasoning is the idea that the rioting and looting is helping reducing black deaths by cops. I see no reason to believe that. First, its directly putting people into violent conflict with police. So additional black people have been killed by police caused by the rioting.…
Rioting and looting don't generally kill people. Cops do kill people, time and time again, and they usually get away with it. That's why it is absurd to equate the two. "There was a consensus that what happened to George Floyd was an atrocity." Who cares? Thinking something is an atrocity accomplished precisely jack shit. Peaceful protests get ignored or mocked. Police forces continue to get more militarized. Far rig…
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
Protests have been regularly shown to let emergency vehicles through, I saw videos of this yesterday.
Except for the "Open States Up" protests that occurred that had hospital personal begging the protestors to let the emergency vehicles through. But that's a different type of crowd.
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, it was pretty clear that the police in Santa Monica and Long Beach allowed the looting to occur while treating the protesters like criminals from the outset. This isn't to say that other local precincts weren't significantly better in their treatment of protesters, but there's clear evidence that many police departments are either corrupt or completely inept in addressing violent crime. This has been a long ti…
The police seem to clearly be allowing looting on purpose. SoHo was looted two days in a row . Where were the NYPD? There are 10's of thousands of uniformed officers Maybe you can say the first day they somehow missed it, but two days in a row? Come on. I refuse to believe that they didn't see this coming - they brag about how they're "gathering intel" on terrorist groups, but they couldn't check twitter to see #soho…
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s pretty hard to condone that 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…
>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? Never thought of it this way before, but this train of thought strongly resonates with me and makes sense. Thanks for posting it.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stopping traffic risks the lives of people in ambulances so it’s pretty hard to condone that. Make noise, block access to some businesses, etc, but don’t block streets and cause traffic jams that could kill people FFS.
Your of course assuming that ambulance services don't track the protests and route around them as much as possible.
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.
Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
#480How & why is this happening? I feel fairly confident that police don't usually attack media, but it seems clear that in the past few days there has been some kind of deliberate choice made to start doing so. Are individual groups of police making the decision to attack media, or is it concerted? Are they just seeing it from other police and copying? I know some people will say it's because Trump has called media "fak…
It all started with the media, as in, police crime was documented. Now when police already uses questionable methods, cameras will point at them. Since they can't be identified in full gear, they can shoot at press without anyone stopping them, so I guess why not? They're already shooting at random people so there's a lot of aggression built up.