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Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

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Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#701

Post by logicchains »

freeone3000 wrote: post #693
logicchains wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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…

They're wearing full bulletproof vests, shields, helmets, and drive up in armored personel carriers. What, pray tell, would a semiauto rifle do against that, other than get you killed?

The example gun-nuts usually point to is that Afghani farmers (and Vietnamese rice farmers) did a pretty good job of giving US soldiers trouble even though the solders were way better equipped.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#702

Post by logicchains »

pbourke wrote: post #695
logicchains wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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…

> Question to Americans: if the police really are acting this badly, why aren't y'all exercising your second amendment rights to defend yourselves? 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.

Even when the protesters vastly outnumber the police? The police used much less force against the anti-lockdown protestors, who were armed, than against the unarmed BLM protestors. I don't think most police would be willing to risk their lives confronting a large crowd of armed protestors.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#703

Post by megous »

jcims wrote: post #659
JamesBarney wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the vast majority of medical conditions where routing around a protest or road closure would cause serious harm to an individual are probably in ambulances.

So just roll the dice that you’re not going to hurt anyone by blocking traffic? Who’s responsible if something does go wrong? That’s going to really help the cause.

We'd still have communism here if people were so obedient and concerned about blocking traffic that millions would not go into the streets for protests in 1989.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#704

Post by luckylion »

strken wrote: post #530
luckylion wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you have preferred? If the police shows up and the looting does not stop, they can either use force (aka violence) to make it stop, or they can go home, essentially giving up the rule of law in the area. 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…

The state's power is not just fear alone, it's legitimacy. What stops people from looting under normal circumstances is the belief that looting is wrong and will be punished, and people will agree punishment was justified . 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 d…

Oh, absolutely, but there are different levels of damage.

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.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#705

Post by grupthink »

devin wrote: post #647
jariel wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>>>>>>>> "looting is an action and not a quality." - no, it's absolutely a crime, and a 'quality' of an individual to the extent that we definitely consider it very immoral, and we have laws against it. It's not 'protesting' in any sense of the term. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "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 mos…

Hmm, I'm sorry, but we have to talk. 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 p…

Good point about context. Are these looters stealing bread for survival? I see them looting jewelers and high end retailers, like Gucci then torching the place. What is the motive?

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?

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#706

Post by iso947 »

mchusma wrote: post #520

I have been trying to think of good, relatively simple policy decisions that can make a large impact. I have not heard too many proposed besides removing qualified immunity. I would be curious what ideas people have: Ideas include: -Banning police unions -Having a federal agency to discipline police (outside the purview of local politics) I haven't heard this idea elsewhere but I like the idea of us addressing from t…

All white male police officers on deal duty for six months

After that ensure they are chaperoned by a black person.

All costs for “bad apples” come out if the departments pension fund.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#707

Post by iso947 »

viraptor wrote: post #311
jfoster wrote: post #143

How & 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.

Why don’t the police have visible numbers on their uniforms?

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#708

Post by pbourke »

panny wrote: post #687
bosswipe wrote: post #91

I had been heartened by the right's recent upswing in fierce support for the first amendment, but unfortunately I've seen little of that support during the protests as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press have been attacked. For example Rand Paul has not tweeted in a week. Sadly, as always, these kind of principled arguments, on both sides, are a sham to advance whatever the partisan battle of the week is.

>I had been heartened by the right's recent upswing in fierce support for the first amendment, but unfortunately I've seen little of that support during the protests You do see a difference in the protests, right? The protests against lockdowns didn't include looting, arson, rape, murder, and multiple murdered police. Here, have a small sample, Black pawn shop employee murdered by looters for TVs https://www.youtube.…

> Protesters set homeless man’s belongings on fire

This was staged by infowars. I cannot be arsed to look at all of your videos.

The right wing lockdown protests had a strong smell of AstroTurf about them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/coronavirus-p...

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#709

Post by brian-armstrong »

kortilla wrote: post #360
bradly wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a small suburb of San Diego the protest stopped traffic. Police forced the protesters off and then riots started and two banks were burnt down. 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…

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.

This is a pretty short-sighted argument, isn't it? Surely the long-term harm from systemic issues people protest against (namely, police brutality) will claim many more lives than a few weeks of blocked street intersections downtown.

Re: Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28

#710

Post by josteink »

luckylion wrote: post #704
strken wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state's power is not just fear alone, it's legitimacy. What stops people from looting under normal circumstances is the belief that looting is wrong and will be punished, and people will agree punishment was justified . 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 d…

Oh, absolutely, but there are different levels of damage. 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 opti…

> 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.

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?

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