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Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

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Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#531

Post by standardUser »

solidasparagus wrote: post #114
0xddd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples do you have in mind when you say this? The main case studies that I see get brought up are Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and the Paris Commune, but the wartime pressures that led to their collapse strike me as much different from the present situation. I think the CHAZ will be an interesting experiment given the context.

Specifically the music festivals I've been to. It's fun and a wonderful feeling for a while, but eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with. Or nature throws a disaster at you and there is chaos. It's a little hard to come up with historical examples because the utopia portion is often quite short and overshadowed by the negatives that follow. Generally, I would point to almost a…

The continued existence of Christiania in Denmark should prove to you sufficiently that these types of attempts are not automatically doomed.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#532

Post by standardUser »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #453
zaarn wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it their duty to protect you.

It's really strange how people in this thread refuse to believe that the "reform the police" option even exists. As though we must either have a subpar police system or no police system at all. It's also strange how many people think that getting rid of the police will just work itself out. 1. Abolish police. 2. > 3. Prosper.

"Reform" is a well known word in the US that translates to "do the very minimum necessary to shut most people up for a while". The fact that proponents of radical changes to policing have not come up with terms you like more should not be an indictment of their perspectives.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#533

Post by djsumdog »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #502
djsumdog wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you look at the numbers, police abuse has gone down. There were 1007 shootings by US police last year. Yes, that's still terribly high, even per-capita, for a high income/developed nation, but police departments have been embracing body cameras. If you watch YouTube channels like Donut Operator where people do police breakdowns, a lot of people .. really do deserve to get shot. Body cameras also make it way ea…

> Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles? The police in my town make more than I do. NYPD officers make way more than I do and get sweet benefits I will never enjoy. In return they act petulant and ignore their duties whenever someone forces them to apply less than brutal tactics to non-threatening people. They need comprehensive retraining and removal of the pro…

I grew up in a small city in Tennessee. I remember reading about a cop whose income topped out at $38k when he retired. I was making $45k in my 2nd job, in my 20s, only a few years out of college. Sure my job probably required more knowledge, but I'd argue his was more dangerous. I dunno .. there are a lot of trade-offs and it varies greatly per municipalities. Not all police departments in all cities and counties can be lumped together under the same metrics.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#534

Post by cameron_b »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #410
craftinator wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue I've noticed with the less-than-lethal ordnance use is that in order to be non-lethal, they need to be used according to manufacturer guidelines. I've used rubber coated bullets, bean-bag guns, and flashbangs. The police are not using them according to non-lethal guidelines. Example: Rubber coated bullets have explicit instructions to be aimed at shin height or below. This is because everything below…

I imagine its because all their other training, all their range practice, is to shoot at center of mass three times in a burst. Hard to change in the heat of the riot.

I would say this is spot on from what I've heard. When emotions are this high ( look at the cops faces when they are exposed ) there's nothing but muscle memory.

I took a class on active shooter scenarios where they focused on that "be careful how you train" aspect with the illustration that a police officer ( no idea where ) once responded to a call where an armed man pointed a pistol right at the cop close range. The cop quickly disarmed the man, but then returned the firearm to the man, whereupon the man shot him dead.

In drilling the technique he used to disarm the man, police would practice in pairs, taking turns disarming each other from the draw. This meant that two officers would stand facing each other, pistols in holsters. One officer would draw, the other would disarm, hold the weapon pointed at the first officer for a beat, then return it to the first officer in order to draw his or her own weapon.

Then when you start to hear about corrections departments sending officers for crowd control... the animal instincts and things these guys are trained for is so volatile.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#535

Post by endogui »

zeveb wrote: post #476
jakelazaroff wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we seeing the same front page of foxnews.com? The top story is about the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone, and the biggest text on the page says "Clueless in Seattle".

No, I do not see that anywhere on the page. I do see '"YOU HAVE HIJACKED THIS" Black community activists clash with Seattle anarchists over BLM message, seized district' and other stuff like 'Washington restaurant apologizes after police officer finds derogatory acronym on receipt' and 'Seattle mayor, police chief deny making call to abandon police precinct.' It's mostly sane news. I wonder if it shows different thin…

No ad blocker, on mobile from Asia, and I see what you see.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#536

Post by Izkata »

djsumdog wrote: post #489
ogre_codes wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what the end game is I don't know, it's like a massive catch-22. People are sick of police abuses, but society needs police to some extent. I agree with much of what the protests are about, but struggle with their solutions.

But if you look at the numbers, police abuse has gone down. There were 1007 shootings by US police last year. Yes, that's still terribly high, even per-capita, for a high income/developed nation, but police departments have been embracing body cameras. If you watch YouTube channels like Donut Operator where people do police breakdowns, a lot of people .. really do deserve to get shot. Body cameras also make it way ea…

> Yes there are probably 8%~10% that are psychos and I think most officers wish they could get rid of those people from their ranks too

I personally don't think it's even close to that high. We never see a denominator; how many millions of police interactions are happening that we just don't hear about because nothing went badly?

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#537

Post by kf »

mcv wrote: post #475
ashtonkem wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has never been to Seattle, I am shocked by how bad your police department appears to be. Even the LAPD behaved ... well, less bad from what I’d heard. Flash bangs? Those are for assaulting buildings, not crowd control.

I think over the past few decades, there's been a movement towards increasingly aggressive use of some police weapons. Using tear gas to disperse a crowd is also needlessly aggressive. When I was a kid, Dutch police used water for that. And only when it was an actual riot. I've seen videos of police tasering someone who wasn't the least bit violent, but simply uncooperative. That's not what tasers are for. But if som…

A lot of less lethal crowd control is about imagery and perception. Water can’t be used on crowds in America because it was used against crowds in the civil rights era so comes with a historic connotation of racism even though in reality it’s safer and more reasonable than CS gas.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#538

Post by umvi »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #388
latencyloser wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not automatic rifles, they're very likely all semi-automatic. Semi-automatic rifles can look the same as automatic rifles, visual appearance doesn't mean much. Automatic rifles in the US are much, much more difficult and expensive to acquire than one would think--tens of thousands of dollars usually vs ~$500 for a semi-automatic variant. Sorry if that seems pedantic, but the media uses the understandably ea…

The whole 'fully automatic rifle' is such a nothing burger anyway. M4s and M16s aren't controllable on fully automatic at anything over 10m. Watch modern combat footage of any trained unit, and I guarantee you'll see them using semi auto. My point? Semi auto AR-15s are every bit as effective and deadly as their fully automatic military counterparts. Whether civilians should have such weapons is another discussion.

Regardless, full auto is misleadingly portrayed in media as being orders of magnitude more deadly than semi auto, hard to change that (for example[0]). Nevermind handguns kill more than all other gun types combined, it's the "military" style ones that politicians and media focus on because they look scary (again, also disregarding the fact that a functionally equivalent semi-auto hunting rifle has exactly the same destructive power).

[0] https://youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY?t=113

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#539

Post by tathougies »

modo_mario wrote: post #440
nikkwong wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more; I think part of the appeal of the right is somewhat dogmatic in that most of the sticking points are very fundamental and the messaging is very straightforward; guns, religion, family, low taxes. What does the left stand for? Being a progressive is a moving target, and the inter-messaging is very mixed and often contradictory. Ex. for a long time liberalism was about free speech but now we want…

>guns "There is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons" - ronald reagan >religion, family There squirming to ignore trump on matters like these show how well in line the party walks that's definitely true >low taxes Lotsa say a, do b there They have been very keen to push up deficits tho the focal points where they like to increase spending are different. They're not really cons…

> They have started less invasions but aren't really against global force projection at all

Trump has started the fewest invasions of any president thus far. We've had no regime changes, and no extended battles or fights. Obama (Syria and Libya) and Bush (Iraq, Afghanistan, others) and Clinton (Iraq, Kuwait) all engaged in new wars. Trump hasn't, and has in fact withdrawn America troops.

Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

#540

Post by ashtonkem »

kf wrote: post #537
mcv wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think over the past few decades, there's been a movement towards increasingly aggressive use of some police weapons. Using tear gas to disperse a crowd is also needlessly aggressive. When I was a kid, Dutch police used water for that. And only when it was an actual riot. I've seen videos of police tasering someone who wasn't the least bit violent, but simply uncooperative. That's not what tasers are for. But if som…

A lot of less lethal crowd control is about imagery and perception. Water can’t be used on crowds in America because it was used against crowds in the civil rights era so comes with a historic connotation of racism even though in reality it’s safer and more reasonable than CS gas.

That’s a great point. I’m sure CS gas will soon become associated with this round of police violence and soon have similar issues.
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