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De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

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Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#611

Post by adamsea »

beloch wrote: post #78

We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organize…

Are we going to ignore the elephant in the room?

Police are, in the aggregate, racist. They are more violent towards people of color. The marches are led by POC, include large numbers of POC, and are all about calling the police out for their own biases and illegal behavior.

This is simply a fact. It's not only intuitively true based on astute observation of current affairs, but the data trends towards supporting it.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shooti...

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#612

Post by michaelt »

andrewzah wrote: post #446
exolymph wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, if all of the protestors are armed, the police realize they can't escalate the situation and get away with it.

So the question here is: Would the response have been the same if all the heavily armored folk were black? As a born and raised American, I'm inclined to think not. I could be wrong of course, but everything that I've seen and experienced growing up and living in the US has led me to believe otherwise. I want to think that more protestors being armed would make a difference, but ultimately I believe it will just lead…

In a historical precedent that doesn't particularly clarify the situation, in 1967 the Black Panthers were able to enter the California state capitol building with guns. [1]

Apparently they were let in, then arrested, then released without charge and their guns returned as they hadn't broken the law. However, they were there protesting against the 'Mulford Act' that intended to disarm them, and it was subsequently passed. So they didn't get shot, but they didn't get what they wanted either, and they did get banned from doing it again.

Of course, there's a lot more detail than I've put into this post, and society was pretty different at the time. Reagan supporting gun control? The NRA as a sporting organisation that supported gun control? And the panthers were Marxist? So I'm not sure it's a very instructive example about how the same thing would go today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Protest_at...

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#613

Post by RhysU »

hef19898 wrote: post #564
RhysU wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was active I could easily tell the difference between someone potentially violent and someone peaceful. Woman with a stroller - probably peaceful. Person in all black with a large backpack - potentially violent. Wait for it... > The simple solution to this problem is for the police to target the troublemakers and to let the peaceful protestors be. You are suggesting that the police should profile individuals…

I think you are purposefully misreading the comment. There are ways to differentiate, mom with kid, old man vs. young guy in black clothes with a backpack. I think I know what you want to imply, but did you note the complete absence of race or colour in OPs comment? And alos the completely different circumstances, crowd control vs. standard law enforcement?

I am not purposefully misreading. I am reading. I was gobsmacked by how ironic the proposal was and felt compelled to point it out. To show that this stuff is hard even when folks are entirely well-meaning.

I did notice the absence of race or color and you will note my comment does not include any notion of race. You added race. I did note judging by appearance. You added age, out of nowhere.

Using appearance to treat people differently is profiling, though not always racial profiling. Should non-racial profiling be okay? To your inclusion of age, should we treat gatherings of youth differently than gatherings of the elderly?

The GP says "...for the police to target...". No distinction is made between crowd control and standard law enforcement.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#614

Post by CydeWeys »

hinkley wrote: post #240
WillDaSilva wrote: post #6

"Of course, as Gillham pointed out, negotiating and managing a protest can’t really work if the protest wasn’t organized ahead of time. That goes double, he said, if the topic of the protest is police brutality. It’s hard to negotiate with someone about the best way to demand they be fired." This point is important. The police can't police themselves, and for a lasting solution to this problem to emerge there'll have…

Police brutality protestors should be meeting with the mayor’s office with representation from the police department and internal affairs, but the chief of police is not in charge. That’s the problem. When official channels fail to the point of Protesting in the streets, you can’t use the same channels to address the situation. And I don’t mean “you are incapable” can’t. I mean, “You are not allowed” can’t.

These protests and riots are happening precisely because the alternative mechanisms such as the one you are suggesting have failed time and time again.

Here in NYC we have a spineless mayor who has completely given up even attempting to exert civilian oversight on the police since 2014. They have free rein to do whatever they want and to "self-police" themselves, and because of the union violent cops are never fired.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#615

Post by kuzimoto »

vertex-four wrote: post #394
kuzimoto wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is citizens job to be compliant. It is the government's job to enforce compliance. I'm sure there was things the police could do better, but no one died at the hands of the police (after protesting started). The same can't be said for the protestors/rioters.

> It is citizens job to be compliant. It is the government's job to enforce compliance. That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship, not democracy. In a democracy, it's the citizens' job to keep their Government accountable - when the population says that the right to a presumption of innocence is paramount, they create a Government to ensure that right. What you are suggesting is that the population does not believ…

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant when you wrote "Government says one thing so we're compliant, and then does another when it suits it". I never said people don't have the ability to change how the government enforces compliance, simply that they are the ones who do.

Many people have died at the hands of other rioters as a result of the protests.

I'm not saying that people needed to loose their eyes, but they were out after curfew which was enacted because they wanted people to go home due to the violence.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#616

Post by TulliusCicero »

snickell wrote: post #543
mhh__ wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k dead

0.026% dead As per normal, absolute numbers can be misleading to very smart humans when we have trouble intuiting about vast numbers like "100 million". If the goal is to convey scale accurately, its generally recommended to default report population related measures as per capita percentages. That doesn't mean other measures can't be relevant, but the choice really should be very carefully weighed in order to convey…

You could say the same thing about the September 11 terrorist attacks. They killed only a tiny number of Americans, so why even care?

Similarly, the 40,000 who die each year from traffic fatalities are only some miniscule number of Americans, so why care about those deaths either?

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#617

Post by ratww »

snickell wrote: post #543
mhh__ wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k dead

0.026% dead As per normal, absolute numbers can be misleading to very smart humans when we have trouble intuiting about vast numbers like "100 million". If the goal is to convey scale accurately, its generally recommended to default report population related measures as per capita percentages. That doesn't mean other measures can't be relevant, but the choice really should be very carefully weighed in order to convey…

> 1) Everyone stays in their huts for 6 mos to a year with all the impacts and suffering that entails

Probably doesn't even have to be that long. A large portion of Europe is pretty much back to normal already.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#618

Post by wizzwizz4 »

eirini1 wrote: post #481
briandear wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction. I have been in the middle of protests when I worked for Reuters and the difference between peaceful and violent is very tiny. I was in the no-man’s land between the K…

>It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. thats very interesting. The difference seems to be in initial reactions of the police to peaceful protests. With lockdown protesters, police showed up in soft clothes and didn't initiate vi…

> much more incisive and dangerous to the government.

Why the "government"? I don't think the police automatically defend the interests of the currently-elected politicians. In the absence of distinguishing evidence, I assign much higher priors to them defending their own interests.

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#619

Post by wizzwizz4 »

chris123 wrote: post #559
beloch wrote: post #78

We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organize…

The mass media could use some de-escalation skills, too. Of course, their specialty is escalation, not de-escalation.

We become what we behold. https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb

Re: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

#620

Post by TulliusCicero »

creato wrote: post #483
frabbit wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the Malheur Refuge standoff where heavily armed protestors were handled with kid gloves. Maybe it's to do with having guns?

A few of those protestors were chased through a road block and shot at, and one was killed. It is ironic that you are calling the police killing someone handling with "kid gloves" in a thread about deescalation between protestors and police. (Don't get me wrong, what those protestors did was senseless and the epitome of entitlement.)

> A few of those protestors were chased through a road block and shot at, and one was killed.

This is a highly misleading way of describing the situation.

The police set up a traffic stop to arrest them. They fled the stop. Finicum told the police he wasn't going to surrender and that they'd have to shoot him. He reached for his gun in his pocket, and then he was shot.

If black men were only being killed by police after fleeing arrest, refusing to surrender, challenging the police to shoot them, and then reaching for a gun...then we wouldn't have much of a police violence problem.

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