Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28 | Hacker News Reader

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

niemanlab.org

1,125 pointslaurex768 comments

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 crowd.

I find it really hard to not come to the conclusion that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.

It’s the same here in Seattle as it was while I was in Berkeley during Ferguson.

People protest peacefully, and police shoot tear gas into the crowd and attack whomever they can get their hands on.

I’ll admit, the outright brutality I saw in-person in Oakland was worse than what I’ve seen here in the recent days.

In Oakland, the police would purposely corral protestors into groups and literally beat the shit out of them. I saw this in-person multiple times. In Seattle, I haven’t seen that sort of corral behavior. However, police do shoot tear gas completely unprovoked and fire rubber bullets and mace without concern.

In both places, no looting was occurring at the main scene of the protests. In both cases, numerous videos show police breaking windows themselves.

In any case, it’s all the same: in a country that parades its freedom, people of color can’t protest without the president calling for them to be roughed up, and without the police willingly complying.

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 is legal and a protest without a disturbance is not a protest, so arresting people causing a disturbance while shutting down non-violent disturbances is disappointing.

> (why forced oral sex is not rape I’m not sure)

The justice dept definition as updated in 2012 would include this. I don’t know how that plays out in state law, but what I’ve read points to that being the definition for state charges too. Doesn’t help when it’s not enforced, which is clearly the case here since the officer didn’t have to register as a sex offender either.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition...

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.

I have never in my life seen an ambulance be stopped by a protest, nor have ever heard of such an incident ever occuring.

> Stopping traffic risks the lives of people in ambulances so it’s pretty hard to condone that.

Social media is clogged with live footage from the protests. Can you find a single video of an ambulance being stopped by protests?

The irony of your comment is that the likelihood of an ambulance being close to a protest is linked to the extreme violence that the police is using to attack and repress protests against police violence.

Protests have been regularly shown to let emergency vehicles through, I saw videos of this yesterday.

> 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 people into the streets.

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?

"What about" is not a helpful question here. Stay focused on the main issues.

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.

Your of course assuming that ambulance services don't track the protests and route around them as much as possible.

Where I live you have to send the places and waypoints your protest will take before you start one so that emergency services can route around protest and have some units on standby in case things go wrong.

You can see in the HK protests the sea of people instantly parts to form a path for ambulances. American protesters just need to learn these advanced coordination tactics.

Blocking traffic might reduce auto accidents, saving lives. How many of those ambulances are responding to auto accidents that could have been prevented?

Race relations between Oakland's black residents and Oakland police have been fraught for decades (probably at least since the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland in the 60s). But that doesn't justify the violent actions you've described.

Unfortunately, some senior "dog whistle" politicians have labeled protesters "thugs" and "looters" and have called for "shooting" and "no quarter." These loose words are dangerous and may be unlawful: https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-death/republican-senato...

As a result of these statements, some armed enforcers including police, National Guard, and U.S. military may interpret these bellicose pronouncements as a declaration of war or a granting of letters of marque and reprisal against protesters and their property.

Good leadership would call for toning down the rhetoric but leadership appears to be in short supply. Gefickt, we are.

While I think Cotton is a jackass, I can’t help but notice how your first paragraph is about Oakland, California, and your second paragraph is about a guy who is a Senator in Kentucky.[1]

Oakland has had a Democratic mayor since 1977. California routinely has a super-majority of Democrats in the state legislature, and the last Republican Federal Senator from the state left office almost 30 years ago. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the second paragraph after mentioning the “fraught” relationship between black residents and the Oakland PD should have something to do with those Democrats who have direct executive and legislative control over the city and state, who are directly in charge of hiring/firing police chiefs and operating the state level internal affairs bureaus, and who set police department budgets and make the laws. And maybe the (admittedly deplorable) coded language a Republican Senator thousands of miles away uses belongs many paragraphs below that.

[1] Interesting fact. Oakland and Louisville are ranked similarly (188 versus 194) on Urban Institute’s “economic inclusiveness” index: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/97981/...

"have labeled protesters "thugs" and "looters" "

Referring to looters as 'looters' is not problematic.

Calling for shootings, using code-words like 'thugs' and referring to peaceful protesters as 'looters' is a problem - but let's not lose context here: there are riots and rioters are bad news.

I think in these ugly times it's even more important to be cool and clear about things.

Here in Santa Monica the police ignored nearby looters to fire upon protestors. The two groups were largely unrelated and physically separated, making the police’s actions very hard to justify.

"numerous videos show police breaking windows themselves"

I don't believe you.

The umbrella guy breaking the AutoZone window with a hammer has no connection to any police department. Someone made that up on social media and people shared it because that's what people do.

The only video I know of showing officers breaking a window is out of Seattle. It shows officers responding to a burglary in progress at a Target store. The officers had to chip away at the already broken glass windows so they could safely get in. (The burglars had broken the glass to get inside.) Once inside, the responding officers found and arrested the three burglars they had come for.

Here you go. https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gv2ogk/news_ch...

Multiple people have replied with evidence in this thread.

I don’t know your view on the matter, but somehow I doubt that seeing videos will do anything to change your view on the matter anyway. I say this because in a thread about police brutality, you cherry-pick an argument counter to what videos have already shown.

I do hope the continuing videos showcasing police brutality, during protests OF police brutality, do something to convince people that it is a very real problem.

It's actually worse than that. Even in the killing of Floyd the Police claimed he resisted arrest, which was a lie[0], the coroner said it wasn't asphyxia that killed him (despite all the videos) and a private autopsy found that's not true[1].

They did all this amidst a huge public outcry, what do you think happens to some poor schmuck when no camera is around.

Like this[2] and this[3].........

EDIT: Here is one where the cop force the poor guy to grab his baton and leave his fingerprints so he can accuse him of whatever he wants[4].

EDIT2: What do you know "his death [Floyd's] is on their hands [protesters and looters] as much as it is those officers"[5]

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/us/video-george-floyd-contrad...

[1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/george-floyd-au...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/07/27/...

[3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-woman-shot-killed...

[4]: https://v.redd.it/yo3bpzzt9h251

[5]: https://youtu.be/tIBoxt9maJs?t=64

"the coroner said it wasn't asphyxia that killed him (despite all the videos) and a private autopsy found that's not true[1]."

The county coroner's report was technically true in a way meant to imply a false result.

Floyd didn't die from lack of airflow, he died because the knee stopped blood flow to the brain, that is the brain couldn't receive Oxygen despite the body being able to breath.

The county coroner carefully checked that Floyd could breathe, but not blood flow to the brain. Once asphyxia was ruled out (not really, since strangulation is not the only way to get it), the coroner was free to imply whatever was comfortable to the police.

I wonder how many other autopsies done by the same coroner were also misleading, and whether other cases will need a retrial.

You are correct. I found this great analysis of the official report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egRf84EqaJI

The autopsy was purposely vague so as to give as much leeway as possible to the police.

Was this the coroner or medical examiner? I didn't think the coroner did a report. The medical examiner released their full report shortly after the preliminary one and did state the death was ultimately due to asphyxiation. I read that the initial medical examiner's report didn't go this far b/c they had not completed their review and they needed to get a report out quickly so that the officers could be charged.

This officer claimed he feared for his life. No charges were brought. The dashcam video is supposed to be exculpatory, but that's not how I see it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/04/zachary-hamm...

In the video I watched (the one with multiple viewpoints from security cams, dash cams, etc.), Floyd did resist when they attempted to take him out of his car, and then again when they tried to put him in their car the first time. Of course, none of that should have resulted in a death sentence.

FFWD a couple months and Trump will be praising the police while fixating on the original coroner report.

First, this evidence there was 'no resistance' is not evidence at all, in fact, the claim by CNN is 'the lie'. There are many minutes of the interaction we don't have insight into, in particular the moments leading up to the 'kneeling'. That doesn't mean the police are not lying, but it definitely means the 'proof' offered by CNN is not 'proof'.

Also, city coroner made one claim, the coroner hired by the family made a different one, the claim that somehow the coroner hired by the family is 'correct' is just flat out inappropriate. Personally, I'm slightly more inclined to believe the city coroner, and that there were probably some complications. When the victim initially came out of his vehicle, it seems he fell to the ground in a manner that didn't seem to be due to a struggle, which would indicate something was wrong, physically, already at that time, obviously exacerbated by the police brutality.

The county coroner changed their report and labeled the death a homicide after the outcry that the original report was a cover-up. They no longer have any credibility.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867219130/george-floyd-indepe...

> In charging documents released last week, prosecutors said that preliminary results from an autopsy "revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."

>However the new report from the medical examiner did not include such language.

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 time coming, too. In the last few years, many police departments around the country have thrown their hands up and publicly stated they won't be bothering with most property crimes. The way they see it, the only crimes worth their time involve people not committing real crimes at all or crimes involving guns or knives. Anyone who doesn't get why people don't trust the police has been living under a rock. This goes beyond just racism.

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 trending?

They want the story to be about rioters so they're letting them riot. It's a way to shift the public opinion (same way some cops have been seen breaking car and store windows).

On the topic of police refusing to do their job in order to punish backlash.

https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904

> Politicians who cross the MPD find slowdowns in their wards. After the first time I cut money from the proposed police budget, I had an uptick in calls taking forever to get a response, and MPD officers telling business owners to call their councilman about why it took so long.

This is them shaking the public down and saying they decide which laws to enforce.

> SoHo was looted two days in a row. Where were the NYPD?

Local news reporting tries to explain what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m01s

"What you've been seeing is basically a cat and mouse game all night. The police have been here with a huge show of force, but they can't stop people, because they don't know that they've necessarily been looting. And so they're waiting for somebody to do something, police move onto the next block, and then someone does something."

I don't know one way or another whether this is the whole truth, but it appears to play a significant role according to the reporter.

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 state's power isn't real as in "we can crush you", it rests only in everybody's fear of the state being able to crush them. If there's a chance that the state has to back down, not seeking the confrontation sounds like a smart choice to me, even if it comes at the price of a day or two of looting.

So logically you would welcome Trump sending troops to end the looting?

I'm not sure what it is you're suggesting they do. If they arrest the looters, you will complain of "police brutality", since as a rule, criminals do not go into custody willingly. If they do not, you will complain of "looting". They also can't individually go after looters in this situation - too dangerous. Whatever they do they have to do as a group, without dispersing.

This was also the case at Fairfax and 3rd in Los Angeles. Violence erupted only when the police arrived, not before. They escalated the moment they arrived.

This does not align with my experience. I off 3rd street, right by the La Cienega where significant looting occured. I intentionally walked outside while looting/vandalism was occurring and there was absolutely no police presence whatsoever except for police helicopters.

I walked down third street until I reached the point where the riot police set up a barricade and didn't allow the protesters further. It was really a peaceful scene where the police were setup, and I thought it was being handled very professionally with the goal to not incite violence (There were also 6 police helicopters circling the area) Everywhere the police were not there was looting.

The amount of misinformation being circulated is staggering.

Or, apparently anyone criticizing them. They’re very invested in stopping that.

and I thought these Raymond Chandler novels describing the cops of "Bay City" were fiction...

>the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith

Seems fairly accurate. I'm just annoyed that many people can't grasp that awful police behavior and awful behavior from other actors are not mutually exclusive. There is lots of unjustified police violence and provocations against perfectly peaceful protestors. There is also systematic vandalism and arson by people who aren't peaceful protestors. And there is massive amounts of opportunistic vandalism and looting. All three can and do co-exist.

This is not a two-sided conflict. More like three- or four- sided mess.

One of the sides mentioned has a monopoly on the lawful use of force. Shouldn't we expect better from them in return?

One side of this coin is that the police have a monopoly on lawful force and therefore should be held to a higher standard. The other side seems to me that police derive their tasks from laws (handed down by the same institutions) and a certain degree of pressure is therefore accorded to enforce said laws.

I agree that we should expect better from the police and authorities in return, but also that we accept their use of limited force (even when not physically harmful) when necessary as the means to do so.

I personally lean towards presumably the same direction as you: that police should first and foremost be held to a higher standard before their legitimacy is accepted. However, I think it's not that far from the views of some that see their role in this conflict as imposing harsh law and order.

No, the police do not have a monopoly on the lawful use of force. Not in the USA... or, at least, not in most areas of the USA.

It's ironic that the people trying their best to change that are also the ones who are most closely aligned with the victims of police brutality, politically speaking. One of many things I don't understand.

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 protest originally and she tried to use the lack of police presence to anger people ("look, the police don't even care about protecting you!") and then they merely showed up and it was the other way around ("the police are here to stop us!"). Seemed like she was trying to agitate people into provoking the police. Even still, the protest was generally peaceful on both sides; as far as I know, there was no police violence nor rioting/looting/etc. Proud of my hood.

I can weigh in a bit on what the police claim happened here in Indianapolis. They won't account for all of their CS deployments, which I think is crazy, but they did address why it started the other day (Saturday?). Their claim is that what they saw was some police inside the city/county building and a single person started hitting the glass on the building. Simultaneously, "previously peaceful" protesters started locking arms at one end of the street, blocking emergency vehicle ingress, so they let loose a bunch of (13 year expired)_CS gas.

Is that believable? Sure, but locking arms is also a common thing during protests. The road was already blocked off and cars weren't going through. Also, they fired CS into crowds of protesters blocks away, claiming that they think the protesters are coordinating by secure communications and instantaneously turning violent across the city. Most of it seems like bullshit, and even if it's all true, locking arms on one side of a closed street is not at all unusual. They should have arrested the one guy hitting the glass and let the protest continue.

By the way, they used this event to justify the curfews that haven't been raised since then.

> blocking emergency vehicle ingress, so they let loose a bunch of (13 year expired)_CS gas.

That doesn't make sense, unless they wanted the driver and other people in a not airtight emergency vehicle to end up in the gas cloud as well...

I'm in Richmond, Virginia, and according to people monitoring the unencrypted fire department radios on twitter (one of them a fairly reputable community organizer, but rate the source as you will), this exact situation supposedly happened on Saturday night. Fire department got called to a shoe store fire, they faced some impediment reaching the fire, police showed up and dropped tear gas all over the area, and the fire department ended up back on the scanner requesting an ambulance for the commander on site for tear gas exposure, and additional PPE from another department to help the other fire fighters cope. The building ended up being marked a complete loss, although I'm unclear of the nitty gritty details like timelines, source of the fire, etc.

EDIT: I will also note that this, among other events, was used to justify calling for a curfew in town, and today, the mayor and police chief have condemned their own police officers for deploying tear gas on peaceful protests prior to the start of the curfews last night, and then putting forward a false justification (admitted by the police chief to have been a false justification, to be clear) for doing so.

Right. And this is the justification given during a press conference the next morning; it's not some on-the-spot question asked to the deputy chief of Indianapolis Police. It's a dumb excuse. Plus, it's literally one block long. If you want police on that block, they can stop around the corner and walk in. The building isn't touching the street; it's a couple hundred feet back.

As another observation, I've been to the protests in Raleigh, and at least 75% of the initial violent actions have been from individuals in the protest.

(I say 'individuals', not 'protestors', because the latter are peaceful people. The instigators are rioters and looters, a small minority of the people hiding within the former group.)

The other 25% has been initial violent action from the police. Things like shooting gas and charging forward when protestors were simply standing still.

Welcome to Russia . Actually, since 1993 police actions in Russia were never that outright violent and cruel as they are now in the USA . I'm watching news coverage with disbelief and anger, and I'm wondering if the pot will continue calling various kettles around the world black.

So, I not the only one feeling that the situation feels ominously similar to the august putsch, and 1993

I'm seeing the same. Even when people are acting out, the police are supposed to be a professional, trained force that is capable of keeping them selves in control and knowing when to back-off and regroup when things aren't in their control.

All I see is crazed fighting from them. Wide eyed with fear, wild swinging, just indiscriminate violence. Is property damage bad? Sure. But good lord stolen Nikes are so inconsequential to what I'm seeing from the police right now.

I am not a bleeding heart liberal, nor am I some apparently crazed republican. I just don't like seeing my fellow Americans getting killed and beaten. The fact that they are totally immune from prosecution and oversight makes the power dynamic of it all that much more infuriating.

On the other hand all incidents of violence that I have witnessed so far was from the protesters to other protesters, and some against shops, shopowners, counter-protesters, and drivers. Although I am not doubting what you said, in my experience it seems that the protestors scatter and do not cause any unjustified violence when the police starts chaos.

What events were you at? Everything is on video these days somewhere. Can you point us to an online video example that you were at?

Sorry, for the safety of myself, my fellow demonstrators, and my family I am not going to state the actual events I was at.

Others have already shown examples, however here is an news article covering some incidents: https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-asks-evidence-individuals-incit...

I have so far not seen any evidence of the opposite taking place, I would certainly appreciate some counter examples.

I certainly don’t think the police cars in NYC going through those pedestrians - the first example on the page - is a good example.

People crowded around the vehicles and starting throwing things at them. While I would expect police to have more restraint/less fear than they did, that wasn’t the police starting violence. I would expect almost anyone to have the same reaction they did.

There was another NYC incident that people were up in arms about without context and it turns out one of the police had been hit in the head with a brick.

From what I've seen is everything is peaceful during the day time, but after the curfews or when it becomes an unlawful gathering (i.e. blocking interstates etc.) is when police intervene. Which is what they job is supposed to be. The methods used for crowd control are acceptable when things reach the above mentioned criteria. Protests during daylight hours, and not breaking other laws is fully protected by 1st amendment, and I have seen no sign of police missteps in my city during these lawful peaceful demonstrations.

If you’ve never seen videos of police tear gassing peaceful protestors, or driving into them with their cars, you’re living a very sheltered life.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...

And if you haven't seen many clear examples of opportunistic looting and people clearly thrill-seeking, you're living in a bubble:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5C38kayWI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sKN2vOtZM

https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gvc5pt

https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gvimlx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RokxrLLBjKA

And many more examples are available...

There's still no need to aim for close range headshots like this and many other incidents https://i.imgur.com/medV8y6.gifv

There are plenty of daytime abuses by the police in this twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...

In at least some cases it has been initiated by protesters/rioters. E.g. in the spread sheet row 17: https://twitter.com/Stephon_Dingle/status/126656092123893760...

And of course there was the case of the riots at the CNN headquarters.

But I think this clearly & quantitatively shows that in general actions against journalists are initiated by the police force, which I don't find surprising.

From all the videos/pictures circulating I see both sides doing cheap-shots to escalate the situation and prove that their narrative is the right one.

But when will people take a step back and start asking themselves; who profits on this turmoil?

Do you have any concrete examples where the protesters instigated the violence? I have not been able to find any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wz69m4hKsw

Someone at a protest was stabbed. Police was called to arrest the stabber and take the victim to hospital. They were actually leaving when some people started throwing rocks and bottles at them.

Well a police officer was killed trying to prevent a store being looted. But many people here consider looting as justified and warranted in the current circumstances - shop owners should grin and bear it for the greater cause - so it may not be what you are asking for.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/small-town-police-chief-killed-off...

I don't understand how you can think that all violence everywhere was started by the police. Yes, the police has probably been guilty of that, but do you really think all protestors are unanimously and inherently peaceful in every single place? Even in Sweden most protests are filled with bad actors and professional rioters who just want to cause a stir.

I was at a peaceful rally in Seattle last night, and a bunch of cops kept closing in and started shoving people.

>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 to be for: protecting yourselves from an oppressive government. If the current situation doesn't warrant it, what situation would?

> 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.

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.

As a non-American, I'm thinking the exact same thing. The whole system is completely broken.

You are absolutely correct. A lot of these protests start out peacefully and are then instigated by police.

Here's a video of the Seattle police instigating violence: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...

A cop felt so threatened by a pink umbrella that he just had to have it, at all costs.

I've been watching (and attending) a lot of the Portland protests and it's the same story here. Peaceful protesters, violent police. They're all fully geared and armed, and yet feel threatened by water bottles being thrown at them. They feel so threatened by the people that just having protesters get close to a fence around the Justice Center will cause police to start firing rubber bullets, flash bangs, smoke bombs, and tear gas at unarmed and unprotected protesters. Police feel so threatened by unarmed protesters that they now need the help of fully-armed, fully-geared, completely decked-out national guard. This is an embarrassment for police.

Not that any of this is a surprise, anyway. A police officer felt so threatened by an unarmed, handcuffed black man that the had to murder the unarmed, handcuffed black man.

Nobody shot tear gas into the crowd that burned down the 3rd precinct in Minneapolis. It was the exact OPPOSITE. Police left the premises hours prior to the gathering.

I‘m not sure this will help:

https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/126675152005...

The police are being told by the governors who are being told by the POTUS that the protestors must “dominated”. I’m not editorializing or interpreting here. Listen to Trump himself say it over and over again in the course of this phone call:

https://soundcloud.com/the-daily-beast-politics/trump-audio

I can’t stress how useful it is to hear this context first hand yourself.

Why else would the police get all this military equipment that they are so eager to try out?

Never mind that you always see them as law enforcement and not a service to the community.

I think at some level, police are rioting to keep their jobs.

I came around to prison abolition once I realized it was a goal that was meant to be achieved piece by piece.

Cash bail. That's one piece. None of those people need to be in jail. They haven't been convicted of a crime and they overwhelmingly show up for their court date if released. The only thing they can't afford is their bail and that is used to get them to plead to crimes without the police having to prove anything. That's 470k people on any given night. *

Drug possession. Like to smoke weed? Well, that's your choice and no need to throw you in jail over it like 1.4 million people each year.

The other pieces are more radical or require replacement programs or just don't even have proposed solutions. But just above are two pieces of the incarceration system that the many people will agree could just be turned off.

So, if you turn those off, what's the staffing change in police departments and correctional facilities? We're not talking about firing for performance (yet), this is just run of the mill right sizing. Gotta be efficient--can't give people jobs as a handout.

What if you kept going down this line of reasoning. What if you ended racial profiling? Across the country black motorists are 20% more likely to be pulled over. Either black people are being targeted (the consensus) or white people are being given a free pass (my personal experience is that this is also happening). So either hire more police to pull over white people more often. We are doing hella drugs, driving drunk all the time, texting while driving, etc. Or, more along the lines of what everyone wants, there could be a 20% reduction in the staffing of highway patrol.

I think if the will of the people was respected, police departments would probably be reduced by 25% across the country. Certainly in NYC, which has one of the highest cops per capita in the world even though we have the highest density and cops shouldn't have to walk far to do their jobs.

If it were my policy though, probably 50% of police could be eliminated.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics

* https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/us/police-stops-race-stanford...

Possible explanation: (Note: I am not saying this is what happened in any specific case, merely that it is plausible.)

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.

I've had the opposite experience in Chicago. I live in a high rise in the loop. I was able to watch the "protests", "riots", whatever from above. I'm sure I'll get flagged but these are my honest impressions on the behavior of the CPD and the protestors.

My biggest takeaway is local events translate to global action in the crowd (police or protestors). And it leads to all this misunderstanding. "What I was just standing here. Why are you pushing me?". Because jackass, a group of people 10 feet away from you threw rocks and bottles at the police. Sorry you got shoved but shit happens.

Below are my unorganized thoughts. Just wanted to get them out.

---

There were like 100k people at 2:30 (maybe more I didn't count I'm just guessing). These people were mostly peaceful. The worst thing they did was chant obscenities about the police and jump on the cars of bystanders. Not the worst thing in the world but not the nicest way to protest either. I don't hold it against them.

By 6ish there were maybe 10 or 20 thousand hardcore protestors remaining. The people legitimately concerned about police brutality but not clinically-insane-enough-to-march-for-four-hours-saying-the-same-thing-to-no-one-in-particular went home.

These diehards are mostly a bunch of power tripping assholes. "Fuck 12", "ACAB", "Pigs", running up to the police line and trying to 'punk' them out. Just stupid. The weaker and frailer they are the more it seemed they had to say. They know they have all the power when they're with the crowd. Its simultaneously the most pathetic and the most terrifying thing you've ever seen because one of these cracked out weirdos is probably going to try to light your building on fire soon.

And then the fires start. Police cars, a 7-11, doesn't matter. The protestors block the street when firefighters roll up to put it out. They eventually move but I couldn't tell you why. Big shoutout to CFD for being total badasses. I wasn't about to walk out in the crowd even if I were disguised as a "protestor". They make their way to the fire, get it out ASAP and roll out before the crowd has a chance to completely engulf them. Though I never saw the bulk of the crowd leave the police lines.

I have to criticize CPD a little here. I was legitimately concerned my wife and I were going to burn to death in our apartment. I didn't have faith that the CPD could prevent someone from lighting my building on fire.

Thankfully it never came to that.

The police were completely outnumbered and were generally powerless to do anything when the crowd was in its full force. There were people with hammers breaking up the sidewalk to use chunks of debris as weapons against the police. The police just stood there unable or unwilling to prevent it.

In my mind, the police were present to A). soak up as much of the crowds rage as possible and B). prevent the really heinous shit from going down. I'm not talking murder. I'm talking burning an apartment building down with all the people inside heinous. Several murders happened behind the crowds (i.e. bad people are using the crowd as a human shield to do whatever they want). The police didn't (maybe couldn't) budge. Even if they did try to prevent it the crowd would have raged at their intrusion into "their" space.

After curfew the cops went on the offensive. The police began to march. Pushing the remaining "protestors" further and further south outside of the loop. This involved rubber bullets and I assume tear gas but I couldn't actually see this part. Along the way the rioters looted every business (aside from the Crocs store hilariously enough) from Wacker all the way to Roosevelt. I assume they looted further down but I didn't feel like walking any further through the ruins of my city.

That's basically it.

I think you're underestimating the effect of corralling people with bridges and police lines. And then shutting down CTA. It's subtle escalation, but it's escalation. There's a very blurry line between "control the people after our jobs" and "keep people safe" and nothing about CPDs behavior looked like "keep people safe".

Police escalate conflict simply by showing up, especially in riot gear.

I respect your opinion but...

If the police were not there my life would have been at imminent risk. And if the police show up their lives are at imminent risk. So the cops have to show up and they have to wear riot gear.

I've had to live with months of protest downtown. People protesting to release prisoners because of coronavirus. People protesting to lift the coronavirus lock downs. In those cases there was no riot gear. Minimal police presence. When Friday's protest came around it immediately felt different. The people were much more angry and much more hostile.

People were looking at the Minneapolis riots with envy. People were shouting about the righteous cause of riots and looting. "Its the language of the unheard." Despite noble protestations that they were only going to loot the wealthy corporations with fat insurance contracts, they ended up looting everything. They ended up shooting each other far from police lines. They ended up burning police cars that were parked far away from police lines. They lit buildings on fire that could have very easily spread to neighboring apartment buildings.

You said:

> nothing about CPDs behavior looked like "keep people safe"

I disagree. "People" are more than just the rioters. They are rioters. They are residents in the immediate area. They are residents outside the immediate area who were spared the carnage by virtue of CPD's actions.

You can talk all you want about "subtle escalations". But truth be told anything the "authorities" do will be considered an escalation because the mob is not rational. It is primed to perceive anything and everything as a reason to execute its collective will.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It seems in line with what I'm reading elsewhere.

> As far as I know,every documented case where a formerly peaceful crowd turns into chaos has been started with police

If it's documented, it should be easy to produce documentation backing that claim, because to me that sounds incredibly unlikely.

Yeah, I don’t believe it. Rioting is natural human behavior. In Bangladesh we have violent riots after every election. The police aren’t instigating them, they are nowhere to be found. Why would I believe that Americans are any different?

>Why would I believe that Americans are any different?

We don't have violent riots after every election, for one thing.

America certainly had violent riots during elections. Also after sports games. It happens.

I’m sure you know who Shibir and Chhatra League are? Who are their American counterparts?

There are instigators involved in the hartals, no doubt. But working with the police?

It's different now. Early in the presidential campaign, anti-Trump demonstrators were blocking the road to the Reagan library to deny access to people heading to a Trump/GOP fund raiser

I remember thinking, America is in for it now, the Rubicon has been crossed. Since then politically motivated violence has been embraced and celebrated by many luminaries. Welcome to the normal.

What do you make of Trump's many pleas to handle the opposition and journalists with violence while campaigning?

I've seen quite a few videos and read a lot of articles about what's going on, and from my perspective Law Enforcement are scared Sh&^less they will lose control and get completely over-run by the protesters.

Realizing how angry the people are and how massively outnumbered they are they've decided to come out hard with violence in an attempt to squash the protests, which makes sense.

I don't think it would take much for the people to overcome the Law Enforcement with their overwhelming numbers. Once the news gets around that it's happened in one place, that will embolden others to do the same. I just hope it doesn't get wickedly violent if it happens.

Overcome the police to what end, though?

All most of the protestors want to do is protest, ie partake in some of their 1st amendment rights. So the protestors "overrun" the police and then what? Continue to stand in the street chanting?

This feels like straight projection, and focusing on the few people taking advantage of the situation by looting etc. The police could solve that in a heartbeat by deploying small units into the protest crowds and working with the peaceful protestors, but first they'd have to give up on the goal of disrupting legitimate protests.

I don't know.

I'm not saying it's productive or a good thing, I'm just saying that's what it feels like.

People are only going to stand and watch their fellow citizens get shot point blank in the face with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and rubber bullets for so long.

Law Enforcement are denying people their right to demonstrate, and I feel like people are going to fight hard to keep it.

EDIT: I mean, watch this [1]. Those look like Police who are desperately trying to maintain control with the only means they know how - violence.

Do you think everyone will continue to just watch them swing batons like the first few seconds and do nothing?

[1] https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1267968926761312256

They're not scared overall though. Yes, the guys on the front line against the riots, maybe. Those shooting at press, people on their porches, spraying directly in the faces of unarmed people passing by... no, they're not afraid.

Why did the police shoot teargas and pepper spray into the crowd?

My guess would be curfew, crowd was told to leave, and it didn't. That's when teargas starts getting fired from my experience ( crowd told to go home and it doesn't ).

I read this as "stop using your constitutional right to protest or we will attack you". These curfews are clearly being used to suppress protests, and I think disobedience is crucial here and does not justify police brutality in any way against otherwise peaceful protesters. Again as others have pointed out, a small group of violent protestors does not give police the right to attack clearly nonviolent protestors either.

I think if we banned police from getting near these protests at all / only getting involved with people causing physical violence, it would be a great step to actually minimizing the exact things the curfews are intended to address.

To clear the path to some good ol' fashioned bible-thumpin'

To get to the other side.

Without having any sort of insight into police behavior, I'm assuming two likely options:

1. They are given rubber bullets and mace without any form of de-escalation training, so they just use the tools they have at their disposal.

2. Just like any kind of organism, the police force needs to preserve itself and make sure it is necessary. The military doesn't like peace, and the police cannot thrive with peaceful protests. They do what they see fit to make themselves irreplaceable.

I can't speak to your experience, but I've been in multiple riots, and you are right, teargas make some peaceful protestors violent and angry.

From what I've seen, teargas and mace are used after a small minority of protesters become violent and the crowd is lawfully ordered to disperse.

I can't say if these are the right tactics, but I have not seen police use these things for no obvious reason.

The one situation where this wasn't the case is when peaceful protesters were blocking one of the two roads that was going to be used to transport multiple heads of state off of a peninsula after high level discussions. I assume this was due to some security consideration, but I don't know. The crowd was passive.

> 1. They are given rubber bullets and mace without any form of de-escalation training, so they just use the tools they have at their disposal.

From what I've heard , they aren't even using the rubber bullets they way they are designed, but instead in a more dangerous way. Incompetence or maliciousness, take your pick. I wager its a bit of both.

It was the same 20 years ago when I turned up to these things.

Well I would hope that many BHLs or similar, I am a Libertarian, as asking themselves, how did blue cities get to this point. The Democratic Party has been pretty much in control of politics in most major US cities for decades; it is only common rebuttal here on many stories that cities are losing out to rural suburban areas at the national level to Republicans.

The question they should ask is, why did the party turn from the people who put it into power and become beholden to public employee unions which encompass police, fire, education, if not regular government employees. Easy answer, the support where the money comes from. People decry corporate money in politics but this money is more poisonous because of its out sized influence because of pressure they can put on any politician who tries to stand up to them; just go google stories of these unions protesting in the streets of the homes of politicians making moves against them, they have bought billboards and even homes nearby to put pressure down.

TL,DR : This is all about money. The politicians have been more than willing to turn a blind eye to police malfeasance; if not problems in fire departments and education; because the money is too good and the groups involved have very big influence over the citizenry.

How did blue cities get to this point? An interesting observation here is that while the police forces are supposed to represent the populations they serve, the police unions (FOP) endorses Trump and so clearly takes a stand against that representation in "blue" cities.

Were you able to observe whether the police instigated the looting too?

Last I heard, protesting is enshrined in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights and you cannot use the crimes of other people to crack down on all protesters.

So it's ok if the police use violence against protestors because there were a few looters?

The looters take advantage of the chaos apparently willingly and knowingly created by the police.

I'd say holding the protestors responsible for it is a bit missleading.

You think there is a clandestine 400 IQ policy such as this?

The following is a heartfelt text that one of my friends in my PhD program sent. She wishes this to be shared to raise awareness, so I'm sharing here for people who might not have a good understanding of the context. This is related to the relationship between the American police and the black populace, so imo relevant in this context.

"Sorry for this lengthy message but here goes: My ancestors are African and Native American. My African ancestors were taken from Africa, brought here to America, beat and killed, and forced to be slaves since the late 1600s. Of course as slaves you have no rights, so my great-great grandmother was raped, which is how my my branch of the family came about. So I actually have white and black ancestors. The Civil War occurred, which most people think the north fought to help free slaves, but actually the north just didn't want the south to have slaves anymore because it was giving the south an economic advantage - not because they wanted to free black people. And although the north won, no one told slaves in the south this for many years, so they had no idea because they were not allowed to read. But eventually the word was spread and black people learned that they were technically free, but they could not own land, so they had no where to go. A few more benevolent slave masters gave some land to the slaves because, like my ancestors they were raped by the slave master and therefore the kids were part-family. This is why you see different shades of black people in America. My grandfather (born 1920) was forced to flee Texas as a young boy in fear for his life. He could've been another Emit Till. If you don't know who Emit Till is, please, please just search the name. It will break your heart (Also sidenote: the woman who was the cause of the Emit Till murder announced on her deathbed that she lied about it all). Moving along...so my grandfather moved to Detroit where things were just a little better for black people. He was the only black person in his engineering program at Michigan State, and endured brutality and abuse for just trying to get an education. Then we had WW2 where he was not allowed to vote or have rights, but served as a Tuskegee Airman, a troup of all black pilots who literally saved America's ass from Germany. If it were not for the Tuskegee Airman, we would have lost WW2. But he comes back after the war, and still has no rights, no freedoms. Blacks and whites were segregated and when black people made our own financial district and economy it was burned to the ground because it threatened white capitalism (see 1921 burning of black wallstreet in Tulsa Oklahoma). And then Jim Crow laws were put into place. Basically this meant that white people could legally discriminate against black people, which also included violent acts without repercussions. POLICE were created during this time to literally "police" black people because the slave masters did not have control anymore. So police did the slave master's dirty work and it was still legal. This is why people are protesting against police brutality with a focus on black lives. Because the police were specifically created to take our lives, but not the lives of others. And you can see this today, for example George Floyd. So when people say "all lives matter" it is just another way of covering up the real reason police were created, and it hurts that 400 years later we are still trying to get justice, within a country that we literally built with our black hands. We are the economy, which is why when we created our own economy, it rocked the US economy so much that they burned it down. We have tried to march peacefully, we have tried to kneel peacefully, we have tried to protest peacefully, and it has gotten us nowhere. So that is why many people feel that the only option left to make our voices heard is to hurt the economy. And that's what the rioting and looting is about. I'm not saying I condone it, but believe me, I understand it. Also if you have been following any of it, the vast majority of people being violent and breaking things are not black people, but actually white supremacists who dress up as protesters. They are trying to make black people seem violent so that the police take violent action against the protestors. Things are never as simple as they seem, so you have to know the history to understand the full scope if the situation, and guess what....they took the real history out of the textbooks! So yes, this is a heavy time for black people and I hope you all can start to understand why this is happening. Thank you for reading and being open-minded."

I am not a bleeding heart liberal in Austin, TX but I live downtown and check it out everyday on my bike, I've seen the same thing.

Consider that the police are heavily networked, whereas the crowd is not. It's possible that one section of the crowd is antagonizing the police, the police respond as a whole, but you have no idea why because you were 200' away in a different section of the crowd and didn't know about what that other section was doing.

> that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.

The police is composed of a bunch of individuals. It is highly unlikely that there is any kind of conspiracy to set the narrative of excessive violence by being...excessively violent? It doesn't even logically follow.

I'd say people misbehaving doesn't justify attacking non-violent people 200' away from that. Many examples of the recent days can not explained by "someone nearby did something, so it was an unlucky accident", and their police departments and local governments don't seem to care all that much. Which is fueling the anger, given this happens at protests against overreacting/overly aggressive police.

Here's another article uncovering the brutality of the police [1]. Some of the scenes are really inhuman [2] and I feel sorry for the poor people trying to make their voices heard.

I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to exit that spiral of violence. But right now it looks like this won't happen. It's a shame.

If the state acts harder against protesters, journalists and civilian bystanders it will only fuel their anger. Leading to more violence, used by the state to issue a even worse crackdown than now. And so on and so on.

The only hope that I have is, that other politicians from all parties will stand up against that.

[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/05/31/us-law-e...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byk2axDVNHE

> I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to exit that spiral of violence.

The two sides are massively unequal in terms of power, the onus is on the police to stop the violence.

> The two sides are massively unequal in terms of power

This is certainly not true except on an individual scale.

> the onus is on the police to stop the violence.

The onus is on every individual. On each side.

The onus is on both. One may be able to do it better, and more conveniently, but everyone's responsible for doing their bit in ceasing and stopping violence.

You understand why the protests started though, right? It's not like the protesters can say "ok, if we stop protesting now, will you please consider following the law?"

How to you expect protesters to deescalate this with absolutely nothing changing and high level LE people still not accepting any blame and pushing for military help?

First of all they should say that they are not related to any of the looters, that anyone even throwing trash on the streets is against protesters. Use every opportunity to show how peaceful the protesters are. Not gather at nights as at nights there is a higher chance for confusing situation to arise that give opening to police to apply force. Instead of negative chants like fuck the police use positive chants like join us, or police is ours.

Police knows how to deal with force, the goal of the protest should be to not give it any opportunity to apply the force, so that even the people who are against protesters can't find a way to justify police actions.

It may be too late for applying this tactic now, but if it was applied earlier it would make the protest much more successful. At least that's what happened in Armenia few years ago, when after many years of unsuccessful violent protests, non-violent protest brought a real change.

Took me a minute to realize you meant Law Enforcement and not Lawful Evil here. I guess in this case it's the same.

You understand why US cops are so heavy handed though, right? It may be because they have to deal with a population with 3 guns per capita, where the amount of police killed per year on duty(even disregarding accidents) is more akin to a third world country than anything going on in the EU.

> and high level LE people still not accepting any blame

I don't know how you get that from OP saying that both sides need to de-escalate.

This is mitigating garbage trying to avoid blame, and more both-sides junk that will excuse anything so long as quiet (not "peace", that would be something else) is restored. This is an unusual protest of the usual systemic violence and prejudice of police and government.

There are people to blame and it is not everyone's responsibility to make it easy and comfortable for the channel surfers at home.

Please explain what the police is doing to curtail police violence.

Third party oversight. This country was founded on checks and balances. There are no checks to their power as it stands now.

> Third party oversight.

Aren't the journalists supposed to be the third party oversight? Showing and telling the rest of us what's happening so that when one side oversteps we as a society can take action to correct it?

Freedom of the press is certainly important, and if anything changes because of all this, people hearing about it will be instrumental, but it's not a replacement for proper systems of accountability. If the bar for getting away with murder is "don't make national headlines," something is deeply wrong.

Up until now the bar has been far lower than that.

That works great until a sitting US president demonizes the journalists for four years.

That's hard to do when the police open fire on the journalists.

No, the Judiciary serves as a check on the Executive, so the courts are supposed to be the ones reeling in the police. That's obviously not happening.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

The journalists are clipping context out of video that they are broadcasting.

The pink umbrella bit was clipped out of the riot started by police in Seattle on Monday - instead the news agencies started showing footage after pepper spray was deployed.

In Canada, the CBC cut a video right before a police van physically drove its way through a crowd. [1] Anyone else doing that would be described as vehicular assault, possibly attempted manslaughter.

The press isn't holding the police accountable for any of this. It's pushing a narrative that "The appropriate amount of force was used against rioters", without showing the inappropriate use of force that started the riot.

[1] https://twitter.com/_llebrun/status/1267209166545981445?s=20...

> I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to exit that spiral of violence. But right now it looks like this won't happen. It's a shame.

Is it a shame?

The only way this de-escalates is if the police violently repress the protests so hard that dissent is silenced. Which is what Trump wants. Which will only push the country further into authoritarianism.

And the police have shown themselves completely unwilling to self-interrogate their actions, and truly see themselves as the victim in this situation, justifying their reaction.

Honestly, I think the only way through this is down. There needs to be a violent insurrection from the left. Revolution is the ONLY way to enact societal change at this point.

Violent revolution (attempted anyway) probably will produce societal change. It just won't be the kind you are hoping for.

What about the American revolution?

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.

That renewed interest in free speech was never genuine. At the same time they were decrying Twitter “censorship” (mostly on Twitter, I will add), they were busy trying to force laws that would forbid people boycotting Israel from ever getting a government contract. The same people who were praising protest against lock downs are now saying that being out past curfew justifies being shot with a rubber baton.

It was all partisan.

Indeed. No one likes it when people disagree with them. And this is precisely why the freedom of speech is so important and has thankfully stood its tests in court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

That's because their support was always fake. It's about non-existent "censorship" of conservatives, nothing more.

This is, of course, ridiculous. There are serious people who genuinely care about that issue.

More generally, there is always nearby the temptation to definitionally exclude one's political opponents from serious discussion by the lazy insinuation that they don't really believe what they say they believe, that their side is more opportunistic and cynical than yours, and that, therefore, what work even needs to be done to argue the point? After all, there are only two staked-out positions: those who agree with me already and those who are lying about their motives!

Try to resist this. It goes nowhere. It leads to nothing. And I assure you that, whatever the issue, there really are people who see it differently than you. I know that can be hard to accept, but it's almost always true.

They seem to always go silent when they must take an actual stand. Sadly, this looks like a successful strategy.

I honestly wish there was anyone in Washington who seemed willing or able to lead in a bipartisan manner. Someone who didn't rely on the partisan firestorm of the week to get support.

It's all very disheartening, and hard to explain to my children.

Prisoner's dilemma. Bipartisanship is "cooperate", divisiveness is "defect". Cooperating with a defector results in losing badly. The right have worked this out and are playing "defect" continuously. And currently "winning".

We have to change the payoff matrix.

What does "lead in a bipartisan manner" even mean? In what era of this country did anyone lead in a "bipartisan manner"?

Agreed, but I think it’s perhaps just an unavoidable outcome of human nature. (Apologies for the pessimism.) It’s my view that humans are most moved by emotion, and the easiest way to produce emotion as a politician is to play up a charged partisan issue.

Would love to hear alternative takes or solutions if anyone has them.

I wish we could ban political parties (pipe dream I know).

What positive are they doing for us at this juncture?

Justin Amash might be someone to look for.

When you have one side that has completely lost touch with reality, being bipartisan is a bad idea.

To his credit Justin Amash has been very active in speaking out against government and police actions the past week or so.

Because rioting isn’t free speech. All conservatives support peaceable assembly and protest. They also fiercely believe in property rights as inherently tied to the concept of liberty. It is right in the Declaration of Independence. No conservative worth his or her salt will defend theft, property destruction, etc.

rioting is indeed not free speech, but surely attacking the press, one of the fundamental institutions in any democracy, is a violation of free speech.

And not only have the people in question not spoken up in defense of the press, they've actually routinely declare them the enemy of the people.

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 limited.

I hate to break it to you, but the Boston Tea Party that conservatives were so fond of hijacking for their own partisan purposes destroyed over a million US dollars (in today's money) in other people's property. YOU are comfortable sitting there and "defending property" because it props up a system that benefits you.

Not at all. When Kaepernick protested in the most quiet, peaceful and respectful way possible, conservatives were screaming bloody murder. They also did that when MLK was leading protests.

Conservatives support protests by white people, but never by black people.

Aren't most of these happening in majority left wing states and cities run by the left. AFAIK they are still report the Mayors of the cities. Let's not make this a Right vs Left thing any more. The country is already divided as it is, we don't need further division in this country.

Sure, but the president is a Republican who is relishing the opportunity to violently put down protests.

If the first amendment violations are being done by left wing politicians then it should be even easier for the right to attack them, but instead they're silent or encouraging tougher violations.

Big cities tend to vote democrat, but there are protests in all 50 states.

>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.com/watch?v=qhG0v9pDycM

"You said black lives matter.. look what you did to my store"

https://mobile.twitter.com/Mus1yMustafa/status/1267874483840...

Destroying store and beating unarmed woman and her husband

https://streamable.com/rvrwil

Restaurant manager beaten and stomped for trying to defend his workplace

https://streamable.com/ila4dh

Stopping, beating and stomping a truck driver while protesters yell to kill him

https://streamable.com/8zk9dq

Protesters attack a media member and then pummel him

https://streamable.com/p4i3jb

Police officer beaten on the streets

https://streamable.com/je4ki5

Car runs over a cop

https://streamable.com/q4nat7

Protesters set homeless man’s belongings on fire

https://streamable.com/sdjvfa

Throwing fireworks at the cops

https://streamable.com/7sv4a9

Chasing and beating guy with red had

https://streamable.com/rcsmi0

I can keep going. It is utterly dispicable. There's a long long list of videos with these "peaceful protestors" in action. Everyone has a camera, and all of this is available for you to see, if you only choose to see it.

> 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...

A reporter at my previous workplace, KPCC, was shot in the neck with a rubber bullet on Saturday.

https://laist.com/2020/05/31/reporters_injured_protests_poli...

It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point for people to take police brutality at least somewhat seriously.

I'm mistaken for being pro-police and anti-BLM merely because I'm against the looting and rioting. I've always had the stance that the police in their current form are state-sanctioned street gangs.

I recently read that if you tend to think, "it's a shame that black people are being killed by cops like this, but the rioting and looting MUST stop," perhaps you should consider thinking more like, "it's a shame that there is rioting and looting, but black people being killed by cops like this MUST stop."

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. Second, innocent people are getting killed by the rioting.

Third, there are people who would support police reform but are also terrified of looters and rioters. The riots are giving me a look at what my city looks like without police control, and it is scary. I know that police v. lawlessness is a false dichotomy and I reject that sort of thinking.

There was a consensus that what happened to George Floyd was an atrocity. Even racists thought so. A huge peaceful protest would have raised awareness.

Violence lost that consensus.

Yes realistically it took a couple hundred residents about an hour to clean up La Mesa after the riot stopped.

We lost a couple banks and a pizza hut.

But its quite tenable. No one will mourn for the buildings or police cruisers.

Seriously. It's really telling how a few people rioting = all protesters bad!

But you see cops being abusive and "It's just a few bad apples!"

Anything to quell the cognitive dissonance.

All ideas should be considered, but yours is not one I subscribe to. More people have been killed and had their lives destroyed as the result of non-protestors taking advantage of the protests to destroy communities. This is before the actual protests themselves have even been given a chance to succeed without violence. To subscribe to your perspective, I would have to believe that rioting and looting is the way to address police violence, and that the protesters and rioters are on the same page. If that were the case, then the country should be set on fire for the number of crimes it commits.

Put simply, there's no need for a "but". Once can make both statements without implying that one has precedence over the other.

I'd imagine the general public wants both to stop.

It's not a choice to make for one or the other.

Rubber bullets are suppose to be used below the waist. They can easily kill or maim someone with a head or neck hit. Whoever shot him was attempting to kill or severely injure the journalist.

https://bjssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002...

> It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point for people to take police brutality at least somewhat seriously.

They still aren't taking it seriously. People are still bending over backwards to justify violence and police incompetence against even peaceful protestors and press members. They're cheering for people to be run down in the street, etc. Nothing is getting better and things I fear things will only get worse from here.

I don't know who you are talking about. This isn't meant to be an insult, but I don't know a single person anywhere on the political spectrum that is trying to justify police incompetence and violence. That sounds like a very fringe view.

I agree with you in that things probably will only get worse.

Since this is happening simultaneously in many different cities around the country, I have to wonder if there are private Facebook or WhatsApp or Signal groups where police members are talking about this trend. I'd very much like to see those conversations.

When four St Louis cops beat up an undercover cop at a protest, the ensuing federal suit (that's right, takes a cop to charge a cop) revealed some of the text messages of those involved:

https://twitter.com/alexiszotos/status/1068260482807676931

The more the merrier! Its gonna get IGNORANT tonight! But it's gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of those shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!

Someone took screenshots of Amber Guyger's Instagram pages before she cleaned up her social media, and it was disgusting. Private cop groups absolutely exist. It would be interesting to subpoena Facebook when the Minneapolis Four go to trial and investigate how deep the rot goes.

It's possible, but also, there's precedent from 2014 in Ferguson. Several members of credentialed media were arrested and assaulted to various degrees. Pretty much nothing happened by way of punishment other than a settlement from the DoJ saying they couldn't kettle people anymore, enforced by what is now Barr's department.

Any officer paying attention would know you won't be punished unless you act particularly egregiously like the one officer in Louisville reassigned to desk duty (big whoop). Add on the amount of animosity stoked by the president toward media for the past 4-5 years, and it really doesn't take a simultaneously coordinated effort to have this outcome.

> you won't be punished unless you act particularly egregiously like the one officer in Louisville reassigned to desk duty (big whoop)

Isn't this honestly largely due to the police union rules and contacts, which (unions) are a key part of leftist labor relations?

Facebook employees - this is how you can speak truth to power. Publish those private group communications. Name and shame the officers encouraging violence against protestors. You know it is happening, and you have the power to expose these abuses by police, military, and other extremist groups that have taken over what used to be a highly respectable profession.

If a single or even small group of employees could leak private chats without getting immediately caught then Facebook's security is completely screwed

the brain behind all this is the police union, FOP. It is a national scale organization which uses violence and threat of it to achieve its political goals. People mistakenly think that when they're dealing with local police they're dealing with local police.

I think you are on the right track, in so far as we need to understand what the constant across many different cities around the country.

Here is what I think (I know I will be burned at the steak for this):

The media market is the constant.

Media organizations and reporters are incentivized to get the most extreme and sensationalistic footage, so they are taking more risks and crossing more lines than every before.

If your theory holds, there should be footage out there showing media taking risks. Either from the media themselves or from bystanders.

I've not seen any footage that reflects that - and there is plenty of footage of police attacks on reporters at this point.

Reporters know that these attacks are happening - it's their job to know what's going on! They don't want to be attacked, so they aren't taking risks.

If you haven't seen it yet there's a 2020 Police Brutality subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/ - that's very active in cataloguing the increasing number of video evidence of police brutality; 35,000 subscribers, up from 12,000 just this morning.

Warning: there is a lot of disturbing content there.

When "Freedom of the Press" is under attack, newspapers/press/media have had their legal counsel file lawsuits against the government. But with the demise of revenue for many newspapers (and many going out of business), I wonder if they will take those expensive steps.

Are you aware of a foundation I can donate to that will explicitly use the money in these types of lawsuits against the government?

https://www.spj.org/ldf.asp

ACLU?

If they don't respond in their reporters' interest, they won't have reporters risking arrest and hazard to report for them.

It's not that clear cut fortunately. There are people who do this because they really believe it should be done. Even without large org support, they'll be out there.

See for example https://unicornriot.ninja/ which was on the ground, live streaming from the early days of the protest in Minneapolis.

This policy introduced into congress sounds like a helpful solution:

> "Ending Qualified Immunity Act," which would allow civil lawsuits against police, a recourse that the Supreme Court has all but done away with.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/01/us/politics/01reu...

That plus the laundry list of obvious issues with criminal justice that any defense attorney could list off hand.

Is qualified immunity really the issue? The general impression I have is that PDs/DAs straight up refuse to investigate/prosecute abuses of power. It's not like we have a bunch of cases where the case was airtight, but the officer was being acquitted because of qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity affects civil suits, not criminal prosecution. If the police department or district attorneys refuse to investigate or prosecute, qualified immunity means that cannot sue for recourse (under some qualifications).

Might as well start somewhere.

Civil torts are a check on the criminal prosecution system when it becomes too lenient.

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 the top down the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world at 698 per 1,000 currently. This is something like 10x some comparable countries, and at least 3x any country we consider "free" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...). We can make a top down decision to change this by making a hard "200 incarcerated per 100,000" cap at the state level. Dec 31st of each year, each state with over 200 per 100,000 prisoners has to release prisoners until they are below the threshold.

I am not saying it is a simple problem, but any other solution ideas?

Ending cash bail policies wouldn't directly address police violence, but it could reduce the incarceration rate. There are many people in jail waiting trial for crimes they did not commit, simply because they could not afford bail and would not take a plea deal.

Ending the use of private prisons and restricting police use of military equipment and weapons are also frequently suggested proposals.

In terms of police violence, I think the main thing lacking right now is accountability. There are a lot of ways to impose that. One avenue is to impose accountability from a higher level of government (for instance: the FBI getting involved if local government doesn't act), and the other traditional approach is accountability from voters.

Thanks! Ending cash bail is a good one. I'm not so well versed on private prisons, but I think I'm general the scale of incarceration is a larger issue than the quality of it. Still a good suggestion for discussion.

We have 10x more incarcerated per capital than germany. If the police think 1 in 100 (rounding a bit) belong in jail, it leads to a very different quality of interaction if it is 1 in 1,000.

Definitely agree on the issues with accountability.

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.

Important to note: I have seen not one example of a non-press person claiming to be press and I've been watching all the livestreams constantly.

Just a piece of data, a cameraman attacked by someone posing as a medic: https://twitter.com/Lucas_Jackson_/status/126708396851348684...

Any news reports of people posing as reporters might be suppressed by newsrooms themselves as to not encourage copycats or get the idea out there that reporters might not be reporters, that is entirely unsubstantiated conjecture though.

See here for at least one example (funny that cops even noted to the man that he didn't display the press cred as the others standing right next to him) https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/1267669541452017673

In at least some states, "internet blogger" qualifies you as a journalist. So, y'know, if you've got a twitter account and you're talking about the protest, congrats: you're press!

For anyone who wants to keep an eye on what's going on, the subreddit /r/PublicFreakout is full of videos of police (and rioters) engaging in violence. I haven't found a better source yet. There's sometimes misattributed content, so be sure to wade carefully. Many of these cases have multiple videos from different people from different angles as well. The evidence is quite damning.

That sub is great because you really get a good sampling of what's going on.

There are peaceful/permitted protests that the police leave alone and occasionally support/join.

There are peaceful/not-permitted protests that the police disperse with various uses of non-lethal force.

There are Rioters that vandalize and try to blend with protesters but seldom directly confront the police - occasionally confronted by protesters.

...and then there's just tons of rampant looting with little police intervention.

Anyone blending these four distinct phenomenon is just doing truth and justice a disservice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/ for another source of documented police violence.

Hey dang, why was the headline changed from the source's?

I changed it from the article title to a shortened version of the URL slug (/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country). That's often a legit source title, along with the HTML doc title, and other places that articles tend to reveal what they're actually about (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

The reason I changed it is that "U.S. police have attacked journalists more than 110 times since May 28" is more baity. First you've got the aggressive verb "attacked". And then you've got the specific facts and figures (100 times, May 28). Why do these things make a title more baity? I don't know, but they are somehow active ingredients in the psychology of titles, which is why headline writers use them. I think of them as sharp edges. If you throw a spiky thing into a crowd, it gets more attention than a beach ball—but the quality of attention is not conducive to a reflective discussion on the internet (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). People react to the sharp bits.

It's in HN's interest to rewrite baity titles (indeed the site guidelines request it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) but this is 1000x more important on inflammatory topics of the moment, like this one. We want HN to discuss this, but we want to support the discussion to stay in the intended spirit of the site: thoughtful, respectful, curious conversation. The material is provocative enough, and a title doesn't need sharp edges to make readers here care about the topic.

To clear up a misconception that sometimes arises: I'm not saying the statement in the sharper title is false. Obviously it's legitimate to use an aggressive verb to describe an aggressive action, and if the facts and figures are true then it's obviously legitimate to make a factual statement with them. As a reader I have zero problem with that title. But the moderator perspective is different: the question for a moderator, on HN at least, is always: what is the prospective effect on forthcoming discussion? Or to put it pseudotechnically: given choice A vs. choice B, what is the diff between the probability distribution of threads that A is a prefix of, vs. threads that B is a prefix of? (This is just a metaphor, but it reflects how we think about this. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for more.) In the case of these two alternative titles, experience has shown that there's a significant difference in probable outcomes, and titles are by far the biggest influence on threads, so it's potentially a big deal.

in zimbabwe, the police was once put on lockdown. & guess what the protests were peaceful, no looting etc. america needs to do the same. otherwise, this is another pointer show america has been a 3rd world country. i'm sure you know where else journos are harassed.

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 "fake news" and such, but is that really all it takes for police to start such gross behaviour? At the same time, I presume there hasn't been a direct order to start targeting media or it would have been leaked.

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.

Wear a jacket that says Press. Holds up better in US Court when accosted by cops.

I submitted this story about a KPIX reporter detained despite clearly identifying herself as media. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/01/tear-gas-rubber...

Cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c-5hfR...

There is video of police discreetly unloading bricks to later bait the unsuspecting protester into using them.

You have to outnumber for security. From the videos in Hong Kong, I noticed that the journalists in shiny PRESS vests were usually WAAAAAY more than the number of police, many of them only holding video-taking cell phones.

Here's a repo to collect videos of police brutality during the protests.

https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality

I can imagine animosity from the leadership, for example classifying most journalists as "fake news", contributing to violence from the front line against them.

That, and the journalists are literally there to record evidence of their abuse. Police don't like it too much when you record evidence of them, say, beating a peaceful protester, or forcing a weapon into the hands of someone already pinned to the ground.

Leadership, but individuals too and they spread it themselves.

Bias is now barely defined as "I didn't hear my opinion read back to me." and just about any event is used to discredit entire news organizations, reporters, etc. Write some less than positive articles about a company "they have an agenda" and so forth. We get it on HN here too.

A buddy of mine was a camera man. Not far from the station was a lake where they heard there was some sort of boating accident. He got there first as the station was across the street, emergency services hadn't showed up yet and the crowd that gathered got quite upset and accused them of exploiting the situation somehow as soon as they got out of their van.

It seems people assume poor intentions, not just on the media but in most cases now.

And "the enemy of the people"?

No one can read minds.

You're assuming most cops support Trump?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11142215334617907...

> The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

I'm sure that has made things worse but general animosity between the press and police goes back decades.

Which in turn was perhaps caused by "the news" going from being mostly journalists to mostly pundits with the rise of mass media.

I just want to say that we have to do the things necessary to differentiate ourselves from places like China or Saudi Arabia. Nothing is implicit.

While this is very disappointing news, these matters are not black and white. That is that say that even if police attack journalists in two countries, the one where it happens less frequently still outperforms the other.

Does Assange count?

It seems like in a democracy that voting should be able to effect the changes we need. What has gone wrong?

Are you serious?

1. If that were true women would still be unable to vote. Would you tell women in 1905 that "it's a democracy, you don't need to protest, just vote."

2. Even now, we have seen the power that be make it more and more difficult to vote. The current administration is throwing a complete temper tantrum at even the thought of letting people use absentee ballots during a national pandemic, citing the voter fraud boogeyman.

We have a system of Democracy that emphasizes property over people.

Is this because of police changing their tactics or is it because of journalists changing their tactics?

I don't know the answer, but with the internet and analytics, we've seen media become more sensationalistic to get those clicks and views. So this is a possibility that should be considered.

Honestly cannot tell if you're trolling. If journalists are getting roughed up more because of sensationalism (still well within their 1st amendment rights) that is _completely_ the fault of police.

One side has cameras. The other side has guns. When violence happens, who's fault do you think it is?

Some has to do with the police tactic of breaking up protests by lining up in riot gear and marching towards a crowd advancing and then clearing the area in front of them with tear gas. (the example of this was breaking up an after-curfew protest in Minneapolis in front of a police station, the night after a different station had burned to the ground). Their goal seemed to be to disburse the crowd and arrest a few people as possible.

The next night their tactics changed, for the better, a similar after-curfew protest group was warned, given time, and everybody remaining was encircled by a close knit line of police and every single person was arrested. The second tactic had a much better outcome, it seemed.

There were reporters stationed on the outskirts of the crowd but between the crowd and police, and I saw some of them get teargassed. In that case it had more to do with wind and proximity than being targeted. Much different than police actively going after reporters, but sources like this one don't seem to differentiate between collateral damage from proximity and direct targeting of media teams.

Also, police in gas masks, partially for tear gas protection, partially for covid protection, facing crowd who at times have attacked police, they can't see very well, they are under enormous amounts of stress, and few of them have experience doing anything like this... if you pull back from the blame, talking about rights and duties, and just focus for a minute on the humanity... ask yourself how are these people going to fail? You'd probably come up with a lot of the ways the police indeed are failing. Now in the same context think of how those failures could be reduced without thinking about blame... and it's hard. It's a hard problem.

Just like failures in a tech stack and a team of programmers, blame is not the path to solving problems. You don't go find the guy who wrote the bug and shout at him or send him to jail or fire him or string him up in the public square, you write unit tests, you write post-mortems, you make backups, you make new monitors... in short you find the sources of problems, you investigate them, and you solve them. That sort of thought about failure needs to happen more in software, and it needs to happen more in the rest of life too. Recognizing failures, having empathy for those who fail, realizing the source of those failures is systematic, and working on systematic solutions.

It is totally ironic bullshit that mainstream media "journalist" are presumed to get passes to watch police brutalize the actual 1st amendment right to free assembly.

Less speech out of you please.

Some people say police attacking journalists are isolated incidents by a few bad eggs, most of them are doing the right thing.

Some people say protestors becoming violent, vandalizing, and looting are isolated incidents by a few bad eggs, most of them are doing the right thing.

Really similar thought processes go into those two, usually by people you can sort into camps of opposing worldviews. They're both right and both wrong, but it's surprising how similar the lines of thought are and how people can't see the other side is thinking just the same way.

One of those groups has access to military hardware, live ammunition, and legal (or cultural) protections from prosecution.

It's dangerously to boil down the arguments from both sides and say, "Look, these two things are the same!" because even if both sides were saying, "It's a few bad apples", the implications of that would be wildly different.

One of these groups is capable of violating our right to free speech, our right to assemble, and our right to a trial by jury. The other is not.

No one is condoning looting - in fact, it's just as frustrating for me in that it's distracting from the message. But let's not forget what the (much, much) bigger problem is. I also believe that various bad-faith actors (police, conservatives) are using the looting to distract from the fact that the police have systematically deprived us of our rights with no recourse.

"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." HN Guidelines

But this is probably just my lurker observation. Not against all news but there should be at least some spark of insight of novelty. Feel free to flag now.

Edit: To expand a bit. What I like about HN is not that it's tech but it has plethora of very interesting topics and comments are almost always insightful (unlike this one). This headline is basically the whole article. The comments are therefore not guided by idea, but news. This topic is important but nothing comes out of these threads. This rant is contributing to bad quality of comments, one thing I always try to avoid.

While this "off-topic" definition has always been a gray line, I'm definitely in favor of continuing discussion on hacker news. While it's not about technology per se, HN IMO has had the best discussions when it comes to freedom of information, and how to balance varying interests and definitions when it comes to freedom of information (e.g. is requiring you give up a password the same thing as requiring a physical key, what rights do police have to search your phone, etc.)

This topic is fundamentally about freedom of information and what level we are comfortable (or uncomfortable) limiting that freedom in certain situations.

> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

Hundreds of journalists brutalised over the last week would seem to qualify, though for 'interesting' substitute 'horrifying'.

News stories about freedom of speech and freedom of the press have always been welcome on HN, which is common in tech communities, and the words “most” and “probably” are doing a lot of work there.

This rule is fuzzy by design and I really don’t get why some people here are so pedantic about it.

You don't think police attacks on journalists counts as an "interesting new phenomenon"?

Over 100 upvotes in 20 minutes for something non tech related?

Right now, on the front page, there are posts about the recreation of the first automobile, the archaeological discovery of cannabis residue at a dig site, news articles about meetings between Zuckerberg and civil rights leaders.

While this site trends heavily towards tech, it is not so narrow-minded that we cannot discuss things not strictly related to that subject.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is for (much) more than tech-related things.

On the question of political topics on HN, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, if you think HN has gotten more political lately. The principles haven't changed in 10+ years, although we've learned to do a better job of applying them.

I think it would show more nuanced sentiment to say, that on 110 occasions journalists ended up caught in aggressive police action since May 28. Current wording would have an implication for many people, that journalists were deliberately chosen as targets.

They were though. The videos out of twitter are completely horrifying. An endless wave of cops hearing "Reporter! Here's my badge! I am a reporter!" and just ... not caring. Bash their face, mace them, just follow orders. I saw a video where an officer smashed their video camera. A big one, the style a professional reporter uses.

It's our democracy. And we want to hope for the best. But damn if this isn't worrisome.

EDIT: Hehe, well. Sorry you got piled on. For what it's worth, I was very much on the side of the police about three days ago, so I had to do some soul searching. In case you're in the same boat: I urge you to go seek out and find some of the videos that people are upset about. It's not propaganda; it can't be. It's just footage from citizens.

When you say that, it makes sense if perhaps police are just accidentally brushing by them while forcing their way up a street.

What the reality is is they are literally forcing themselves onto cameramen, pushing them into walls or other obstacles, hitting them.

That sounds pretty targeted to me.

In at least some of the videos the journalists are not actually near any protesters, there's no way they just got caught up due proximity.

Multiple reporters have been shot at directly. The cops have shot into the cameras themselves to break them.

They are being arrested too. You need to deliberately select someone as a target for arrest.

I appreciate the desire for prudence on emotional topics - however, in this specific case, the description is a reasonable generalization. Maybe not all 110 cases were unreasonable or deliberate, but it's impossible to overstate the importance of the fact that many of the cases were.

journalists were deliberately chosen as targets

Well, some videos I've seen wouldn't exactly disagree.

There is plenty of video footage of journalists being directly targeted and attacked by the police.

Watching the videos posted online it certainly seems that the journalists were chosen as targets. At a bare minumum the police knew they were press (given that they are wearing badges indicating as such, often holding them above their head) and proceeded anyway.

A tragic case of passive voice addiction, reader.

The current wording is correct. The journalists are in fact being deliberately chosen as targets.

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