Hacker News Reader

> Protest is legal, and ignoring a "lawful police order" is also legal. The police can't just tell people what to do.

This is a pretty thin hair to split. The police can’t ‘tell you what to do’, but the law can and part of the job of the police is to communicate and enforce the law.

Anyone going to a protest is definitely advised to understand their rights at the local, state and federal level so you can differentiate between the two.

"The police can't just tell people what to do"

What world do you live in? I could just go on a murder spree and when police come to arrest me I can just tell them "you can't tell me what to do", and they'll say "shucks, he's right, guess we'll let him on his way".

By the way, you're being doublespeaky when you say "protest is legal". It sure is. But the vast majority of these altercations come from after a group has been declared a riot, a public safety hazard, and ordered to disperse. They're no longer peaceful protesters when the cops have to use force to shut it down.

> But the vast majority of these altercations come from after a group has been declared a riot

This is typically after police have antagonized the situation and created it through tactics like kettling and surrounding protesters and then throwing grenades of tear gas and misusing rubber bullets in potentially lethal ways on nonviolent crowds.

"declared a riot" is political speak for when the police don't like a protest and begin attacking.

The police have limited powers to uphold the law, including things like arresting murderers. They don't have the power to arbitrarily order people to do whatever they want. If an officer asks you to do something when you're not committing a crime or endangering anyone you are allowed to say no.

For all Americans talk about having rights and freedom you do seem incredibly quick to give them up in the face of authority.

I fully expect police officers in the United States to be able to give lawful orders to disperse rioters and prevent our cities from looting and destruction.

If you don't want to be told what to do, don't riot, loot, and destroy.

If you're trying to say that our citizens can just burn our cities down, and there's nothing that can be legally done about it, I really don't understand you.

In all the clips you see, they're no longer peaceful protesters. All of the clips cut out all of the context. That's the piece you're missing. Peaceful protests happen every day and the police don't order them to disperse. Police only order them to disperse when they've become a public safety hazard.

As someone who has taken part in DC protests, we were gassed, pepper sprayed, stun grenaded, and shot with pellets in order for the president to take a photo at a church. It is incredibly naïve and downright incorrect to suggest that the police are _only_ intervening during "public safety hazards".

Context. https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...

Or maybe you think that holding an umbrella wrong is reason to gas and throw explosives at an entire crowd of people.

> All of the clips cut out all of the context

Categorically false

There are hundreds of videos showing the police brutalising peaceful protest. Watch them.

Single example - How about peaceful protestors at the Whitehouse being tear gassed, batoned and charged to make way for the president's photo op?

The USPP explained that it was pepper balls and smoke bombs, not tear gas.

This is objectively wrong as multiple people confirmed it was in fact tear gas [1]. The USPP was lying.

[1] https://twitter.com/GarrettHaake/status/1267824405876359173

> The police can't just tell people what to do.

Well, to be clear: they can. Courts have given police very wide latitude on what they're allowed to compel from the public in the execution of their duties. This is sort of the problem.

That said, your second point is really the meat here. Faced with civilians refusing their orders, it is not appropriate for the police to resort to any and all means to compel obediance. No one thinks it is. Especially conservatives, under normal circumstances (who, it seems, are a little confused right now).

I mean... most of the same people who two weeks ago were all "You can't tell I'm supposed to stay at home, that's tyranny!" are now all of a sudden all "You can't stay in that park if the president wants to be there! You should be tear gassed![1]"

[1] Excuse me: "pepper balls", which is totally not the same thing because it disperses a fine suspended powder and never enters a gas phase.

What do you think they'd say if they were hit by pepper spray and tear gas at the next anti-lockdown rally?

> The police can't just tell people what to do.

That’s like the whole point of the police.

It's called abuse of power. Police should be enforcing laws, not their own will. Police 100% cannot tell people to do anything. The issue is the law is not good at defining these things, leading to this exact issue of mass scale police brutality. If you think the police have that much latitude in their power, you're missing the entire point of the protests.

No it is not. The police are there to uphold the law, not dictate what people do.

If someone's protesting they are exercising their rights and the police has no right to intervene. If someone is looting however, sure, then they can step in - with appropriate force, which in most cases does not involve shooting them in the face.

Yes. Upholding the law necessarily involves telling people what to do. They cannot arbitrarily tell people what to do, but that’s not what I was arguing.