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Comment by TheGrim-888 | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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> 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".

> 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

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.

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