Americans' perceptions of police drop significantly in one week
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
Hard to watch that and not be horrified.
I guess this guy has been a constant gadfly at protests for some time. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not but shocking.
But the walking over his body maybe the worst part.
There's another video, slightly longer, which shows that the police stop after a few more seconds and attend to him. I think they were a bit shocked by severe consequences of the shove and uncertain for a moment (even though it was a predictable result of the heavy-handed approach that the police have been taking that somewhere something like this would happen).
What is absolutely not forgivable, though, is lying that he "tripped and fell" on the police report. And it's even more outrageous that dozens of officers are coming together to defend that egregious lie!
So the initial shove was pretty horrific, but the line movement at least has a plausible explanation.
There is also a theory that a portion of the burnt out cars you see are actually set on fire by tear gas canisters. Those canisters contain a combustable charge which creates the aerosol (from a solid compound).
Since they are being fired everywhere, it's not surprising that some end up underneath parked cars.
Ok apparently the original comment must have been edited, as its now deleted and removeddit shows less content than I remember this morning, but here's an article noting how the mayor framed things:
https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/buffalo-mayor-calls-protester-...
Police testimony is treated with high regard in the legal system too, maybe in the age of hard video evidence that should go away.
It will be hard to sweep it under the rug. Not impossible. Just hard.
The public is weary and between Epstein hitting Netflix and current waves of protests with all the surrounding circumstances ( brick pallets come to mind ), I would not be sure what the result would be.
That said, the fact that bricks may have always been there does not take anything from my argument. The perception of the existence of spontaneous bricks appearing is already part of today's audience.
Lie can go around the world faster than truth can put its shoes on.
Also, since you brought it up, has anyone seen the Epstein film? ...any mention of the Clinton Foundation /Global Initiative? Other political figures?
Your point still stands but fyi they were charged with assault today:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/buffalo-offi...
> “Some of them probably resigned because they support the officer,” said another officer with whom we spoke. “But, for many of us, that’s not true.”
[1]: https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/exclusive-two-buffalo-p...
Even not knowing what happened leading up to this, it's completely unacceptable behavior. The sheer number of videos just like this one make me ashamed that I ever gave the police the benefit of the doubt in the past.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jusalotofpain/status/126763842772...
And the worst part is he's right.
I've been on the fence about giving up my US citizenship and taking on citizenship in my new home. Seeing the rapid decline in freedom these past two decades, and the absolute mess recently has helped me make up my mind. I can't let myself return to such a place. I can't be happy with myself knowing that my tax dollars are supporting human rights violations. I'm just done with it.
Sorry for ranting, but man, it's just frustrating seeing everything that's been happening these past few weeks, and seeing everything that's been happening for so long but ignored until recently.
I'm not sure which country you are moving to, but the question is the same. With how much power the US has, and how intertwined the world is, do you believe that you are permanently better off out of the country?
Sure, the US is by no means all-powerful; but if the US joins China and Russia's descent into the throes of outright authoritarianism, what leads you to believe you are safe? In this scenario, you would arguably be better off at the onset, but these three countries would surely take the rest of the world down with them? Not even outright invasions and occupations, but bog-standard bullying and destabilization, a la South China Sea or Iraq?
EDIT: Iraq was invasion and occupation. That maybe wasn't the best example of mere "destabilization" on my part.
What I do know is that looking at the state of the world today, being thousands of miles away is definitely safer. It's been nothing but consistent and rapid decline in liberty in the US and the protests. For every police department that says they've done something wrong, there are five of them out there cheering when an officer is released for brutality.
Maybe there's a chance America will do something someday in the future to my current home, but America is detaining and beating innocent people within its own borders today.
I can totally understand wanting to do that, but if it's a jurisdiction that doesn't require an official renunciation or something, I'd keep the US one and continue to vote absentee from abroad.
There's only so much voting can do, but I really hope that the people with their heads screwed on straight don't stop any time soon.
Did you miss the commenter saying this has been a problem for two decades(+)???
All this crap while covering their name, badge numbers and turning cameras off.
Police unions and their code of silence have enabled all sort of abusive behavior.
Also, this: https://theintercept.com/2019/08/30/nypd-anna-chambers-rape-...
Technically in NY and a few other states, the police can legally kidnap you and rape you without any liability.
Doesn't make any of them look better but an interesting wrinkle.
https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/exclusive-two-buffalo-p...
Of course it does. The pragmatic decision not to be without a legal safety net (which even a hypothetical innocent cop would want) is way better than resigning at the first hint of legal accountability.
Few if any professions I've ever heard of get blanket legal defense from their union or professional association to defend them against their own blanket misconduct. Soldiers for example manage without it.
Do they expect defense from blanket misconduct, or from accusations of misconduct while performing their professional duties? There are plenty of rotten cops, and significant institutional rot in police depts, but it's seems unworkable to suggest that they should be on the hook for legal fees to defend against complaints filed in the line of duty.
Any system that takes seriously legal complaints against police will inevitably have false positives, which means that even a hypothetically-perfect cop who never does anything wrong risks being exposed to legal fees.
> Soldiers for example manage without it.
I'm not sure this is a great example; the limiting of rights that soldiers are subject to is pretty despicable IMO; there are plenty of phenomena we'd consider horrific in civil society that have been the norm for thousands of years of military history (hell, the rape problem in the military was treated with as much apathy as the rape problem in _prison_, of course until women started being victims in non-trivial numbers).
We have an even bigger problem facing up to police misconduct in the US and the multiple layers of extra protection police get when something violent happens: (1) time to figure out their story before they are questioned, which normal people don't get, often based on union contracts (2) often cities have contracts to keep misconduct hidden, and we see many of these problem officers with multiple misconduct issues over the years until they finally go a bit too far (3) the supreme court and legal doctrine that sets a very high bar especially for convicting police of malfeasance.
The old man has to shoulder at least some responsibility here. It was wildly imprudent to get all in-the-face of a police in a civil-unrest situation. He shouldn't have been doing what he did.
I don't know what a US cop looks like on an ordinary day, but that group look like they are expecting trouble. There might be riots or unrest in their recent history. If you approach a group like that, things might happen that you don't deserve.
> Think about your grandpa, imagine if he was the one pushed to the ground and now in ICU and tell me again how stressful it must be to stand in full riot gear and have him approach you, alone.
Police aren't lab technicians, they work in an environment where they routinely have to deal with violent criminals who have no respect for the law.
It would remain a stressful job, even if I don't like the police.
And they should have been stressed; they did the wrong thing and are now in a lot of trouble. If anything, they should have been more stressed.
This is exactly what the protestors are saying about the police treatment of black people.
It _was_ the cops, in the end, and she was eventually released on bail, but that shit is _nightmarish_. All of these videos that we have been seeing on social media are exposing how this style of policing that we live with today has absolutely no place in our society.
edit/ Found a link: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/jun/05/san-diego-police-offic...
It can also be both [1]. Sex while being detained by the police is not illegal in 35 states and this was really only brought to light after two plainclothes NYPD detectives took an 18 year old woman in an unmarked van and took turns having sex while the other drove. She claims it was rape and that she was handcuffed the entire time.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-poli...
What is important are the next steps: the police needs accountability, police misbehaviour must be investigated independently. Not by the police, not by the prosecutor they work with every other week. The police must be made to understand they are being watched, very closely, by technical, legal and human means. Only then will they think twice before stepping out of line. And each misstep needs to have proportionate consequences that take into account the misuse of power as well as the crime itself, so punishment must be harsher than for mere mortals, not the usual slap on the wrist.
Changes in training or authorized uses of force are useless smoke and mirrors without proper accountability.
Quis enim custodiet ipsos custodies?
Prosecutors require police to bring them people to prosecute. If a prosecutor starts going after cops, they've now pissed off a group of people they rely on the get their job done, so most prosecutors won't prosecute cops.
I imagine this could be fixed by states having a special prosecutor specifically for those that are now considered protected by qualified immunity, which is more than just police. Also we should get rid of qualified immunity, which is an insult to the constitution.
On the criminal side I think prosecutors + police union negotiations for more lenient investigations are the big issue.
It's all connected. The police unions push back hard against reforms in the prosecutors' office that might subject them to more scrutiny.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapo...
> In St. Louis, when Kim Gardner was elected the top prosecutor four years ago, she set out to rein in the city’s high rate of police violence. But after she proposed a unit within the prosecutor’s office that would independently investigate misconduct, she ran into the powerful local police union.
> The union pressured lawmakers to set aside the proposal, which many supported but then never brought to a vote. Around the same time, a lawyer for the union waged a legal fight to limit the ability of the prosecutor’s office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the union said Ms. Gardner should be removed “by force or by choice.”
How about starting with 3x the sentence of a normal citizen for breaking the same rules?
Thankfully my state has just passed a law making it illegal for police to enter elementary or secondary school grounds except in the case of an emergency. At least he will probably be safe from the police at school.
This isn't a partisan issue, the color of your tie does not wash your hands of blame here.
The Dem party's marketing dept should all get raises, though. For some reason you seem to believe that having a black president who did absolutely nothing for black people was better for black people than Trump. When it comes to policy or enforcement changes, this could not be further from the truth.
In the Federal jury that later convicted Koon and Powell of Federal civil rights violations, there were likewise 9 of 12 white jurors.
Modern American jurors don't inherently judge on race. For another example, the jury that convicted congressman Mel Reynolds on all charges was half black:
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/23/us/congressman-convicted-...
As I may have disclosed before, I have some cops in my family and I do think they have too much power compared to Europe.
edit: corrected the idiom
You can only have one absolute moral principle; everything else must ultimately be contingent on not violating that core principle.
I am usually bringing this up on HN in the context of free speech, because I think free speech is a poor choice to make your absolute moral principle.
In this context, there's another example of a poor choice for an absolute principle.
Brotherhood, fraternity, loyalty to your group is frequently a good thing. Many things only work with trust.
But this is what it looks like when brotherhood -- loyalty to your fellow police officers, in this case -- is your absolute moral principle. Upholding the law and protecting the innocent come second to protecting your own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_pluralism
And modern psychology and neuroscience appear to back it up.
"Absolute" is the key word.
But in the small we are always compromising on some things in favor of others. A principle can be upheld at great cost until it finally gives way. One principle can crumble away in favor of others very suddenly.
Hegel was full of shit.
To me, the cops quitting in solidarity is a far worse problem than the cops pushing the old man.
We need to grasp that in a national eruption of 1000's of interactions, some of them will be bad. There will be emotions, stupidity, even racism and true bad acting. I fully expect that even in a highly professional and well-trained police force ... that stupid will happen.
BUT - the cops quitting ... this is 1) not a decision made 'in the moment of passion in the blink of an eye' and 2) as you say, it arguably contradicts the very nature of their oath.
My cousin, a Marine, said to me that a common creed is 'Unit, Corps, God, Country'. I don't know if that's official, colloquial, or even widely true ... but ... I found it really deeply wrong to put 'unit and corps' above 'god and country'. But I never got the chance to discuss it with him.
I'm pretty sure "unit corps God country" is from A Few Good Men, and the Marine motto is God Country Corps, which makes more sense.
That minor point aside, I agree with you. The "bad apples" defense doesn't stand up to the mass resignation in support of these cops.
One thing a trusted member of your group can do is call you out on bad behavior, rather than supporting it.
[0] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
I just don't get the way police are trained, they are there to risk themselves to ensure others are safe, even the criminals. Instead, they're trained to treat them worse than i was trained to treat literal terrorists.
The censorship that HN readers bring to the forum disgusts me. To those responsible for censoring the parent post: get bent. You cowards have no place here.
If you go read through US military documents about the use of force and rules of engagement you will find things like it requires _presidential approval_ to use riot control agents like pepper spray and tear gas. You aren't allowed to use non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets and bean bag guns without special training because they are dangerous if use improperly. It's against the law of war to target noncombatants (police have been specifically targeting journalists in a number of high profile incidents)
[0] https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936...
edit: I agree with the sister comment that the faulty police mentality largely comes from really bad training that instills the mind set that there is danger behind every corner.
The inner states (which are mostly white) vote the opposite.
This really doesn’t surprise me. America like its political polarization is also quite divided racially.
Our president further propagates this with Xenophobia.
We’re quite backwards compared to Europe like that.
Just because something makes you feel bad for society doesn’t mean the actions at an individual basis are purely malicious or unreasonable.
There’s been an unbelievable amount of violence perpetrated by police these last few weeks. You cannot stand by this argument if you’ve been watching the footage.
There’s no way you can say with a straight face that the police have committed more acts of violence and destruction than the rioters.
Our taxes pay their salaries, and our taxes also pay their legal settlements and fees when they get caught up killing unarmed black men and women. They live in a system fundamentally devoid of accountability. They deploy tools like tears gas and poorly tested “less lethal” ammunition that still has the ability to permanently and critically injure targets. No amount of violence against peaceful protestors should be tolerated. The police exist to protect the public, not treat them like enemy combatants.
Let's stop using abstract passive words like "deploy", and say what the police are actually doing - opening fire on crowds of protestors. I guess they're being nice by using ammo other than lead bullets like at Kent State, but fundamentally they're still shooting projectiles and innocent people are still being killed and maimed.
If a crowd of 1000 people has one person throw a brick at the police. I think it’s well within their rights to tear gas the entire group to disperse them.
The main counterargument is how would that help? The violent cop would still be violent. If the police were abolished they'd sign up as a violent gang member, and if a new not-police body is created they'd sign up to that instead.
There is always a most-violent gang on the streets; we just call them the police if they are state-sponsored and ask them to follow the law rather than their own opinions. Defunding the police won't help that dynamic.
This is exactly what far right provocateurs want, to embed themselves inside legitimate protests and misbehave so that all are punished. Does that seem appropriate?
Also, both cases of brutality I described above happened in broad daylight. Please tell me how this specific incident[0] represents appropriate conduct by the police.
This is an utterly unethical and immoral point of view. If one person commits a crime, a group should never be punished for it. This is collective punishment, and it (along with tear gas) is prohibited under the Geneva conventions.
Seems pretty clear to me.
The tear-gassing specifically isn't to punish anyone. It is because their commanders think the situation is unsafe and that order needs to be restored. The crowd, by its presence, is creating a safety hazard where people might assault the police.
There are very fine lines involved, but there is a point where there isn't a reasonable expectation that the police should break ranks and move into a potential violent mob to arrest an individual. That would be asking them to take on too much risk. It isn't going to violate the Geneva Conventions.
It is rather the other way around there: The situation is made dangerous by presence of the police, the solution is the police pulling back.
At the end of the day, their actions are what matters, not their intent. If they harm you, someone not participating in the action they intend to lawfully suppress, then their action was an overreach.
What if we were talking about bullets, instead of gas? We’d never assert that indiscriminately firing into a crowd is warranted. Just because tear gas isn’t (often) lethal doesn’t really make it different; it’s an indiscriminate, unjustified use of force against arbitrary groups of people.
You’re right, of course, that there are limits and we wouldn’t expect the police to take on unlimited amounts of risk, but don’t get too lost in the theoretical here - the protests are not unruly mobs and are not anywhere near they hypothetical levels you’re talking about.
If someone in a crowd is throws a brick at them, and the crowd has up to that point been a united slogan-chanting sign-waving entity I am on board with the police treating the entire crowd as hostile. It is not acceptable to throw a brick at the police. Or anything else for that matter.
I can see a good argument that if someone throws a brick the police should be as targeted as possible in responding. But it could easily be the point where a crowd disintegrates into an unruly mob and the police would have my total support for not being optimistic and trying to push into the crowd hoping it works out OK. Once a brick is in the air, the crowd is an unruly mob. Bricks are not a civilised tool of discourse.
Yes, you're correct. But they're far from the only people who have jobs dealing with profoundly uncooperative people, and we do not accept violence from other professionals regardless of what they encounter from the public. I believe that police work is something of an exception, but only a limited exception: by and large I expect (and demand!) that they handle stressful situations without resorting to violence whenever possible, even if that is uncomfortable or stressful to them.
> I can see a good argument that if someone throws a brick the police should be as targeted as possible in responding. But it could easily be the point where a crowd disintegrates into an unruly mob and the police would have my total support for not being optimistic and trying to push into the crowd hoping it works out OK.
This is important to talk about - I think what myself and others are calling for is a targeted response by police, and what we've seen over the past few days in America is that the responses are overwhelmingly not targeted, nor are the appropriate. (Not to mention the fact that there is now ample video evidence of police responding with force when there was absolutely no danger whatsoever).
Essentially, it seems as though the police are taking the second part of your assertion to heart - that it's okay to just be indiscriminate when there's danger - but vastly over-applying it and labeling completely benign interactions as "dangerous", and using that to justify their use of force.
Again - I invite you to consider this through less of a theoretical framework, but through the lens of what we're seeing unfold in front of us: police aren't treating legitimately dangerous mobs with justified violence; rather they are treating all protestors as if they are an unruly mob and applying violence indiscriminately. And that is a very large problem.
> If someone in a crowd is throws a brick at them
As a parting note, there is really not much brick-throwing going on. And given the demonstrated propensity of the police in America to lie (despite video evidence), please treat their claims that people are throwing bricks with extreme suspicion.
By not showing up you're aiding and abetting the actions of the small minority of corrupt police officers who murder minorities in the street because they know they can get away with it.
By this logic, the George Floyd death shouldn’t even be a controversy because the public at large commits more crime in aggregate than the police do.
There are many examples of unprovoked police violence nationwide. No amount of looting and rioting justifies unprovoked attacks on peaceful protesters.
This isn't a game, there is no score.
How many cops does it take to realize that their bullying would eventually backfire? How many judges doesn it take to realize that killer cops getting scott free is going to eventually backfire badly? I hope that they learn their lesson this time and hope it’s going to sting badly
I think police will see some funding decreases is some places and lots of discussions about police demilitarization are currently taking place. That can have consequences.
I think their morale is also affected and it’s horrible that because of some bad/unprofessional officers other good ones have to suffer the bad image. This may help some good internal change as well. One can hope at least
Which is quite an indictment considering the protestors can be joined by, as you noted, and random opportunist or provocateur.
This shit is seriously broken.
Police are, in fact, given far too many duties. They deal with traffic violations, drunkenness, domestic violence, homelessness, property crimes, public emergencies, and many more things. Most of their time is spent on systemic problems in society that they cannot usefully intervene in, but only obscure with fines, arrests, and talking-to. These are tasks that call for more specialization, and therefore a more stratified set of enforcement tools than the average cop gets.
The system makes the cops bad. We spend a lot on them; several U.S. cities spend more on their police than entire countries do on their military. Spending hasn't changed the outcomes. This is why the term "police abolishment" has come into parlance; a full reform of enforcement requires a larger set of concepts than "police".
And yes sometimes cops are just dicks on a power trip.
I don't know about the USA but in Ireland the original standing police force ( the RIC ) was responsible for census duties, farm inspections, tax collection and many other rural duties up until the 1920s. What police forces do now, focused on crime, is only a subset of their original conception as servants of the polis ( society ).
There are some very good arguments for 'critical masses of sentiment' necessary to effectuate actual change, at the same time, populism is a war for 'hearts and minds' and the first casualty in every war is of course the Truth.
Personally, I'm far more interested in real nature of every day policing, which is a complex and nuanced subject, not likely suitable for the narrative-driven vignettes proposed to use every night on cable news.
I believe that 'narrative and populist driven change' is usually not the best way forward. We've seen this very poignantly with the rise of the 'doctors and bureaucrats' to the fore of public display during the Covid epidemic. It's been mostly heartwarming to hear from the dry, mundane, secular, academic mandarins managing our pandemic responses behind the scenes.
Dr. Bonnie Henry managing British Columbia's COVID response as a fairly good example; we're now getting actually charts and data to explain and validate the inherently complex nature of COVID, and the impetus for the resulting action.
On TV, the narrative-drivers and those trying to make big statements completely drown out a much-need opportunity for dispassionate discussion about this issue. I feel that people are being highly misled one way or another to the point that when real facts and hard evidence don't align with a narrative, they become anthemic to the presentation, and anyone proposing to discuss them becomes a heathen to the cause. A lot of people are spending a lot of time, decades even, in bubbles of 'very incomplete information'.
America has made huge strides in all sorts of areas, and in most ways 'it's better than it's ever been'. I wouldn't for a second give Trump (or any incumbent president) credit for this but as avg. Black income, wage-gap, and unemployment-gaps become historically low even during his tenure, this is saying a lot. If you look at the broad measures of ostensible progress, they don't really jump at points of social contention, really, it looks mostly good over broad units of time. Progress is mostly a steady grind, made by a lot of thoughtful people.
Particularly disturbing is the entrance of major brands, deciding to participate in the situation - though sometimes it's hard to see how earnest intention may be exploited ... it definitely is. Master marketers don't sell you products really on the basis of function, rather an aspiration - and if that aspiration has moved off the court onto the streets, you can be sure that someone hustling you shoes because of a deeply held political or social conviction ... it's a huge red flag.
It takes a real kind of mindfulness to 'see something bad in a video or tweet' as a data point, instead of an emblem. A quick gander through Pew polling, actual police stats, victimization reports, and decent research paints a totally different picture than one would form from reading headlines or drowning in Tweets.
The fact is, while all the other metrics may have improved, the police force in lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police unions are bastions of corruption, racism is the norm, and incidents are constantly swept under the rug.
Your statement: " lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police unions are bastions of corruption, racism is the norm," - is false, and almost bigoted.
The vast majority of PD's in America, the Police themselves generally reflect the racial reality of the communities they manage.
Chicago PD is about 50% White, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. [1] Black and Latino police are overrepresented those forces. This is not uncommon.
Why don't you have a look at the actual data - all the PD ethnic composition is right there for you to see.
It's false to suggest that these PDs are 'a bunch of White Boy Clubs' - when they literally are not, but not only that, just the opposite, fairly multicultural and excellent examples of 'functional diverse workforces'.
Ironically, the police are considerably better than hight tech at demonstrating how representation and getting along matters.
The fact that Police forces generally well reflect the ethnicity of the people they manage is probably something most people wouldn't necessarily know, and it's 'real-world information' that adds nuance to the situation. Unfortunately, since this reality doesn't fit the narrative, it doesn't get talked about.
Even this incident in Minnesota: we have 'assailants' who are diverse: two white cops, an Asian cop, and a cop 'of Colour' (possibly Black?) - does that fit the 'Team Racist Redneck' narrative? No.
It's ridiculous to suggest 'racism is the norm' on teams that are overwhelmingly diverse, wherein partners, managers, chefs, officials are of every stripe and creed. Also, it's kind of insulting.
So how could it be that people have this view of PD's when the data shows that this would be highly unlikely? Why is this kind of information not made part of the discussion on various media outlets? There's a lot more where this came from.
Populism leads to misinformation, poor analysis, and crude thinking. The situation is far more nuanced. We need dispassion and reason.
[1] https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-dep...
Chicago is 32% non-Hispanic white, 32% black, and 28% hispanic. So, no, white cops outnumbering black cops 2:1 is not black cops being overrepresented. (This is as of the latest census.)
Could you link your research?
The percentage of blacks who have a favorable view of police hasn't changed since the 1970s and is significantly lower than for whites. A majority of blacks worry about the police using violence on them or their families. The percentage of unarmed blacks shot by police versus unarmed whites paint a clear picture of racial targeting (and as we've seen the last week, police will lie about someone being armed so the real stats are probably even worse).
Deviations like this just bring down the original purpose and integrity of going to HN.
“ Off-Topic: 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.”
The argument is the type of content, not the content itself. This content falls into mainstream events which would be against HN guidelines.
*edits for grammatical errors
These are humans too and they're watching society (and especially media) totally dehumanize them. To some degree their anger is arguably justified.
I feel like it's impossible to get an accurate feel for how many people are protesting and what proportion of the population supports the protests. But I have a feeling it's a minority, maybe 10-30% of the population, in which case you cannot let a fraction of your population hold your entire city hostage, especially when opportunists are simultaneously looting and burning, though that seems to have calmed down recently.
Point being, if the protestors won't listen when asked to leave, and if they are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of 70-90% of the population, I don't see any option other than gradual escalation, which typically precedes gas and rubber bullets.
The police in a city in Canada went on strike in the late 1960s[1]. Things didn't go well. And we've already seen that American demographics are willing to burn and loot even with police present...so I don't mean to defend police but I really don't see anything good coming from police standing down or refusing to use force.
1.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot
Edit: Downvotes are intended for discouraging low effort or otherwise poor comments, not to shame people for disagreeing. Whether you like it or not at least half the country supports police, they play an important role in society, and that makes this a discussion worth having.
And by the way, the point of protests is not to leave when people ask you to.
It's not surprising that Americans feel 'anger is justified' however, that's very different from saying for example that 'riots' or 'protests past curfew' are supported.
"And by the way, the point of protests is not to leave when people ask you to."
No - it is absolutely not.
Neither you nor I get to decide what is lawful and what is not.
The 'rules' are a 'social contract' that we all get a say in, you don't get more of a say because you want to hold a sign up past 10 pm or block a street.
It's disturbing to read this because I don't think people grasp the real variety in American opinion out there, and what some others might want to 'protests beyond what the community wants them to'. You might find yourself on the other side of the fence.
Not only this - it's counterproductive. Things like 'million man march' do a lot more good than the Watts riots, which are both directly damaging to the community, and probably very damaging to the movement.
If the point is to 'make change' - people are losing tons of allies by stepping outside the bounds of civility. Everyone is fine with signs in parks, and possibly a march through town - beyond that, it's just bad.
This is a bold oxymoron:
"The law is the law, except where it is not the law because you have other constitutionally guaranteed laws that enable you to break said laws"
This misunderstanding underlies a lot of the commentary here lamenting police breakup of ostensibly 'legal' protests which are actually, totally illegal.
If the city has a curfew for protesting, that's literally quite lawful in every sense, and you don't have a legal or constitutional right to protest at that point.
I mean, you could take up with the courts.
Add to that the protests appear to have popular support and the issue of curfew becomes largely irrelevant. I am not arguing legality here.
edit: added not. geez that was bad
Yes, that is what a social contract means, we already have that.
"The protests suggest that the law is no longer within acceptable range for society, but the administrators of the law, for whatever reason, chose not to address it."
The 'administrators' are we the voters - not the protestors.
You're advocating anarchy: the protestors get to decide what is lawful and what is not, for whatever arbitrary reason.
It's incredibly naive for people to support extra-judicial action, a lot of which is disruptive and a total transgression of other people's rights, and is sometimes violent.
Consider the next time there is a protest you don't agree with, and they decide that 'the law is not relevant in that case because it's not what the protestors deem appropriate'.
It's the total civil breakdown.
The thread of the 'protesters are above the law logic' is totally unwound and nonsensical.
Yes and a time seems to have come to renegotiate that contract.
<<The 'administrators' are we the voters - not the protestors
It is possible I did not communicate this clearly. By administrators I meant 'law givers'( senators, congressmen and so on ). You are right that voters ultimately decide what is the law. Note that protesters is a subset of voters. Note that I already pointed out the popular support for protesting.
<<You're advocating anarchy: the protestors get to decide what is lawful and what is not, for whatever arbitrary reason.
I am not. The system does not break, because one law is broken ( if it did the system would have collapsed already ).
<<It's incredibly naive for people to support extra-judicial action, a lot of which is disruptive and a total transgression of other people's rights, and is sometimes violent.
I do not believe in dura lex sed lex. There is a point at which governed can say: fuck it. We are not there yet, but we are slowly getting there. It is scary, but it is not unexpected. I do not want to go on a rant here, but I will start by saying that total transgression may be overstating it.
<<Consider the next time there is a protest you don't agree with, and they decide that 'the law is not relevant in that case because it's not what the protestors deem appropriate'.
Sigh, I live in Chicagoland. That is not an argument you want to present to me. I am considering it. The moment there was a whiff of protests moving to suburbs, my neighbours were considering it too. Is it scary? Yeah, but change tends to be. You do not know what may follow.
<<It's the total civil breakdown
Eh, its not total. Consider that if it was total you would not posting on social media, but rather foraging for essentials at night. You are overstating your case.
<<The thread of the 'protesters are above the law logic' is totally unwound and nonsensical
You seem to believe that law and order is the US highest value. I do not think it is. And when multiple values clash, one of them has to give way. Surprise, arbitrarily enforced rules gave way.
> Everyone is fine with signs in parks ...
Yes! You're getting it! The point is for people to NOT be fine with it. The point is to turn heads, to inconvenience, to get people talking, and to demand that attention is placed on injustice.
If you don't want to help, just get out of the way.
The law is meant to be tested
You do not have the right to block traffic, march down the street etc. as an expression of your 1st amendment rights. You literally need a permit for most of that.
If the city puts down a curfew, you don't have any '1st Amendment rights' there either.
"doesn't mean the police get to illegally attack and disperse them."
Much of what we are seeing is not a legal expression of 1st Amendment rights at all, in which case breaking it up is not remotely illegal.
Some of it may be though.
Here are the ACLU's guidelines:
[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_pdf_file/kyr_...
>Much of what we are seeing is not a legal expression of 1st Amendment rights at all, in which case breaking it up is not remotely illegal.
Think about what you're doing right now. You're responding to someone saying that cops shouldn't be killing people in the streets for blocking traffic. Your response isn't "cops shouldn't kill people!". It's "what they are doing is illegal".
This about this. Think about what you're doing.
Lots of people have difficult stressful jobs dealing with people who don’t have much respect for them. That’s not an excuse for criminality, though. Take medical professionals. In the public mind, there are few things more horrifying and reprehensible than the doctor or nurse who deliberately kills or neglects their patients. There’s pretty much universal agreement that this is not okay, and that it is in fact a morally worse crime than normal murder or neglect, as it is done by someone in a position of trust. It should be the same for police.
Hell, take minimum wage store clerks.
There has to be a way forward when it comes to police reform, but it is a valid question to ask whether or not policing itself takes a particular toll.
It seems like many of the worst offenders have been mostly stagnant at their posts for many years - surely getting in fresh faces that have had a chance for more modern training would help break some of this mentality of "corps over country".
Hard to police, but, to encourage it...?
What exactly do you mean by 'American demographics'?
The reason this is low effort is that your feelings on what the facts might be do not suffice for facts. Why would we want to know your personal guess about how many people support the protests if you have no new information to add? why not just do a Google search?
One of these abilities is "incite unrest". Across several turns, this can enable a war of attrition ( a turn represents a year or a season I cannot remember). Death by 1000 cuts is a way to reduce the morale and economic output of a city in order to eventually conquer it.
Here is an excerpt from a forum dialogue about the game:
"Incite Unreast give "X" public order penality, depending on your agent skills and traits. Army gives "X" public order boost depending on army size and general traits and skills.
So yes.
The best tactic would put as many agents as you can get into far positions, champions can decrease public order as a passive, spy like you already know they pay for it, armies can raid, which decrease their upkeep and steal some of their income for youself."
https://steamcommunity.com/app/214950/discussions/0/61956934...
“It is an open secret,” he said, “that secret services of imperialist powers and foreign anti-Soviet centers actively join extremist nationalistic actions. Later on, they start playing the part of open instigators of hostile actions aimed at kindling hostility among nations. One should not underestimate the danger of this method of subversive activity.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-04-14-mn-1958-s...
(a red flag here is that the word "secret" is repeated rapidly in succession. Timeless "click" bait before Jobs ever visited Xerox).
We must first consider credibility of a dot com site. LA times does not represent vast majority. But this is from 1988. Fear mongering conspiracies can get tongues flapping. This is also before digital proliferation of media injection into cultures (click).
Behind "video games" are 20-50 year old minds digesting their environment and historical records made available to them by their coordinated government(s). My "real life" has not been affected by rioting and widespread respitory pandemic (destroyed storefronts are not selling things I want, economic furlough gifts me spare time and empty streets to hone new skills and more quickly traverse new domains). I am interested in the Phoenix that rises from this reset (dust is still in the air and must settle).
From the wikipedia article for Principle of Charity:
"The first to state this hermeneutic principle was Rabbi Meir ... 'A person does not say things without reason'."
The video game designers are steadily sculpting their audience's perception of "real life" via their own art form.
What's happened in the last week is that targeted propaganda has flooded people with a few isolated examples of bad things happening and letting people's emotional response mechanisms do the rest.
Did you know that tens of thousands of people die from medical malpractice and medical errors each year? There are many thousands fewer people suffering from police brutality, yet somehow the police have an infinitely worse reputation than doctors and surgeons yet your chances of being killed by a surgeon is far higher than being killed by a cop.
The police do one of the hardest jobs in the country, dealing with the worst elements of society every single day. It's shocking to me that there isn't far more "brutality" every year than there is, and I commend the police for keeping us safe while having to deal with people that hate them and want them dead every day.
The judgement callously meted out on police on HN and elsewhere is completely unjustified.
Doctors have their own personal liability insurance, if they make too many mistakes they literally cannot afford to continue working in medicine (or have to move to a lower risk sub-field that have lower base premiums).
If police held their own individual liability insurance, and it too could become uneconomical for them to continue to practice law enforcement, I'd consider that a huge improvement over the status quo.
If you want law enforcement to be comparable to medicine, then oversight is going to raise tenfold.
You know, this is word for word what Russian 'patriots' tell me, when I ask them why 200 people were killed in Country's jails.
Somehow in UK the number is zero, the police must be superhuman here.
To the downvote-brigades: Yes, this is embarrassing and not well-known, but that doesn't excuse further attempts at suppression. If you have something to say, say it, don't just press a button.