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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

"After about 30 minutes, law enforcement told protesters to the leave the area in a loudspeaker announcement calling the demonstration an unlawful assembly."

Unlawful assembly.

"In England, the offence was abolished in 1986, but it exists in other countries."[0]

"while freedom of association is used in the context of labor rights and in the Constitution of the United States is interpreted to mean both the freedom to assemble and the freedom to join an association"[1]

I wouldn't be too excited about police in my area invoking "unlawful assembly" willy-nilly, especially when followed up by the "identification of press" actions as described in the article.

I don't want to go too far off the deep end in commentary, but it's more anecdata pointing in an uncomfortable direction.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_assembly

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly

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I think the distinction is pretty straight forward...

> Unlawful assembly is a legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace. ...if the disturbance is commenced, it is then termed a riot.

Now you might say "Arrest those people in the crowd actually committing crimes during the riot.". ...but the obvious counter-argument there is that since they are assaulting police officers with rocks, bats, etc... then there's no way to do that safely for officers.

The protests seem pretty well segregated between the peaceful crowd before midnight, and then the violent crowd after midnight after the order to disperse is made.

What's strange to me is why the same violent participants are released from jail each morning to participate in the riot again the next night. This seems like a significant disconnect between the police action and the prosecutors office/local judges.

I would love to know more about the conversations going on behind the scenes between those two groups.

You ignore the facts of this specific case. Anecdata indeed.

> Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington says throughout the night, and particularly from 8 p.m. onward, officers came under threat from a variety of new individuals who began to approach and contest the area around the police department with items like baseball bats, plywood, shields and "liquid products."

> There were reports of some protesters shaking the perimeter fencing, while lobbing objects over the fence at officers on the other side.

> Harrington outlined how attempts to breach the outermost ring of fencing by more belligerent protesters was handled with some amount of restraint, with officers repairing the breach and backing off rather than immediately proceeding to clear the area around the station.

In england they just replaced it with other similar laws, which are commonly deployed against people the police don't like

[0]:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/06/law-to...

That specific article is quite flamboyantly written. But then looking at just the intro page of the "Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act"[0] the uses cases are very wide-ranging in a way that I don't have the experience or knowledge to judge its 'normality'.

eg:

  The Act introduced simpler, more effective powers to tackle anti-social behaviour that provide better protection for victims and communities.

  The Community Trigger and Community Remedy empowers victims and communities, giving them a greater say in how agencies respond to complaints of anti-social behaviour and in out-of-court sanctions for offenders.

  The Act also:

  - tackles irresponsible dog ownership and the use of illegal firearms by gangs and organised criminal groups

  - strengthens the protection afforded to the victims of forced marriage and those at risk of sexual harm

  - enhances the professional capabilities and integrity of the police

  - amends the port and border security powers in Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, to ensure that they strike the right balance between the need to protect public safety and the protection of individual freedoms.

  - amends the Extradition Act 2003 to strengthen public confidence in, and the operational effectiveness of, our extradition arrangements

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/anti-social-behavi...

I agree about the writing style of the article, and while I unfortunately don't have anything better than anecdotal evidence, while visiting some friends in my teens in England we were routinely approached by police while in public spaces, as loitering (or whatever they would call it) was illegal.

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