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Comment by mellavora | Hacker News Reader

This needs to be seen in a larger context. The police have been actively harassing citizens since the protests began.

Endless low-altitude helicopters circling over neighborhoods:

https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/02/09/endless-helicopter-...

Mass arrests and harassment of peaceful protesters. Including my niece. People are picked up by the police, but not 'booked' until 9-10 hours later, and they sometimes have unexplainable injuries by the time they are booked. Cell phones are confiscated as evidence; good luck getting it back in less than 5 years.

Police are not the good guys. This is not the country I was taught to believe in.

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Minnesota has less than half the population of the US city I live in. That metropolitan area is less than a third of the metropolitan area I live in. My area, as well as many other large US metropolitan areas, does not seem to observe that animosity of police aggression and civic unrest though some do. Could this problem be regional, because it isn’t evenly distributed based upon population density alone?

The problem is "agitators". For at least the last 10 years a good many of the riots/protests you have seen on TV have been fomented and/or inflamed by paid parties. This is a 100% proof case of "Wag the Dog". I highly recommend it if you haven't seen the movie.

Peaceful != Legal

Assuming you are not right-wing, imagine having endless Trump people on the street protesting - there is no way you would reach the same conclusion.

I don't live in the US, so I'm not familiar with the law there, but I don't understand why a peacefull gathering would be illegal ? Are large gathering illegal somehow ?

Well, in some places, gatherings have been temporarily banned because of the covid. No idea if that's the case here.

“Peaceful” gatherings are not illegal as long as they follow the rules.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights/

In every country in the world the rules of protests are legislated.

Peaceful protests can turn violent or break the rules and then police can shut them down.

These protests start off as peaceful, but then turn violent after midnight.

It's easy to take pictures of a group of peaceful protesters, and then some pictures of the police arresting people after midnight to construct a false narrative that the police are assaulting and arresting innocent people.

The reality is exactly the opposite. ...and that deception is exactly why the police are frustrated with the press.

This is very accurate. Anyone that watches the videos banned on YouTube, not shown by most media, and uploaded only in other sites, see just how much damage, looting and violence is occurring. Literally entires malls of hundreds of stores are getting destroyed each night.

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