German police start measuring distances between people with folding rulers | Hacker News Reader

German police start measuring distances between people with folding rulers

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18 pointshncurious19 comments

It looks like they were measuring from stomach level, that's somewhat unfair to fat people, they should definitely measure from nostril level.

I guess I would just laugh pretty hard to see the German police putting rules up to peoples nostrils one after another, because I'm not in Germany.

Only as a nitpick, they don't look like folding rulers to me, they seem like normal (non-folding) rod/staff of the kind often used in topography.

It would be dangerous to point one of those at someone's nose, a wrong movement or an accidental push and an eye could be seriously harmed.

Of course, this is only enforced when it suits them ( at a protest ).

...where people regularly flaunt all the rules completely on purpose. It doesn't seem particularly unfair to look there first, no? It's a bit like harsher punishment for repeat offenders - yes the thing they did isn't different, but there is often an element of "doing it repeatedly and on purpose" in prosecution of infractions.

Which are exactly "all the rules" at a protest besides a minimum distance?

It does bother me when the police is enforcing one thing ( the distance ) because they want to break another thing ( the protest ).

All applicable Coronavirus related rules. Masks and distance, specifically.

Are masks mandatory when you are outside ?

At demonstrations, they are.

When a protest involves deliberate, nonviolent violations of law, it is better described as civil disobedience. If you engage in civil disobedience, you should be prepared to face the consequences, and argue why the law is bad to a judge. Civil rights activists have known this for centuries.

Did the protest involve deliberate, nonviolent violations of law besides possible violations of the minimum distance ?

This is not clear from the footage.

> besides possible violations of the minimum distance

That would be the law in question.

Looking at the video, it seems the only ones who are not correctly social distancing are the police who are walking rather close to people and each other.

I would say these are very very dangerous measuring devices as it is impossible to operate them and keep the minimum distance.

The police tries to enforce the rules because the protesters (our local contrarians) quite often violate the rules regarding distancing, masking or contact limitations intentionally.

Unfortunately this creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because these folks view themselves as persecuted victims in some sort of covert world war. (Last year, a woman from Kassel even compared herself to resistance fighter Sophie Scholl who was executed by the Nazis [0][1])

The whole contrarian scene here is somewhere between crazy and ruthless by now. Earlier in the pandemic there were parents who took their children to protests to make the police refrain from using water cannons on them [2]. Recently a man from that scene killed his wife and their three daughters because they were caught buying a faked vaccination passport for his wife and were afraid what might happen to them [3]. In another incident, a man shot a student gas station employee after the worker asked him to wear a mask [4]. They're completely out of their minds by now.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y7pNU03i-o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl (because you might not be familiar with that name if you aren't from Germany)

[2] https://www.fr.de/politik/corona-demonstration-berlin-infekt...

[3] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/tote-koenigs-wusterh...

[4] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/idar-oberstein-tankstel...

Has any protest ever been identified as a 'spreader event' ?

This was speculated about ( fear mongered if you will ) in the beginning.

AFAIK, it never happened.

Are those cops giant? The measuring sticks seem like they can't be two meters long unless the cops are all incredibly tall.

I guess, the rule is 1,50 meters distance

I hope it extends to 60ft for an indoor gathering with an aerosol virus.

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