Police Crack Down on Burning Man | Hacker News Reader

Police Crack Down on Burning Man

intellihub.com

95 pointsjkbyc24 comments

If you believe the thesis presented in Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested... (http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A...), that in a period of declining overall real crime rates the bulked up police-judicial complex needs a steady diet of the "clueless" else there would be layoffs, then you'd expect these sorts of events to be magnets for police to build up their arrest statistics.

Doing these sorts of events may be less and less practical in the future. I can think of a number of countries where people tend to build walled compounds to among other things keep the "authorities" out, or at least strongly discouraged from "visiting".

> Doing these sorts of events may be less and less practical in the future. I can think of a number of countries where people tend to build walled compounds to among other things keep the "authorities" out, or at least strongly discouraged from "visiting".

Those are fascinating places. Not in a pleasant way, most often there are drugs, own made up rules, human trafficking going on and so on, living condition are probably terrible (slums). But it is just the whole setup is interesting. Like a little fiefdom or small city state.

Authorities are either corrupt and are bought off and discouraged from going in there via positive reinforcement or they are just so outnumbered and the determination of the community to keep them out will make it very hard to get to a particular subject to arrest them.

I can think of Brazilian favelas or that one criminal in Jamaica that was walled off and protected by a large community who he was "taking care of". It is also interesting at how self sufficient those places are. Is there always rampant disease and crime or is there a support network, people helping each other in need and so on. I guess it all depends who you ask.

Sometimes I think Detroit and inner cities our there are almost there. I imagine and all out assault will bring the national guard out.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

Drugs, yes. Own made up rules, yes. Otherwise, not so much. No human trafficking, no slums, and the authorities are neither corrupt nor underpowered. They just largely choose to ignore them and let them get on with what they do (I say largely, because that's not always the case; every few years they have some crackdown or other).

    "One DPW member was issued a $275 ticket for urinating on 
    the playa, and threatened with being forced to register as 
    a convicted sex offender."

Lots and lots of stuff goes down at Burning Man that could get you registered as a convicted sex offender if that stuff occurred back in the normal world. However, it's a sexually charged event and everyone who goes to the event knows this before they go and the event occurs far far away from the normal world. To be out there charging people for acts that are within the social norms of the event, especially in a way that is going to follow them back to their life where ever they happen to live is pretty shitty.

TBH I don't get why public urination deserves more than a ticket as deterrence. Listing someone as a convicted sex offender is quite frankly absurd for such a benign infraction.

    "If the cops would leave their badges and guns at home and 
    just be burners like everyone else in BRC, we’d welcome 
    them just like we welcome anyone else. We’d even build 
    them a Donut Camp!"

Not exactly the best comment to make if you don't want to attract the ire of law enforcement. It may be a playful jab that burners will get and consider not that big of a deal. But some tough guy LEO with a hard-on for prosecuting hippies is going to see that as an excuse for going there and ticketing people. It's now a known phenomena that police officers in many parts of the country will volunteer at major events like political summits where they it's likely that they might get a chance to crack some skulls. When you teach people new paramilitary skills, they are going to want to jump at opportunities to practice on real life human beings.

"TBH I don't get why public urination deserves more than a ticket as deterrence. Listing someone as a convicted sex offender is quite frankly absurd for such a benign infraction."

Sex offender registration is absurd regardless of the crime. The entire concept was a knee-jerk reaction to a rare crime, and now we have to deal with a class of outcasts who have trouble finding a place to live:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offe...

The Overton window has passed on that one. Now, no one remembers that sex offender laws were controversial when first instituted, and were a big difference from anything that had happened before. Of course sex is dirty, and people who commit sex crimes should be permanently stained while murderers live freely - the only debate is when people get that stain for something that merely involved nudity, or teenagers get it for molesting themselves.

Sad, really. The Bill of Rights was the only thing protecting us from the wolves, and each amendment has been reduced by the post-Warren courts into a loose guideline or an unenforceable platitude.

Having events and social places where norms are super lax and people are free to experiment is very, very healthy. It is a shame that more of these festivals and places of experimentation don't exist.

Without a safety valve and a safe place to learn about oneself, people can end up in pretty terrible headspaces.

Calling the police pigs and showing outright disdain isn't going to help anyone, it only makes the Burning Man community look like a bunch of lawless idiots which is exactly what the police want. That said, this is likely retaliation for the lawsuit Pershing County sheriff lost against Black Rock, LLC (http://brcvpc.com/). The linked article said the BLM lost but I don't think they were even involved in the case, as far as I can tell the BLM has only been supportive of Burning Man.

I think we are forgetting that the point of the law is to protect people. If a bunch of people do want to be lawless in the drugs and public urination sense, but go out of their way to do it in an isolated, out of the way place, then I support them 100%, and think the police and law should stay away. "Lawless" is not a dirty word in my mind when the laws are wrong.

Look, I'm all for weird stuff, but when a site features ads that read "FACT: Cancer is a Fungus, It Can Be Prevented" and two "X banned/hate this video"... hmm, how about no?

>"FACT: Cancer is a Fungus, It Can Be Prevented"

What on Earth. Are they serious?

Cancer vectors vary far and wide, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease no comment on whether that particular cancer is a fungus which BTW would be a new one to me.

Not to mention their comment section is unreadable due to font size/spacing.

Law enforcement is big money, big profit.

Sadly as every last non-service job is shipped overseas, you can only expect more of it in every aspect of society as government sees it as boosting employment numbers, especially as we scale down wars and switch to drones, bringing home all those enlisted.

The equivalent of strip mining the citizenry.

Here's a clarification from the official Burning Man blog:

[Note: It was erroneously reported on Boing Boing that BRC won a lawsuit against BLM this year and that BLM may be retaliating by writing more citations in Black Rock City. For the record, BRC was not in a lawsuit with BLM this year. There is an ongoing lawsuit with Pershing County. More information about that can be found at www.brcvpc.com. The information about retaliation is unfounded.]

http://blog.burningman.com/2013/08/building-brc/law-enforcem...

"One of the most peaceful and long running festivals in the country".

If you don't count rape. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vanessa-pinto/burning-man-rape...

Exactly which festivals do better?

Wacken Open Air, I'd guess. Been twice, never a problem. The second time a friend of mine who made his way there independently and who would come back home with me said that the police even returned his weed when he said he was going to WOA.

Then again I guess Germans got over authoritarianism around sixty years ago.

By the easterly folk might have been over it, but weren't rid of them for a few more decades.

guess why Germany has such strong privacy laws :)

Given the lack of information in that article beyond a single anecdote, we have no idea how common rape is at Burning Man. However, rapes occurring wouldn't preclude it from being "one of the most peaceful .. festivals"; it merely has to be better than most of the others for that to be true.

(I have no idea whether it is true. Never been.)

Agree.

Anytime you have large groups of people (in certain circumstances) things are going to happen. As you noted w/o statistics it's hard to draw a conclusion as far as the risk. Similar to when you hear about things happening on cruise ships. They do but statistically chance is extremely small.

Also things like this:

"Reno. Joseph Pred, Burning Man's Emergency Services Operations Chief confirmed, "Rape kits do not exist in Black Rock City. Forensic exams are incredibly complex issues that have to do with the court system and are not something that is really easily taken on. In Northern Nevada, there is only one facility that does that type of exam."

I found this curious, so I contacted a hospital in Northern Nevada and asked if rape kits were only done in specific facilities. A charge nurse in the ER said that when a person is brought in for rape, they are instructed by law enforcement to conduct a special exam and it can be done in any hospital in Northern Nevada."

So we have one person saying one thing and another person saying another thing. At least the person making the first comment is named. The 2nd is just "charge nurse in the ER".

I'm a BRC Ranger.

I can't comment on anything that happens on Playa, but the thing to keep in mind is that BRC is a city. If it happens in your home town, it happens there too. We take incidents such as rape very seriously. Any sexual assault, domestic violence, or unwanted assault, we will work with law enforcement and contact the appropriate authorities.

Participants should feel safe. If a participant wants to feel danger, there are plenty of ways that can legally happen too, if that is the desire of the participant. Sexual assault is not a gray area though. It is something the event absolutely goes out of the way to protect the victim.

If you feel that you are the victim of sexual assault, please find a BRC Ranger and let one of us know.

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