RangerDave wrote:
One of these women, DE?
They're not throwing rocks or bottles. They're just standing there, behind the netting, and the cop walks up and pepper sprays the group. That's assault. Sure, there was lots of chaos generally, and blah, blah blah. But if dude can't keep his **** together, he needs to find a new job. And in the meantime, he needs to be prosecuted for assault.
Ok, first of all they are not just standing there behind the netting, they're trying to push it back; you can see the cops in the blue trying to keep it in place. The supervisor (that's why he's in a white shirt) shows up and sprays. If they were being told to move becuase they were blocking people or for some other reason, and were sprayed because they didn't comply, no, it's not assault then either. Just because they aren't engaged in a violent riot does no mean they get to stand there and refuse to move, or try to shove the netting out of the way. I'm not interested in another long-ass back and forth about use of force policies; the fact of the matter is that you don't really know what's happening there, you're just taking what's being fed to you by the guy that edited in all the little white prompts at face value because you
want him to have just walked up and sprayed them for no reason.
Quote:
More generally, go on You Tube and just watch some of the videos of how the NYPD has handled the protestors. There are more than enough examples of cops taking a quick baton shot or whatever at guys being smart asses (which is not illegal, even if it is rude) or who happen to be standing next to someone who's being a smart ***, cops running their scooters into crowds, etc.
According to you, that's what's happening. I'm not likely to trust what someone decided to slap on YouTube as the whole story in any of those cases, especially given how large the protests are and how little the camera can capture at any one time. You're assuming that's what's happening, and it may be in some cases, but for damn sure not all of them. I'm absolutely certain, however, that this huge crowd of people is just being perfectly nice and peaceful and it's
just being a loudmouth. After all, no one would
ever selectively put videos on YouTube, would they?
More importantly, the fact that there are YouTube videos of supposed assaults by the cops in NYC does not mean that the police, in general, are most likely to be assaulting OWS protestors. There aren't going to be many videos of the reverse because it's for the most part OWS protestors taking the videos and selecting the ones they want on YouTube to make themselves look better.
Furthermore, NYC is just ONE city where this is taking place. Apprently in Baltimore the police union asked the city to extend the protest permit, and in Cleveland they were giving the protestors blankets.
Let's not try to dress up our preconcieved notions and assumption-laden video analysis as any sort of realistic probability assessment of who is likely to assault who, shall we? Riots are **** dangerous, and frightening to try to control; if you think there's really very many cops that actually want to have to deal with one, you've lost your mind, and going up and spraying or batoning people for no reason is a good way to provoke one.