The Glade 4.0

People who used Federal services, bought land from the Federal Government or who bought lottery tickets.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The minority is still cleaning up...

/rimshot

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In time, this too shall pass.

Who cares if they want the police there? **** the protestors. The police are there to protect everyone else from a bunch of idiots that think their grievances give them the right to take over and destroy whatever the hell they want.

As for politicians wanting to "squelch protests", that's got nothing to do with it. Protests in this country tend to piss off as many people as they gain sympathy from mainly because people in this country mostly realize we have it pretty good, and most protestors these days are either spoiled brats or living in a complete fantasy world even if there are notes of truth to their compliants.

I don't agree with charging to protest, but I do agree with holding protestors accountable, and dealing with this sense of entitlement that "freedom of assembly" has created that amounts to "as long as I don't throw molotov cocktails I have the right to do whatever the **** I want just because I'm a protestor." PEaceable assembly does not just mean "not engaging in over rioting", it means "allowing everyone else to go about their business, and not creating a gigantic mess for everyone else to clean up."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So in effect these rules will only allow well funded and organized groups of people to protest.

Meaning basically only corporations, PACS, Unions, or those sponsored by corporations will be able to secure the necessary permits, bonds, etc. to protest. Boy talk about the law of unintended concequences eh?


Sorry Scott you're going too far-

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Hey ****. This has nothing to do with free speech. Guess what? "Freedom isn't free" means if you want to **** protest, you clean up your mess afterwards. "Freedom isn't free" does not mean "I get to stick everyone else with the bill for my tantrums."

Go someplace that doesn't have freedom of speech if you don't like it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, they've been doing a great job of that.

And again I ask, who gets to dictate how many police are "needed" (i.e. paid for)?

Actually, they have. OWS's claims of "brutality" are almost entirely based on their own carefully-selected evidence.

Who decides how many police are needed are the police. Just like the military decides and tells the President how many troops are needed for a given operation. I don't know who else you think would be qualified to decide such matters. If the mayor or governor thinks it too many he can tell them to back off.

Just because you can put quotations around "needed" doesn't mean they aren't.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure, they're "needed." Just like 20 Teamsters are "needed" to do the job of one person. And getting paid $50 an hour to boot! I'm sure they'd only put the minimum number of police "needed." Just like the governor against whom the protest is levied will tell them to back it down so as to provide the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to petition for a redress of grievances against him, rather than use this to hamstring the ability of protestors to protest.

And outside of the photos, news reports, first-hand accounts, and other evidence, I can see how the claims of brutality by the OWS protestors could be exaggerated.

Just because you have a vested interest in unchecked authoritarianism doesn't mean it's morally or (particularly in this case) legally justified.

Have fun, I'm done.

+ 1 million billion.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

A) If you want to assume all protests are directed against governors, and that all politicians are indeed willing to simply cast aside any and all pretense of principle just because of a protest
B) They are, in fact, needed. In fact,t he more police you have at a protest the better because it's a lot harder for agitators to convince people they can overwhelm the police presence and go start looting and burning cars, or even just throwing a few rocks. The object is not to keep it to some absolute minimum; it's to make sure there's adequate numbers for control of a riot, either started by the protestors, or started by people antagonizing the protestors. The more police are there, the sooner any riot gets controlled, and the fewer people get hurt.

This all has to be done while meeting all the other responsibilities the department has to deal with, and the number of police available doesn't just magically increase. That means a lot of overtime, and while $50 an hour might be nice, working 7 days a week for 16 hours a day because you need a hundred extra guys for a protest is not a lot of fun.

But, since you've decided to latch on to this imaginary idea that police presence isn't needed to prevent protests from getting out of hand and rioting in your extensive experience as a web designer, maybe we can just dispense with the cops at protests can call out the National Guard to deal with them. Soldiers don't get overtime, so we can just eliminate this silly little pretension that it's about police unions and overtime that way.



Oh, you mean the photos, first hand accounts, and videos taken by OWS members themselves? Yeah, that's some great "evidence". I mean, nothing like a 45-second cell phone video that just happens to show someone getting pepper sprayed, but not anything else. I mean, how fortuitous that it just happened to catch such outrageous brutality! It's not like OWS protestors would ever carefully select what photos and videos to put out there, or ever give an exaggerated, biased, or even outright false account, now would they? No, of course not! They're not the police so they must be telling the truth, right?

Of the incidents I've looked at so far, maybe 10-15% looked like they would have a chance of standing up to an impartial investigation.



Just because you have a beef with the police for no reason other than your own obvious bigotry does not mean that it's somehow morally or legally justified to let protestors run unchecked through the streets damaging the property of other citizens and interfering as they go about their business. But then, that's really not important, is it, as long as you can show how cool and rebellious you are by complaining about "authoritarianism." Since it's such a concern to you, at the next protest let's just send all the cops home and issue every store owner a shotgun.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If you're a total retard, maybe. It's amazing how the rights of everyone else to use the streets and have their property protected disappear when the issue can be portrayed as "anti-authoritarian".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If you don't toss in your buck-oh-five, who will?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Using what standard of reasonable / appropriate force, though DE? I agree that by current police use-of-force protocols, most of the incidents probably are legitimate, but my objection is to those protocols themselves. As we've discussed before, there's been a steady SWATification of police tactics and attitudes from the 60s onward, prompted, I believe, by the mass protests of the 60s, followed by the crime and urban decay of the 70s, the drug wars of the 80s and 90s, to some extent the WTO nonsense in the 90s, and now the post-9/11 security culture. Regarding the use of less/non-lethal weapons in particular, I read an interesting article the other day (can't find it now, but will link it if I do) noting a study that showed cops who carry pepper spray and/or tasers are significantly more likely to use force (usually, but not always, including the use of said pepper spray and/or tasers) than cops who don't carry them. Some hypothesized reasons for that difference (some in the article; some my own) are (i) department standards that permit the use of the spray/taser as a compliance tool against suspects that are refusing commands or passively resisting; (ii) the "every problem looks like a nail to a man holding a hammer" phenomenon; (iii) officers' belief that the spray/taser was preferable to hands-on tactics because of the lower risk of injury to both the subject and the officer; and (iv) the lower risk and decreased effort for the officer compared to hands-on tactics eliminated a natural check on the officers' use of force.

The upshot of all that is that for many/most police departments today, the standard operating procedure is to use pepper spray and/or tasers (not to mention paramilitary home incursions for drug warrants!) in situations that likely wouldn't have resulted in such use 10 or 20 years ago; and much of the general public isn't comfortable with that.

I think the increase in use of these items by police is due to their being insulated from the repercussions , as well as the idea that they can avoid other types of lawsuits by using them. A bit of a catch 22. Also I think administrations feel that these mechanical devices allow single officers to deal with situations that used to require backup. Maybe the idea that their ranks are stretched thin puts the idea in the officers head that they must use "the hammer" instead of looking for a more appropriate tool?

Id really like to read the article.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Using the current standard. That is the standard they must be judged by. You cannot just say "well, yeah, they're perfectly fine by present standards, but by some other undefined standard that isn't currently in use they wouldn't be ok therefore they aren't".

Also, don't use the word "protocols". That's hollywoodish. Hollywood loves to call anything sinister that its fake police and military do a "protocol". No one talks like that in real life.



This really doesn't make any sense. SWAT is for entering buildings. Riot police tactics have absolutely nothing to do with any supposed "SWAT-ification". To the degree that any such change has taken place in building-entry tactics, it has been driven by the War on Drugs (which is definitely a mistaken approach to drug problems, but a sidebar at this point) and it has been counterbalanced by the advent of the concept of Community Policing, which is utterly ignored by those looking for a reason to complain about police tactics, and by the press in favor of the glamor and saleability of creating a stink over tactics developed to deal with heavily-armed drug dealers.

Neither one has the first thing to do with riot tactics. Moreover, what is and isn't reasonable force is ultimately dictated by the courts in cases such as Graham v. Connor, not by developments in police tactics.



What do you mean by "use force"? Significantly more likely than what? The only way this conclusion can be reached is if pepper spray and TASERS are "using force" but open hand techniques are.. not. Use of force includes everything from pressure points to lethal force, and trying to limit the definition to the narrow band of pepper spray and TASERs tells me right off the bat that the article is either written by someone ignorant or is trying to create a certain impression with misuse of terminology.



So? There's nothing wrong with any of those reasons for the use of TASERs or pepper spray except the "every problem looking like a nail" one, which is blatantly preposterous. These same officers carry batons, their hands, and of course, guns as well, so their only tool is quite clearly NOT a "hammer" (TASER/spray). By that logic, they should just be shooting everyone.

The fact is that passive resistance is resistance, and is a valid reason to use force. It is not ok to resist arrest because you're being nice about it. While it is not acceptable to pepper spray someone right off the bat for passive resistance (and you will find NO use of force policy that allows that, and the fact that this article asserts that they do instantly calls its credibility into question, it IS acceptable to pepper spray a passive resister after other means have failed.

What's really appalling in the case of OWS, is that OWS knows this. Therefore they engage in some passive resistance that looks "peaceful" on camera, and get sprayed. Never mind that they were violating the law, obstructing people from using the sidewalk, blocking businesses, or shitting all over the place or whatever (there are far too many incidences to address each) wait until they get pepper sprayed, and VIOLA! Intant YouTube propaganda!. All that time that they were resisting will never make it onto YouTube, only the 45 seconds or so of pepper spray will. Then they'll talk about how they're "peaceful", totally disregarding the fact that they were still breaking the law. Simply being a peaceful protest does not mean you can do anything you want. Shoplifters are "non-violent" criminals; that does not mean its ok to shoplift.

[quote[The upshot of all that is that for many/most police departments today, the standard operating procedure is to use pepper spray and/or tasers (not to mention paramilitary home incursions for drug warrants!) in situations that likely wouldn't have resulted in such use 10 or 20 years ago; and much of the general public isn't comfortable with that.[/quote]

A) The farther back in time you go the less available TASERs and spray were. Clearly, they would be used less
B) The paramilitary nature of the tactics used in drug raids and hostage situations is both irrelevant to the current issue, and a non-issue in itself. They will go away when politicians stop demanding the police enforce a "war on drugs" that demands them. They are not remotely germane to riot tactics
C) So what if they wouldn't have been used in the past? In many of those cases in the past, the result would have been an ass-beating rather than TASERing or pepper spray.
D) The public is not allowed, and should not be allowed, a direct say in what is and isn't reasonable use of force. The public is, for the most part, utterly incompetent to decide such matters. That is why we have courts. The only say of the public should be in electing the officials that appoint the judges that decide such matters.

The public regularly decides something is "excessive" based on emotion, bigotry, and irrelevancy. I suspect strongly that if you showed the same use of force in the same situation you would receive different average public reaction based on whether the subject was white or blac, and whether the officer was white or black, to say nothing of other factors.

The courts have ruled that such matters must be taken from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, not just any person, and must take into account that the officer must make decisions based on limited information in an extremely limited timeframe. The public wants to be able to sit at home and look at a YouTube video taken from a totally different perspective than the officer's , when they are in no danger of being shot, stabbed, hit, or bitten, replay it over and over and discuss how "oh but X happened at 00:45 into the video!" and expect the officer to have made his decisions as if he were in that comfortable detached situation and not to disagree with their emotional impressions and predjudices.

That's why people get so up in arms when you call a video into question. The public thinks video shows everything and makes the observer an infalliable judge. The public is a bunch of hypocrites.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The police are not "insulated from the reprecussions" at all. What police are insulated from is being held responsbible for the decisons of others'. If their superiors put out a policy, the individual officer should not be held responsible if that results later in them using the device in accordance with that policy. An officer should be immune from a suit in such a situation, especially in a society that encourages lawsuits simply to get rich. If a court previously decided a particular use is acceptable, officers should not be penalized for adhereing to that decision.

Complaints to the contrary demonstrate that for a great many people it isn't about fairness or a consistent system of law at all, it's about the desire to see their own bigotry engrained in the way things are done. Anyone who wears a uniform is just an "authoritarian" and it's ok to dispense with all basic precepts of justice if it satisfies the thirst for blood.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Horseshit. Policy doesn't exempt you from criminal prosecution in any other line of work, and police are in no way special.

Every time we have one of these conversations I walk away thinking the only thing that could possibly change the shitty willingness of cops to do harm and over assert themselves is more dead cops. It certainly isn't preferable, or even desirable, but I'm really getting to the point where I don't think there's any other sort of solution.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

The problem is police officers, by the nature of their job, are less able to rely on the Fourth Amendment to protect themselves from the federal and state bureaucracies. What was the statistic? The average person commits three federal crimes per day? Because everyone is a "criminal," The Fourth Amendment is the only thing that keeps the government from imprisoning whomever it wants whenever it wants because they need to have probable cause before they can do anything. Well, police officers, due to the nature of their work, are under immense public scrutiny, have no expectation of privacy while working, and are constantly under surveillance which makes obtaining probable cause easy. On top of that, there are plenty of prosecutors that would love to score points by nailing as many "corrupt" cops as they possibly can. If you take their qualified immunity away it becomes impossible for them to do their jobs because there will be plenty of people who would go out and tape cops 24/7 until they commit some violation that they didn't even know about and then go and try to get them prosecuted.

That is an argument for having less idiotic laws Xeq, not for removing qualified immunity which literally creates a separate class of the public.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

To bring this back somewhat more to the original topic:



Let me refine the question: Specifically how is it to be decided at the time of application, how many police will be needed for a given protest? What information is used to make this decision?

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Protests involve walking on public land thats been cultivated and maintained by public servants, who are all paid with tax dollars. It is not out of line to charge a fee to all protesters. If there were protesters nonstop, Id be very frustrated at their costly presence. The Occupy movement for example has cost cities nationally multiple millions of dollars. Not to mention, they block the movements of non protesters with street congestion.

Obviously the solution is to make every protest "spontaneous."

For the most part, police officers have no idea how the general public views them; and, the general public has no idea what police officers actually do. Of course, we could probably get past this problem if police officers figured out they're customer service employees first.

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Huzzah the man! I completely agree, at least that's the result I'm counting on.



Agree again about the mistaken approach, but I worry about the tactics developed to deal with heavily armed drug dealers having bled over into use against less formidable suspects.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko