The Glade 4.0

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/9847



How many times do you need to be told to move before you get moved?

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Holy shitsnacks!

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

Hit ctrl + F. Type in "assemble." Read each passage where the word appears. Consider the phrase "unlawful assembly" in light of what you find in that link.

There was a lot of tough talk during the Bush administration about disagreeing with what people said and defending to the death their right to say it. I guess some of us didn't actually mean that, did we?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hmm... You have a point.

If they were peacable, sure. The cops went in to remove the illegally pitched tents, did so, and were prevented from leaving until they "Let them go". Them being those that were arrested for resisting the removal of the tents.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I could only watch about a third of that video before the Occupy protesters started to annoy me. In that time, I didn't see anyone throw any rocks. The loudest comments were things such as, "You don't have to do this, officers." That was a peaceful assembly. Context changes nothing. Those officers maced peaceful protesters who were sitting on the ground. There is no context which makes that acceptable.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yeah there is. The protesters surrounded the cops and said they would only release them if the cops let the arrested ones go. The protesters on the ground were told several times that they would be subject to use of force if they did not move. The cops then waited for backup to arrive, and made a display of taking out their pepper spray bottles, shaking them theatrically.

At that point, that's like your dad taking his belt off. The protesters were warned yet again, and as a final result, were sprayed.

Seeing the whole event instead of just "cop pepper sprays nonviolent students" leads me to a different conclusion. The police showed a great deal of restraint and professionalism in dealing with these douchebags. Noone was shot, noone was tasered, noone was beaten with sticks. A few idiots got pepper sprayed for impeding the police in the pursuit of their duty.

I'm ok with that.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Really? You're ok with cops using pepper spray simply to force compliance even in the absence of any threat to the safety of officers or the public? (No, a bunch of college students linking arms and sitting on the ground while others chant slogans at you is not a credible threat to safety. And there's nothing in the body language of those cops to suggest they felt it was.)

Creating a disturbance, unlawful assembly and refusal to stop blocking what looks to be a thoroughfare and all they get is mace?

I considered that getting off easy and applaud the use of non-lethal force. Had they thrown in a few "wack-a-mole"s on the protestors, I'd have been OK with that too. Now, if the cops had drawn their weapons and shot a few of the idiots, that would have been going too far.

Sometimes you just need to get people's attention. Looks like this was one of those times.

Don't want to get maced? Get your *** up off the street and assemble somewhere else. Hell, there wasn't anything preventing the idiots from just getting up, running 200 feet down the road and plopping their asses back down again, wash, rinse, repeat. They got what they were looking for.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You're conflating the enforcement function of the police with the punitive function of the courts, Taskiss. You disapprove of the protestors' behavior and feel they deserved some punishment, so you feel it's ok for the cops to get a little rough with them. That's not the proper function of the cops in our system of due process.

Yes. I am.

The cops weren't telling them that they couldn't protest, just that they needed to stop impeding them from doing their duty.

"We'll let you go when you let our friends go" implies threat to me.

Those little **** got off easy. A little pepper spray in the face is better than the *** whipping they deserved.

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Holy shitsnacks!

No, I'm looking at their level of resisting an order to move vs. the amount of effort used by the police to enforce that order.

Your politics is showing.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The protesters were preventing the police from performing their lawfully appointed duties. The cops had other places to be and more important things to do than get boxed in by a bunch of people getting their rocks off on standing up to the man.

As was pointed out, given this, they showed quite a bit of patience and restraint.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So, if it was a bunch of Buddhist monks blocking the sidewalk in front of the Chinese embassy to protest the occupation of Tibet, or some retirees blocking the sidewalk in front of the SS Administration to protest benefit cuts, or (drawing from history) Martin Luther King and others blocking the sidewalk in front of an Alabama courthouse to protest Jim Crow laws, you'd be equally fine with the cops using force to obtain compliance? The political views and personal characteristics of the protestors and your estimation of the legitimacy of their complaints are completely irrelevant to you when it comes to the use of force? And, more to the point, you think the political views, personal characteristics and legitimacy of the protestors would be completely irrelevant to the cops' decision about whether, when and how to use such force?

The context does change everything.

Sorry boxing in the cops until they submit to your demands was a stupid move on the part of the protestors. I mean seriously, the protestors escalated that situation needlessly.

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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

Sit your *** down on the road in front of me when I have places to be and just watch how much I care about whatever political view you're espousing.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The major difference is that these protestors were detaining the police until their demands were met. I can walk around a sidewalk protest. If that sidewalk protest surrounds me until I listen to them- they are using force to keep me there and there is an implied threat if I resist.

We covered a similar situation where the car ran over the protestors who were banging on its Hood.

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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

RD, what those protesters did was stupid. Now, no matter how sympathetic one can find themselves being on the "why" they were doing what they were doing, the "how" of it was stupid, and I don't see you getting much traction arguing that stupid shouldn't hurt.

I'm a big believer in "stupid should hurt".

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In time, this too shall pass.

I agree that what the protestors did was stupid, and I agree that it's legitimate for there to be consequences for that stupidity. What I take issue with is (i) the view that the cops are the legitimate authority for doling out those consequences; and (ii) the cops use of force (other than the "force" that is incidental to arresting someone) as a compliance tool when there is no reasonable threat to officer or public safety.

Peaceably is not synonymous with peacefully. The Constitution guarantees the former, not the latter. Unfortunately for all of the police officers involved, the protest as shown in that video is peaceable. Of course, none of that matters because Congress and the Courts have vacated almost the entirety of the First Amendment already.

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Main Entry: peace·able Pronunciation: \pē-s-bl\Function: adjective Date: 14th century 1 a : disposed to peace : not contentious or quarrelsome b : quietly behaved 2 : marked by freedom from strife or disorder — peace·able·ness noun — peace·ably \-blē\ adverb

Ill let folks decide for themselves.

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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

Yeah, they were both of those.

Especially when a few douchebags started chanting "F tha police"

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Holy shitsnacks!

Maybe when you stop reading the Constitution with a contemporary dictionary, you'll actually understand the legal difference between those two words.

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The cops didn't dole out consequences, in my opinion. They used the minimum amount of force necessary to get compliance with their obligation to remove protesters from the thoroughfare, and I see that as a matter of public safety. They were blocking a public road, and on a scale of one to "running with scissors", that's off the scale.

Khross, I don't see the protestors complying with your definition of "peaceable"... what does your non-contemporary dictionary have to say about "trespass"?

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In time, this too shall pass.

The cops were not doling out "consequences". As for using force as a "compliance tool" that's how you effect an arrest when the person won't comply. You're contradicting yourself; what you're saying above is that it's ok for the police to use force to make an arrest, but not to "gain compliance", when the whole point of gaining compliance is to make an arrest. In the case of protests, it's also to disperse the protest since it's generally not possible to arrest each and every protest.

There does not need to be a threat to the officer or public safety to make an arrest of a person who is violating the law and yet is not actually threatening anyone. If you go to someone's house to arrest them for stealing and they simply refuse to get off the couch, you do not just have to let them si there indefinitely because they are not actually attacking you or anyone else. You use compliance techniques, and if that doesn't work, pepper spray or a TASER.

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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."

According to the definition of peaceable you posted, it isn't. If you are blocking a public thoroghfare or highway, you are using force to prevent people from lawful use of it. It might or might not also be trespass, since while any member of the public has a right to be on the public streets, they do not have the right to do whatever the **** they want there regardless of the consequences to everyone else.

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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, actually there is.

Just having a peaceful protest does not mean you can do whatever you want. You still have to comply with other laws. In fact, a protest that violates other laws is questionably of "peaceful" or "peaceable" nature at all, regardless of whether it's "violent".

If the protestors were otherwise engaged in unlawful conduct, and the police went to arrest them, that is perfectly fine. If the protestors would not comply with the arrest, it is acceptable to use a minimal amount of force to arrest them, and excalate to a higher level of force if that is not acceptable (within reason, clearly it is not acceptable to shoot them.)

So yes, it absolutely is acceptable.

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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."