After watching this video of the events at UC Davis, I can only conclude that the police are cowards and thugs. THe only lesson they’re teaching is that we can’t trust them, and they’re not on the people’s side.
There is something worse, though. Ann Coulter has weighed in on the OWS movement, and she has an answer for UC Davis:
Remember the lesson from my book: It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.
Without any hint that the irony registered, she also made this comment.
I guess it’s fun to destroy stuff. As they found out during the French Revolution, it’s lots of fun to just start randomly murdering people – this is the way it always is with mobs.
Coulter is the one advocating random murder. She is a creature beyond the pale: I would hope the media would finally see the light and ostracize her, but I don’t expect it to happen. Especially in a Breitbartian world where eliminationist rhetoric is something to be giggled over.
(via Charles Pierce)
(NOTE: As is usual when I mention Coulter, if you can’t focus on the hate and stupidity in her words, and instead dump a load of sexist, misogynist comments here, I will delete your words and in extreme cases will ban you.)
THere’s an interview over at Boing Boing with one of the students who was sprayed
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/20/ucdeyetwitness.html
It is disheartening and infuriating to see how police all over are reacting to OWS. I can’t say I’m surprised that Coulter is gleefully jumping all over this, she takes any opportunity to say the most loathsome things.
PZ:
I see no basis for calling them cowards; the only justification for that I can see is that you want to bad-mouth them.
I was sickened by this video and have been tweeting about it for the past couple of days. Just read that the police who sprayed (I guess the primary culprit, plus someone else) have been put on leave…read in open letter written by English prof (written to Chancellor) that the police even pried open the mouths of some protestors and sprayed the pepper chemicals DOWN THEIR THROATS.
Coulter is insane and dangerous; thank you for shedding light on her antics.
It is making me crazy that some people still refuse to see the barbarism and inhumanity here, and rather just attack the OWS protestors…
In contrast the media is ignoring the local OWS, and so it seems to be petering out. There’s a lesson here.
And yet, if a Tea Bagger rally had gotten the Kent State treatment, Coulter would be screaming for the shooter’s heads on a pole–literally.
About the video, the creepiest thing is the seeming nonchalance of the cop–he looks like he’s watering the plants, not indulging in chemical warfare.
her only objective is to keep her name in the forefront and sell more books to all the assholes who eat her shit up. While we can’t resist justified criticism of her vile opinions in the end we only boost her book sales.
John:
I consider it cowardly to attack those who are doing no harm, it’s cowardice to do such a thing and then claim ‘prevention’ or any other excuse.
Honestly I don’t know why anyone mentions Coulter. She is clearly a troll who just shouts ridiculous things to get attention. I can find 1000s of idiots saying outrageous and absurd things like that online, why is she special again?
Not only that, but they are wearing riot gear while they assault unarmed, peaceful protesters.
WTF
Are you out of your gourd?
Attacking unarmed people peacefully sitting in protest is nt cowardly?
So can my friends and I just sit in the middle of the highway by my home? What if we just simply not respond to direct police orders while will hiding our hands from the sight of officers? Police can’t use force when we refuse to Obey the law because we are “Protesting”, right?
I’m glad we live in America! The land where we all believe we can break the law as long as we give our movement a name. -sarcasm
_____________
If you were a police officer that was facing a dozen people who were disobeying direct orders, and were hiding complete parts of their body (The possibility exists that any one of them Could have had a concealed weapon), would You have walked over and started arresting people one-by-one (without pepper spraying)? That’s a scary situation to be in.
THIS. A thousands times over.
She’s a professional troll.
artymart:
Not so. The people who listen to and buy Coulter’s books are a specific subset. People who find her viewpoints disgusting aren’t going to run out and buy her books just so they can read more of it. There’s more than enough material online for those who might be curious.
There is zero reason to be quiet about the utter crap she spreads around.
I really dislike the use of “coward” as an insult for people who do bullying, thuggish deeds. The only justification for it is that it gets under the skin of the bullies and thugs.
These police are criminal, sadistic torturers. As a rule, I do not feel safer around police.
NA:
Provide evidence for those weapons, please. C’mon, let’s hear something valid for once.
I don’t, it’s not a brave at to prey on unarmed peaceful people.
It’s taking advantage of your power and using it against those without that power.
Cowardly.
Mattir, their actions are cowardly. A coward will often strike first and do it when a person is off guard. That’s a coward’s way.
@Newtonian Astronomer uh really? because we actually do have a right to nonviolent protests. The students didn’t do anything to provoke being pepper sprayed. They were just sitting there. They could have been arrested for refusing the vacate the premises. I wouldn’t be complaining if they were just picked up and cuffed and taken to jail, but they did absolutely nothing to deserve to be pepper sprayed, point blank by a military grade pepper spray which is intended to be used 15 feet away THREE TIMES IN SUCCESSION. It’s police brutality, plain and simple.
“I consider it cowardly to attack those who are doing no harm, it’s cowardice to do such a thing and then claim ‘prevention’ or any other excuse.”
Calmy refusing to pull over to the side of the road when a cop is behind you with his lights on does “no harm” too.
The fact it isn’t harming people doesn’t make the police’s Pit-Manuever to my car wrong.
You’re a scary individual. When in doubt, excessive force is the proper path, right?
[OT]
Caine,
Then you’re just plain wrong; cowardice doesn’t mean unwarranted aggression, it means lack of courage.
If any cowardice can be applicable, it would be that they feel it’s wrong but fear to object and thus face penalties or lose their jobs
The police on the ground are just doing their job; any such cowardice is on the part of their commanding officers.
—
(You might as well claim the US armed forces are cowards)
—
Alethea:
(Sigh)
Did I miss something about the new definition for cowardly? What is cowardly about attacking people? You may not need to be courageous to attack people sitting peacefully, but it does not make you a coward when you attack them.
*facepalm* This is one of the reasons why I consider you to be stupid, Caine. Is it cowardly to punch a punching bag? After all, the bag isn’t going to harm you back. Even though John Morales is a moron for complaining about PZ badmouthing cops who exhibited super asshole cop behavior he is right that their attack is not a cowardly action.
Shitty analogies for 1000 alex
Sitting peacefully protesting isn’t the same as driving a 2 ton weapon.
And before you say, they could have a weapon, show they do and or have shown they do possess one.
Your default response is one of violence.
Coulter’s advocation of murder to quell protest is disgusting. Unfortunately, I don’t doubt that there are quite a few people who would agree with her, all the while proclaiming how “free” we are compared other nations.
LOL, this is all so predictable, everyone with half a brain would see it coming after hundreds of unwarranted tazer incidents.
You basically got lazy thugs for a police, the key word being “lazy”, that’s why they use tazers and pepper sprays so much.
And please don’t be so idiotic as to say that those cops are just a few bad apples, that doesn’t make any sense since they all act in packs, if no one is stopping bad apples it means they are all bad apples.
Are you really this twisted? Yes if fucking right does.
Is it brave for an armed thug to attack and unarmed person walking down the street?
You’re another twisted motherfucker.
Ok, John and I posted about the same time. So we resolved the oh so very important issue with definitions John, perhaps we all can now STFU about this stupid and extremely minor point? Perhaps we can focus on the complete wrongness of the cops’ actions? How about it? You’re a smart guy who doesn’t want to waste his time, no sense getting bogged down in useless tangents, right?
Pathetic fallacy; punching bags are not animate.
Newtonian Astronomer@12, The possibility exists that the cops could be hit by a meteor. So what? Why aren’t they hunkered down in an underground bunker then? I think they just get their jollies assaulting peaceful protesters.
Also, It looked like there were more police (thugs in full riot gear) than there were protesters on the ground.
“Provide evidence for those weapons, please. C’mon, let’s hear something valid for once.”
It is not the police’s obligation to put themselves in danger to find a weapon on a perp. That is THE reason they have people walk backwards out of cars and spread their legs. Because the MUST assume that Everyone has a weapon.
Because That’s how you make it home Alive. These “cowards” face dangerous situations Everyday for the good of you and I.
I say it take much more mental robustness to not use the easy way out, force, against an unarmed and in all aspects peaceful protester and instead deal with it using your intellect.
Violence is the easy way out in this situation.
And cowardly.
Why don’t they just pepper spray them first.
moron
Brave? YOU IMBECILE. Not cowardly equals brave? Either you are one or the other? LOL! Are you really this dumb? I thought we skeptics had nuance – you apparently do not. Read the last few posts you moron. Words have meanings, use them properly. There are 1000s of adjectives you can give to these asshole cops, but calling them cowards is inaccurate.
Being a sociopathic jerk doesn’t make you a coward, no. The rest who stood buy, afraid to serve and protect the unarmed and peaceful students from an armed and illegal assailant, were in fact cowards.
And we’ve trusted the police before this? I’ve not trusted them for years.
(Damn mouse,)
Pathetic fallacy; punching bags are not animate.
Humans beings certainly are; they are living, breathing things that can think and feel pain. Being sapient, they can also choose not to resist violently in the face of aggression.
When responding to non-aggression with excessive violence, while in ownership of weaponry both lethal and less lethal, not to mention body armour and a dozen equally armed people behind you, to subdue peaceful protesters?
Yes, that is cowardly. That is the very definition of a coward; someone who attacks the helpless.
And animate matters because? The sentence I was responding to equated cowardly with attacking anything that is causing no harm. This of course has nothing to do with the dictionary definition of cowardly, and is an absurd and stupid way of considering what is and is not cowardly. So I gave a hypothetical which demonstrated how bogus the non-dictionary definition of cowardly is.
Yes they sure fucking do
Using violence instead of dealing with the peaceful protesters is fucking cowardice. They took the easy way out instead of facing the danger, or not danger. They went to violence first instead of finding out the actual situation. The more difficult and lengthy thing to do would be to deal with the protestors instead of just spraying them knowing it would be over quickly.
Cowards.
Dumb fuck
No it isn’t you dumb fuck. We’re on the internet, go pull up the definition of cowardly and coward from all the main dictionaries, if you really want to keep discussing this minor and incredibly dumb point.
Or we can use lots of other accurate adjectives to discuss the cop’s behavior and move on.
srsly, did you watch the video? before the spraying a police officer just up and stepped over the line of protesters. have you ever been in a fight? taken a martial arts class? grown up with siblings? went to grade school with recess?
-if you think there is even a chance of someone being armed and dangerous, one of the last things you are going to do is up and expose your crotch to them (especially if you’ve got XY bits, but I still wouldn’t recommend it towards those with XX bits…)
that action alone invalidates any defense out of fear of weapons/resistance, and clearly shows that the police felt this group was posing absolutely no (physical) threat to them (which also goes to reinforce the appropriateness of the term ‘coward’)
How would you all go about arresting a dozen people who are huddled together and hiding parts of their bodies?
How would you do it?
If you would just start grabbing one-by-one and start “cuffing”, you are Irrational. That puts your life in uneccesarry danger. This is taught to EVER police officer. This is How they make it home alive after the days work.
True, they could have Easily checked for weapons! But the protestors did Not let them. They instead, sat there, unresponsive.
So, how would You all have arrested them?
ROFLOL @ the dumb fuck who cited this, yet neglected to realize what courage means:
So courage means without fear, if they were cowards they would have to be fearful. So I guess the cops were really scared of peaceful protestors? Instead of just being violent assholes?
You are so completely and utterly stupid that it just blows my mind.
Coward, N [ˈkauəd]
A person who shows fear easily or is easily frightened.
Human reaction to fear? Fight or flight.
In this case, fight. Dousing unarmed, non-violent protesters with pepper spray.
Coward.
That’s why I used words like “lazy thugs” instead of cowards..
Ah, yes. Everyone is a perpetrator. I should just arrest all of you in order to protect…wait, who are we protecting and serving? I forget.
Sincerely,
The Police State
P.S. Sorry about the pepper spray, it was for your own good.
aporeticus says:
DING. We have a winner! Why is this simple concept so hard for some people to grasp? Elsewhere on the internet, I would expect people being so dumb. Angrily dumb trying to defend their wrong conception of what certain words mean. But here? I thought we skeptics had more of a clue. Guess some of you are a lot dumber than I thought.
ummm… last I checked punching bags are incapable of feeling pain, unlike those people that those cowardly (yes I said cowardly) cops assaulted with pepper spray. Clearly what you were responding to really meant ‘anyone’ rather than ‘anything’ (“those who are doing no harm” – note the word ‘who’) and yes it is cowardly to attack other people who aren’t causing harm by dictionary definition. Couldn’t fail much harder than you already have there wishful, but we’ll see what else you have to pull out of your rectum.
First post! Here goes:
According to the boingboing interview with a student that was sprayed, linked by redartifice, those students were blocking some of the police from leaving by sitting on that walkway (the police were encircled.)
What would you have those police do? Stand there until the crowd decided to let them leave? Perhaps have the police walk over the sitting protesters and thus make them vulnerable? Pull the protesters away from the walkway without using the pepper spray? If the latter, they tried that. As you can see in the video, just prior to the spray being used an officer tried to pull a protester away, but they were obviously locking arms and thus couldn’t be pulled.
It looks like they were given fairly sufficient warning that they were about to be forcibly removed, and yet they defied the police. Now, maybe what the protesters were doing shouldn’t have been illegal (camping on campus, a violation of the school’s policy as indicated in the student’s interview linked above). Perhaps the protesters’ tents should be allowed. But the fact is that they are not. The protesters were in violation of the school’s policies (as I see it.) Consequently, the police were called to remove the tents.
Did the police use excessive force? Probably. But that isn’t to say that no force should be allowed at all. I think the police have the right to protect themselves. If that means using some force to insure that they are safe, then so be it. How are the police to know whether or not a crowd that has them encircled is going to become violent (however unlikely)? I know if I were an encircled police officer in that situation I’d be a little uneasy. It is in the officers best interest to leave the encirclement as soon as possible by using an appropriate amount of force.
What is an appropriate amount of force? I would say it is the minimally necessary force possible that still insures the safety of the police officers and, secondly, the people that the force is to be used on. What does that mean, though? That’s difficult to say exactly, and so mistakes will be made where the line is crossed on occasion.
Sure, the protesters are peaceful, but for how long will that last? The protesters do not have the right to detain the police — no matter how lame that method of detention is. According to the video and other accounts I’ve read, that is pretty much what they were doing.
All I’m saying is that it is much more complicated than simply saying that this is outright police brutality. At least, that’s the way I’m seeing at the moment. Thanks for reading my ramblings on the subject and feel free to point out errors. I’m sure there are plenty of grammatical errors alone.
HAHA, you fucking moron
They were fearful. The feared the protesters. That’s why gthey
fucking sprayed them instead of finding some other non-violent way to deal with them. They took the easy way out. A common thread of people who are scared.
You really are out of your league moron.
you can be a coward and a violent asshole as demonstrated by these
cowards
I think people are getting hung up over the semantics of the word cowardly. Its obvious the point PZ was making and its just plain stupid for people to get so worked up about this.
The police were entirely free to go around. As demonstrated by Pike, they could also neatly step over the line.
The police were not detained.
You moron! LOL. Let’s follow your retarded thought process. A coward is fearful (this is correct). When humans are fearful they fight or flight (pretty much correct). When someone attacks someone else, aka fights, they are fearful (incorrect and does not follow from your earlier premises) and since they are fearful they are cowards (also incorrect and does not follow from your earlier premises). You can be afraid and not be a coward, you can be fighting and not be afraid. The fact that you don’t realize this makes me sad. Dumb creationists I can handle, but dumb atheists… it pains me.
So yeah. Logic fail. And apparently schooling fail, since you never learned how to comprehend what you read, because even after reading the dictionary definitions, you still got this wrong.
It’s frustrating to see the inability of one person to understand that if others use a word in a way you may necessarily not, that does not render their use of the word incorrect if the use can still fall within the realm of the definition.
Yes, they fucking CAN be called cowards.
Stop right there you dumb fuck. Maybe they sprayed them because they enjoy hurting people. Maybe they get off on using their power. Maybe they were pissed off at the folks for making their job more annoying that day. There are plenty of reasons besides fear. Being afraid of non-violent protestors is actually the least likely and most absurd reason to explain their actions.
But doing the easy thing does not mean one is scared. Taking a shortcut across a neighbors lawn when going for a walk is easier, but I am not scared at anything for doing it. This argument you are putting forward is really quite pathetic.
You must be in constant pain from just existing.
Police like to stay in protective formations when moving amongst crowds as in this case, they couldn’t very easily do that via those methods.
Been saying this all along, and now I am going to take our advice.
*Goes to watch Dexter*
@43 Newtonian Astronomer: Try not to capitalize random words. After all the insane e-mails PZ gets, people around here see it as a prima facie sign of wingnuttery.
To address your actual argument, here’s the problem: If you authorize the police to use force in any case other than self-defense (see #42 specifically for why this case doesn’t count as that), then you’re in effect authorizing them to inflict severe pain and risk of injury (note that one person had an asthma attack and was hospitalized after this incident) to people who have not even been arrested, much less had a trial. In effect, it deprives people of their right to a fair trial, punishing them at the whim of cops.
Cops are humans, and so we should hope that they have the modicum of intelligence necessary to see the difference between a suspect who may be armed and dangerous and a protester adamantly engaging in non-violent resistance. The two situations require vastly different methods to handle them. For a case like this, if I were in the position of deciding what the cops should, my choice would be to wait them out. Humans can’t survive without water for long, and they’ll need to use the bathroom long before that point (though some may neglect leaving their position for this). They’ll have to move eventually to drink, at which point you can arrest them once the chain is broken. Just cover them with a few cops working in shifts, until their resolve breaks.
Of course, all the above assumes that they actually have broken some law which merits arrest. If they haven’t, then the cops shouldn’t be doing anything like that.
You know what’s cool? Heated semantics arguments, with both parties taking turns calling each other ‘dumb fucks’ over their failure to agree on a definition of a word.
Get over it, you dumb fucks.
“Ah, yes. Everyone is a perpetrator. I should just arrest all of you in order to protect…wait, who are we protecting and serving? I forget.
Sincerely,
The Police State
P.S. Sorry about the pepper spray, it was for your own good.”
Yes! The ONLY reason the police were called was because indeed, the protestors Were perpetrators. They were breaking school code and were ordered to leave. After they refused that order, they were trespassing, which IS against the law. The police were then called because the protestors Refused to stop trespassing.
John Morales:
You’ve gone over the edge. Can you even hear yourself? Ech. You just made me nauseated. Literally.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I’ve always been of the opinion that galloping misogyny is exactly what people like Coulter deserve. They want to turn back the clock? Great! As long as you’re fine with being gang-raped and then stoned to death for being such a whore. Hey, she’s clearly asking for it–look at that makeup! And those clothes look almost sensible–the strumpet!
I cannot believe what I’m reading here. “Disobeying direct orders.” The police would be “vulnerable” if they had to walk over protesters who refused to stand up.
What in bleeding fucking hell is wrong with you people?
Someone who was alive during Kent State and the Vietnam protests – please help me? Please tell me there were just as many stupid, unreflective authoritarian idiots who made these arguments back then? Please tell me we haven’t gotten even more comfortable with a police state?
@Newtonian Astronomer,
My comment wasn’t necessarily directed at you, although you did refer to the students as perps, which irked me. Maybe I’m not that good at satire, or maybe you’re not that good at recognizing it. Or both.
*shrugs and walks away*
Coulter’s vileness has nothing to do with her sex (although she likes to market herself as a right-wing sex symbol). It has everything to do with her utter lack of humanity.
Jonathan, you would have a good point if it were not for the collateral damage.
You know, I had a nice post written up for Wishful, but what’s the point.
You can’t argue with a 12 year old, especially over the internet.
[meta]
Josh:
Other than my literalness, I guess that I am more dispassionate about this than you, and I can conceive of ‘the police’ not just a monolithic entity that is just a tool of the State, but as the set of individuals that constitute it.
—
FWIW, I regret the results of my objection to PZ’s language in my #3, because it’s distorted this thread, and because I emphatically agree with his general sentiment.
I just watched the video – I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it until now. . .the still photographs were bad enough.
I’m crying out of rage and incomprehension. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
And that “set of individuals” all have the ability to disobey orders. They have the capacity to see those peaceful students not as meatbags to assault, but as people.
You’re seriously proffering the Nuremberg defense for these pigs John? That’s not dispassionate. It’s perverse.
And for clarification, my “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you” wasn’t aimed at you personally. But I’m reconsidering.
@WishfulThinking:
“You moron! LOL. Let’s follow your retarded thought process.”
Really?
So we’ve devolved into not only insults, but ableist insults over a minor quibble over the definition of a fucking word?
Who gives a fuck whether what these assholes did qualifies as cowardly or not? It was wrong, sickening, and a blatant abuse of power, and that’s really all that matters.
I feel this is directed at me. Though it’s probably just a rhetorical question. :/ Sorry if I’m a fucked up authoritative idiot. I don’t really intend to be. Perhaps instead of calling me that only, you could also tell me why I’m wrong?
I said that they probably used excessive force. I said that the protesters probably shouldn’t have even been in violation of a law. But they were. Police are very cautious when amongst big and angry crowds. Police (I think justifiably) must be prepared for if the crowd turns violent (as crowds sometimes do.) I think it is reasonable for police to insure that they remain a single cohesive unit, and that they stay in formation if they decide to do so. They could not stay in formation and remain protected from potential violence if they were to step over the protesters. Doing so would go against their training which is meant to keep them safe.
Watching the video makes be pissed off at the police. I think the crowd overall did a remarkable job in remaining peaceful (for most part, I have seen a video where some stuff looked like it was tossed at the group of police officers.) But generally I think that you should be smart and obey the police, (unless an obvious, extreme injustice is going on) especially when it is you who is in violation of the law. Remain peaceful, and try not to break the laws that we as a society have set up to keep the public health, peace, and quiet (within reason.)
“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice”
Confucius, Analects
Newtonian:
By your logic, every cop who pulls someone over for a speeding ticket can and should pepper spray the driver in the face, every time. After all, they are breaking the law, and about to get a ticket.
Even assuming that you are legally correct that the students were trespassing (which I do NOT admit), there is no _moral_ basis for the eviction.
Essentially, you and others like you seem to be saying: “People must submit to authority. Your right to free speech is secondary to authorities determining the mode of that speech. You should be harmed if you do not submit.”
I could not disagree more.
I can’t believe all the stupid comments being made here. To attack someone from a position of strength when the other is not offering violence is the very essence of cowardice. To define cowardice as only running from danger is wrong. In this case the police aren’t cowards, they are just following orders.
The claim that the police are concerned about concealed weapons is wrong. Please refer us to any sit-down protests where there were concealed weapons or that resulted in violence toward the police. The decision to use pepper spray was made to end the situation quickly with minimum effort.
As a rule, I do not feel safer around police.
I would add, that having lived in NZ for 3 years now, it is NOT the same here.
The cops do not rely on intimidation and fear for crowd control here.
It’s quite a refreshing change.
I highly recommend it.
Derick:
The fact that you think it’s worth your time to argue and plead on behalf of the cops who assualted students who did nothing other than “disobey direct orders”, and the fact that you think it’s even halfway reasonable to posit that refusing to move from a public space is sufficient provocation for police to spray pepper spray in these kids’ faces is what makes you an authoritarian asshole.
If you don’t know instinctively why that’s wrong there’s nothing I can do to explain it to you. Something’s direly wrong with your moral compass. Yeah, you should be upset with yourself. I find you frightening and every civilized person should.
Hey everyone one question for all of those on the pig’s side. If it’s alright to use the pepper spray because one might have a weapon, would it be alright to pepper spay you when you’re pulled over because you might have a weapon? Would it be alright if I used a stun gun on you and searched you for a weapon when you walk into my home?
Josh @ 64:
I was alive, and in college, during Kent State and the Vietnam protests.
There were just as many stupid, unreflective authoritarian idiots who made these arguments back then.
Most of them, though, made no pretense of being atheist, humanist, secular, progressive, or liberal.
Sorry. Can’t help you there.
By the time an obvious, extreme injustice is reached, it is too late. See throughout history the examples of people who stayed cowed and quiet and obedient, and what happened to them for it.
That the protesters are not resorting to violence even with this going on is remarkable, but it is important that they continue to disobey and show that they will not be herded and cowed.
Civil disobedience is necessary.
Every generation needs to learn this, it seems. Part of me almost does hope for another Kent State, because this time that shit will be broadcast all over the world within hours.
The founding fathers, whom the far right pretend to venerate but in whose faces they constantly spit (kinda like they do with Jesus, come to that…) had choice things to say about people like the greedy banksters and fascist thugs who run the show now.
mck9
Thank you, even if you can’t comfort me out of all my delusions. :)
I’m so angry right now I’m liable to throw dishes. Most especially angry at the fuckers in this thread. Liberal? Progressive? My ass. Boot-licking scum who’d sell anyone up the river to keep in the good graces of Big Daddy Cop.
Oh, I’d better take a walk.
Ichthyic: That must be rather nice. It seems that threats of violence and intimidation are the only way Police forces operate here in the U.S.
I had to find an example to show you guys:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/features/4553004/Defusing-tactics-pay-dividends
I live with an ex cop. “AWOCA” is how they focus on training cops here.
it is a total focus AWAY from confrontation, AWAY from using intimidation as a control mechanism.
this is the complete opposite of how cops were trained in L.A. in the 80s and 90s, which lead to the riots, and I think NOW some police departments in the States are finally looking at this kind of training, but obviously, they still have a fucking long way to go.
Who is Ann Coulter? Seriously, I’ve never heard of her, who is she?
Police work is a stressful business, and people can act out in all sorts of ways. Sometimes you do meet someone out to hurt you, and have to act to stop him and secure him.
I’ve seen the footage on the local news, and my take is, the cop in question went over the line. As long as the perp offers no clear threat, don’t over react. Now if he refuses to follow orders as you take him into custody, then you can act.
I’ve also heard that the officers in question are now under investigation.
It’s raining now, and I expect the local winter shelters will be going up soon. We’ll see how things go from here.
The fact is, the students were breaking the law. They were instructed to leave by authorities of the school, then when they refused the police were called. Again they were instructed to leave, by a police order. Obstructing this order is an additional crime. Police officers tried to detain students, but the students were interlocked arm in arm. The police, being unable to detain individuals decided to stop straying to desperate them one by one. Meanwhile, the police are encircled by a crowd growing further excited. Fearing that at any time the crowd could overtake the officers who were inside the circle, and after several refusals of direct orders, the police needed to end the protest quickly. They approached the students and advised them several times that they would be pepper sprayed. The students again refused to end their show of resistance to police. Police then pepper sprayed the students.
So, what’s the problem? You’re all saying that because they are protesting they have the right to do anything they want? Well ok then, if this is the America we live in, I’ll go “protest” in the middle of the highway with my friends and all hold arms making police unable to individually detain us. Oh and then we’ll bitch and moan when we’re pepper sprayed after 35 minutes of us refusing to obey the police. OH and then you know what we can do?! We can go sue the government and get rich, because isn’t that the American thing to do? If you’re poor just either complain about it, or sue someone, right? Yeah that makes sense.
in comparison…
all the protests here in Wellington have not had much police intervention at all, have been entirely peaceful, gotten decent media coverage, and…
no pepper spray.
no flash grenades.
no rubber bullets.
I mention all this only to show it CAN be done.
The US does not have to relive the 60s all over again, though it looks like that’s the way it’s going, sadly.
Right now, actual negotiations with the city council are under way to discuss protester issues, and to work out at what time the protests will end.
there is no need for the stick.
OTOH, what this clearly shows is that there is MORE need for protests in the US, if so many city governments think the way to “solve” the issue is not to negotiate, but to use a stick.
kinda a key point OF the protests, I think.
“The perp.” “They were breaking the law.”
Fuck you authoritarian pigs. Fuck you.
You don’t seem to have a grasp on what a protest is. You seem to think it is just trolling for lulz.
Does anyone else here find the use of the word perp dehumanizing and prejudicial? Or is it just me? I prefer suspect. You know, that whole innocent until proven guilty thing?
The fact is, the students were breaking the law
some people just DO not get the whole idea behind civil disobedience.
It’s all right, anthony, just go back to watching fox news, and the nasty protesters won’t trouble you.
Anthony @ #88:
Hey asshole, you know who was also breaking the law? These guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins
It’s amazing how some people can lick boots with their heads rammed so far up their own asses.
Josh: I’ve been getting great use out of my killfile tonight. If only it worked in real life…
And what are the OWS groups protesting for? Have they set out a list of demands, and stuck to it?
Aimless protesting isn’t protesting, it’s having a snit. Have a goal and be willing to work towards it.
Josh,
No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that ‘the police’ ≠ ‘any given police officer’.
If you wish to call each and every member who participated in that action a moral failure and a coward, that’s your prerogative: but note that *I’m not defending them*; what I’m saying that how and when they are deployed is not made by the officers on the ground.
—
I shall not respond further on this thread.
Frightening? Really? I’m sorry, truly. I’m hardly pleading on behalf of these police officers. Honestly I’m looking for different ways to think about this than my own. I’m really looking for why I’m wrong.
Police can use force to enforce the law. That is what makes them police. It’s a very serious responsibility, and one filled with moral vagaries. I, in fact, would not be comfortable spraying these kids with pepper spray. I’d prefer (if I had the courage) to just say, “No, I’m not going to do this, it’s unnecessary and it’s wrong.” Of course, these police probably have families and such, and need the job. But is the job really worth having to do this shit? I don’t know. Quite possibly not.
Am I still an authoritative asshole? I’m just weighing the two sides and trying internally to come up with the best answer, and I am looking for assistance in this with commenters here.
On the other hand, my previous comments haven’t been addressed to my satisfaction and so I’m still stuck. Where does the line of enforcement of laws (and protection of those doing said enforcement) meet the wrongness of inflicting pain on (probably) perfectly peaceful people? This is a big, obviously divisive issue. I’m just trying to come up with the best answers here through discussion.
So the cops bravely hosed down the students with pepper spray?
Cop brutality deniers need to reread the boingboing interview – it specifically said that a path was left open so that the cops could have a way to take away those they were arresting.
The cops need to assume that the protesters were armed? what? Then why should they have stopped at pepper spray? Coulter would be right – should have just opened fire — just to be safe. With that rationality no level of violence would ever be excessive. Anything to make sure the cops and only the cops go home safe.
What a load of crap. Those cops were never in fear (although they are still cowards) of these students. All this was was a chance for bullies to beat up a bunch of hippies.
But it seems that beating up hippies is very brave and noble thing: Ask the cop apologists, err cop brutality deniers, on this very thread.
But will he stick the flounce?
It’s not just you. It’s disgusting. It’s stupid parroting of cop-speak. It’s deliberately designed to dehumanize and turn the object of conversation into a meatbag, not a person.
We don’t even need “suspect.” That’s not the problem. The problem is even conceiving of a student who engages in passive civil disobedience by *sitting there* as “perp” at all. It’s loathsome and frightening.
And what are the OWS groups protesting for? Have they set out a list of demands, and stuck to it?
have you even looked?
there are tens of thousands of cities involved in mass coordination, yet you seem to be entirely clueless as to what it’s all about.
is this just because you are fucking lazy?
addicted to watching fox news?
just plain lying your ass off?
I really want to know.
how is it that after so long, and thousands of protests, you can’t manage to find any information?
At everyone fighting over the word “coward”: get over it. The word may or may not be the correct descriptor, but everyone here understands exactly what PZ meant by it.
@Newtonian Astronomer – they were NOT perpetrators, they were allegedly trespassing, and even then it is hard to say that students who pay for the right to go to school there can be said to be trespassing on school property in the middle of the day. Beyond that, the use of force is supposed to be limited. The police do not have the right to assault everyone they arrest.
For whomever it was that said the protesters were detaining the police; the hell?
Yes, you’re still an authoritarian asshole, Derick. That you even have to spend so much time entertaining that there might be an equivalency between the actions of the police and those of the passive protestors. . .
If you don’t see what’s wrong with that, you’re even more fucked up than I thought. Stop asking people to explain your scary authoritarian reactions to you. Start interrogating yourself.
Where does the line of enforcement of laws (and protection of those doing said enforcement) meet the wrongness of inflicting pain on (probably) perfectly peaceful people?
you really can’t figure out how this doesn’t apply in this case?
fuck me, it’s like an entire generation needs to be re-taught what civil disobedience is all about.
hell, there’s even a fucking wiki for you clueless gits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
PZ:
And this is news to you?
The police are always thugs. That’s their job. It’s debatable whether the word “coward” is even applicable where the police are in little or no danger, but thugs? Absolutely.
We can never trust them, and they are never on the people’s side, in any conflict between the ruling elite and anybody else. The police always serve their paymasters, and they generally aren’t very subtle about how they serve them.
Before anyone jumps in to object: yes, I recognize that the police routinely face real dangers in the context of ordinary law enforcement, and many have lost their lives in the course of that service. I appreciate that service and that sacrifice, and I have no wish to depreciate it.
However the present context is not one of routine law enforcement, but of political conflict. In that context the police are merely behaving as they always do.
When the OWS movement first started I knew that, if it went on for very long, it would become the target of police brutality. It did. It will again.
@Josh
“It’s not just you. It’s disgusting. It’s stupid parroting of cop-speak. It’s deliberately designed to dehumanize and turn the object of conversation into a meatbag, not a person.”
My thoughts exactly. And thanks.
(Sorry, I’m getting behind.)
You make very good points, I think.
I think civil disobedience is sometimes necessary. But don’t go moaning after the fact that the police treated you like they would have any other criminal that could be potentially dangerous (if not fairly unlikely.) I think it is good to stand up to police sometimes for the things you think are right. Hell, I kind of would have liked to see hundreds more people take those protesters’ place once they’d been sprayed. Instead of a dozen people getting arrested, make it hundreds. Show them that what they are doing is wrong. That the people have the right to speak their minds.
But this is where the other side of me says “Wait! We have laws in place to allow for people to protest peacefully already, so long as they follow some simple restrictions (i.e. no camping in public places not intended for that purpose.)” Is the restriction of “No camping” really so unjust that it requires civil disobedience?
It took you this long to reach that conclusion? I feel like Daniel Pinkwater’s teacher: “at this rate, you’ll still be my apprentice when you’re ninety.”
Seriously, at least ever since Bush I stepped up the War On Drugs, the Police Have Not Been Your Friends. For the last 20 years, the Police have collectively viewed themselves as a branch of the military — which is bad enough by itself; police are supposed to be civilians, that’s the whole point of having police instead of the army — and the rest of us as The Enemy.
If you were a police officer that was facing a dozen people who were disobeying direct orders, and were hiding complete parts of their body (The possibility exists that any one of them Could have had a concealed weapon), would You have walked over and started arresting people one-by-one (without pepper spraying)? That’s a scary situation to be in.
If you were a student facing an armed cop, there’s every possibility he might shoot you. By your “logic”, the students should have started firing at the cops as soon as they saw them.
And if the cops keep pepper spraying unarmed unresisting protesters, someone will.
Fuck you, Derick. Fuck you.
another example from here in the Shire:
Down in Dunedin, their city council tried to get the cops to forcibly break up the protest.
The police response?
They joined the protesters. No shit.
I think the other city councils have learned from this.
And if the cops keep pepper spraying unarmed unresisting protesters, someone will.
like I said, it’s like watching the 60s happen all over again.
Is the act of sitting down in a public square really so provocative that it requires pepper spray in the face?
Really? Really?
Are you a monster, or are you just not thinking carefully?
Is the restriction of “No camping” really so unjust that it requires civil disobedience?
THAT’S what you think the civil disobedience is about?
*headdesk*
I’m sorry, I mistook you for someone with half a brain.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Geez. How constructive and informative! Why, I can feel the authoritative assholery leaving my body as I type this!
I’ve already apologized for/admitted my moral ignorance on this whole issue. Do you want to just keep cussing at me because I’m unworthy of an discussion with you, or would you like to actually try to convince me one way or the other?
One aspect of civil disobedience is that you are willing to be arrested. Arrested, not bested, not shot, not gassed. This appears to be clear cut excessive force. Here is such a thing, and it is illegal. There has to be an investigation, and charges laid against the cops involved.
For those who have talked about “orders”? None of us can say for certain what the orders were, but chances are good it wasn’t “gas ’em”. That was probably a local decision.
I saw an interview with some high-up Baltimore cop with the surname Kelly who said that it was entirely appropriate to pepper-spray them.
He said that that is in the guidelines cops are taught – they are to use pepper spray or BATONS on anyone who either pulls their arm away when a cop grabs it, or if they curl in a ball.
Seriously. He said that the proper police response to someone curling into a ball is to start clubbing them with a baton.
Occupy demonstrators are supposed to remain non-violent, and if I were being attacked by a cop I would have no problem being remaining non-violent… That, after all, is where the power in peaceful civil disobedience comes from.
But I have a niece in college and if I saw someone start clubbing her because she curled up in a ball, I would have a very hard time not getting violent with the man with the club.
I can only imagine how a parent would feel.
Stop whining. There’s been more than enough discussion of the ethical issues in this thread to keep you busy pondering for a week. The failing isn’t mine, it’s yours. Try stifling your pissy ego offendedness for five minutes and focus instead on why people are reacting so strongly to your comments. Hint: it’s not because we’re cretins; it’s because what you’re saying is outrageous.
like I said, it’s like watching the 60s happen all over again.
Given the teabaggers paraded around armed to the limits of what the law would allow, I’m surprised none of the OWS group are doing the same. Police thugs and their likspittle authoritarian apologists are putting an awful lot of trust in the assumption that leftists won’t ever be violent.
He said that that is in the guidelines cops are taught – they are to use pepper spray or BATONS on anyone who either pulls their arm away when a cop grabs it, or if they curl in a ball.
Yup. This was standard police training in most US cities I am familiar with at least up through the late 90s.
I have relatives that went through this training in California.
I think you’re addressing my question from a side-ways perspective. I was referring to something very specific and limited, obviously. That is, the tents being torn down. The protesters still have the right to speak, just not to camp on the university’s property.
Are you talking about things in the grander scheme of things? Such as the whole occupy movement, or how. . . I’m unsure. Could you clarify? You are talking to someone with less than half a brain, after all.
I don’t think they are really bemoaning the fact; it is more outrage than self-pity. There is a fair sight difference between a potential dangerous criminal and a protester, while certainly a protester may be violent, they are not the ones who sit with arms linked – they tend to throw rocks and worse things.
Every situation is different, but looking at this situation as it has been recorded, there was no need for the pepper spray, or at the very least certainly not the spray with that level of brutality. A single pass at a distance to slightly incapacitate would have been arguably reasonable to me, but what Pike is doing? That is not by any way, shape or form.
Not everyone is brave enough to take such violence in the face. Those who did should be commended.
The ‘no-camping’ laws are something like a red herring; they are beings used to pick away at the capability of the protesters to get their point across. With no tents and no shelter, they cannot reasonably maintain their lines and numbers with the winter weather approaching. It is a tactic to try and dilute the numbers of protesters, and thus weaken the movement. To maintain their numbers and their voice, the protesters must break such a law.
Remember; this is not a simple protest, it is an occupation. They are not going to leave until something is done.
People are getting so torn up over the definition of a single word. In the interest of seeming more intelligent than another person, both sides come off as very daft. Don’t lose sight of the important aspects of this post and video.
Josh: “It’s deliberately designed to dehumanize and turn the object of conversation into a meatbag, not a person.”
Like your use of the word pig?
I was at the riots @ Kent State- we trashed the ‘Strip’, burned the ROTC building and damaged the Liquid Crystal Research lab. The Guard got called out and did the shootings- the local cops tried to use tear gas, mace (potent form of pepper spray) and ‘riot batons’ to control the crowds. I’ve been through all that- and, even at my now slightly advanced age, I’d do it again. From Kent State, it took a few more years to stop the war, but we did it. This time, it’s our people (the 99%) that’s getting oppressed and victimized. I don’t think it will take a long time to find a resolution to the cause of the unrest. That solution will probably be very brutal, abrupt and effective. Cowardice won’t figure into it, courage will guide it.
You know, once, I had a high school teacher who said America was the best country in the world. Well, despite how nice the teacher was, I want to call him stupid and ignorant. If this kind of stuff are supposed to happen in “best country in the world”, then the standards are pretty low.
You. Stupid. Fuck. That University is public property. Paid for by California taxpayers and the tuition of these students who are getting pepper-sprayed.
What’s wrong with you?
Josh:
Oh, they were bristling all over the place. Hawks & Doves.
I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Americans have gotten very comfy with a police state and trading their rights away for so-called security.
Yep, that’s just exactly parallel. It’s totes the same thing to call out authoritarian thugs who assualt people as it is to stereotype the assaulted. Totally equivalent. Derp.
Who is Ann Coulter? Seriously, I’ve never heard of her, who is she?
Well, generally there are two camps on Coulter here.
There are those who refuse to call her a c**t because it’s a misogynist insult which demeans women.
And there are those who refuse to call her a c**t because she lacks any warmth, depth, or welcoming qualities.
I don’t know HOW they can remain nonviolent through all that. They’re a better person than I am. I’d be SO tempted to take up arms. At least a club. Good thing I’m fat & old, I suppose…
@Josh
I bet you, if he were in the 60s, he would side with the racists in the civil rights movement, and would have sided against Rosa Parks for violating the law.
Ichthyic:
Me too. SoCal cops are trained to react violently to most everything. Getting pulled over in LA is fucking terrifying. I’m so glad I’m not there anymore.
I’ll admit the failing could be mine — it’s my mind after all. I wish I could perfectly understand everybody’s positions on everything. :/ I’m still pondering. I’ve read quite a bit of material on protesting for months now; with it being in the news and all. But I’m still divided on some things. Thanks for your time then Josh, I guess.
The first 30 seconds are appalling, but watch it the whole way through, and you’ll see a beautiful, non-violent, #ows-style shut-down of the police. The Walk of Shame for the Chancellor later was just as great.
I am so proud of those students. Their university. If Katehi lasts the month, I’ll be surprised.
Via Fark:
UC Davis chancellor Katehi does Walk of Shame, learns that silence speaks with a volume and clarity none can dispute
@Susan
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
I would say that an armed and shielded police officer who attacks an unarmed sitting protester is indeed a coward, because there is a complete power imbalance between the two. This should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a complete moron. What would be the only non-cowardly action here, would be to talk, deescalate, avoid violence at all costs, while still achieving what your superior told you to achieve.
It is regrettable that in the USA, as in many totalitarian regimes, the police seems to constitute a de facto paramilitary force, that does not primarily have the interests and rights of their citizens in mind.
That shunning was a thing of beauty. I only wish they’d gone one step further. They should have all stood up in unison and turned their backs to her as she walked out.
Cowards and thugs.
I agree.
There is never an excuse for hurting nonviolent protesters.
+++++
Derick, you are anti-American.
You are a traitor to those who fought for your freedoms.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
John Morales,
as your google skills will reveal (but only ask if you wish for my help), the police in this case explicitly indicated that they did this because they were afraid of the protesters.
Given what we see, I’d call that either cowardice on its face (if they told the truth) or cowardice at one remove (if they wouldn’t just come out and say they weren’t really scared).
For those of you who are still claiming that the police did this because they’re worried about the protesters having weapons or attacking, do you ever fucking pay attention? Did you even watch the video? Did anyone read this post at # 41 (by ryk)
Yeah, let me tell you, when I’m afraid for my safety, I just walk among and walk over the people who I think might attack me.
I’d expect no more intelligence or attentiveness from people who would defend these actions.
Just because something is public property doesn’t mean you should always have the ability to camp there indefinitely. The public owns it, and thus is allowed to decide how it should be used. Correct? Of course, there are defined limits so that discrimination is avoided. Could this or should this classify as discrimination though? That’s a good point. Thanks, I hadn’t directly considered that possibility. D’oh!
Well, I couldn’t say for sure because, well, I would have been in a completely different culture than I am in today in regards to racism.
I can, and have said, that I’m for civil disobedience when you are being treated unjustly. I think I’m just a little undecided on whether or not any force whatsoever should have been used on these protesters. I do think that the force used was likely excessive, however, because of the massive amount of pepper spray used at such a small distance.
So, I’d like to think I would have been in support of Rosa Parks. My issue is just on the amount of force (if any) police should be able to use to retain the upper-hand on safety. It’s like tasers: Should they be allowed at all? Are the risks associated with using them less than the benefits to overall safety? These I think are legitimate questions to ask. Am I wrong? Hmm… What’s wrong with asking these questions?
@ The Rat King
Thank you for actually addressing my points in detail. It’s helping me a lot and I can see myself agreeing with much (if not all) that you’ve said. If I’m going to agree with “your side” it’ll be by reading posts like yours. Thanks again.
Derick is a stupid fuck who doesn’t give a shit what anyone says. He (or she) will continue to defend anything done by the police, regardless of how idiotic his (or her) arguments have to become to continue to continue that defense.
Derick:
No. You don’t get to move goalposts like that. What you said is right here on this thread for everyone to see.
You said:
I pointed out that “the university’s property” is, in fact, the property of the students, too. By virtue of the fact that taxpayers and students fund it, and thus allow it exist.
Now. What say you?
How to break up an occupation peacefully, humanely and respectfully:
St. Louis did it right.
I wish the US had no police and no military. Then the US, and the world, would be a utopia.
I’m a little undecided on whether or not I should use some force on you, considering that you’re camping out on someone else’s (PZ Myers’) property. So I’ll default to pepper-spraying you, and I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt.
Do you still not get it you authoritarian idiot?
There were only two of these idiots. I bet most police officers are just as appalled as everyone else. They’re on administrative leave and there will be an investigation. Hopefully they will be fired.
Perhaps there are lower hiring standards for campus police. They might not have much training in crowd control. Of course the problem with these two idiots is they’re assholes.
Off topic, but what are these protesters protesting? Capitalism? Maybe they would be happier in North Korea.
Why not protest America’s worst problem which are our two never ending religious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suppose since there’s no draft they don’t care about it.
I looked it up — “The Occupy Wall Street protests continue to spread around the country, highlighting grievances some Americans have about banks, income inequality and a sense that the poor and middle class have been disenfranchised.”
The poor can become middle class by learning a skill that’s in demand and then working hard at it. The middle class can become filthy rich pigs by working hard, living frugally, and investing in the stock market. If they feel disenfranchised it’s their own fault.
The problem is they’re disingenuous. Sure, we can have a conversation some day about how much force police should be allowed to use when they’re in danger. Today, however, the police were not in danger.
@Derick;
Blood boils when the fire strikes close to home.
Cheers.
Cops are cowards & thugs only in the sense that atheists are cowards and thugs.
The statement is technically true because **some** cops are cowards & thugs, but if you use it in the sense of, “Cops are inherent cowards and thugs,” you’re quite wrong.
Cops act as we educate them to act. We as a country have educated cops in the US to act violently in the face of no danger other than the danger that we will believe that they are wrong to demand that we leave. This is something that we have **demanded** of our cops. We choose to elect people like Barack Obama who claims the authority to literally murder anyone – citizen, non-citizen, doesn’t matter – in blatant violation of the constitution. This power we have not permitted him, we have **demanded that he take this power**.
Yes, I know that to the extent that the citizenry elects Obama, or anyone else, we are picking from limited options and often responding to woefully inadequate information. The problem, however, is that as a country, when we consistently give Obama a bump in the polls when he suggests murdering citizens, it is impossible for him and other members of the political class to conclude anything other than that we **want** our government to train and utilize murderers. While in any given poll only a tiny percentage of americans are surveyed (typically 1 in 100,000 or less), the consistent results across surveys and across elections make such calculus inevitable.
We as americans do not rise up en masse & yell, “Murder citizens without trial? With all the people we’ve falsely convicted even with the safeguards of a trial, you want to kill people based on whether someone who floats around untrustworthy circles says, “Oh, yeah, you should definitely kill him”? What kind of hateful crap is that? Do that & I’ll vote you out of office, for sure!”
Even if some people later did decide to vote for someone who had engaged in that rhetoric, if they were consistently confronted with the condemnation they deserved for floating such murderous vileness, they would change their minds & policies just to have to spend less capital (political & monetary) on fighting the same fight over & over.
But, no, we demand no cost for such behavior. We actively encourage such behavior through praising people who are the most violent among the candidates. Now that we have for years insisted on voting for people who demonize “lawbreakers” and “criminals” and approvingly fawned over hyper-violent SWAT tactics, there is no other reasonable belief left to those in charge of the police but that we want the police to respond with force when people peaceably decline to leave our own parks or, in the case of students on their own campuses, our literal homes.
The police ordered us to move. We decline. We’re disobeying a police order. We are now breaking the law and everyone knows how criminals are supposed to be dealt with! So bring out the pepper spray! Grab the bean-bag guns!
It’s a frickin’ miracle, given how we as a polity have acted, that they aren’t shooting live, metal slugs at us out there.
I live in a city where the BS order to roust people from a public park was enforced with no real violence, and there was criticism of the Mayor for not using **enough force** even tho’ my fellow protestors (I did not camp, but I did protest & sit in the camp now & again) left voluntarily a few hours after being asked.
You can blame the police if you want to, but we have the police we trained. If we don’t want these police, we need to retrain them – 95% or more would be perfectly happy to live under new, less violent rules of engagement. The others we can get rid of or put on desk duty or whatever as appropriate.
I **do** think that part of that training is the great, “You can go!” chant @ UC Davis. That gives them more confidence that we won’t turn violent.
And, yes, they really do fear our violence. They fear it b/c they know that they are being violent with no real provocation, so why wouldn’t we respond with at least as much violence? It simply does not compute in the algorithms that they have been trained to use. What happened at UC Davis helps, but it only helps a little and for a very short period of time. Psychological studies show that they are more likely to remember the stress of the moment than they are to choose to recall that none of the protestors acted with violence. To get police to truly act differently, we need to demand that the police act differently. We need to do so consistently, for years. This wasn’t a problem created overnight. It won’t be solved overnight.
I am not opposed to holding the cops accountable for their actions. Even most police manuals don’t usually permit pepper spray for mere non-compliance. Usually it’s only usable if non-compliance is determined to both
1) Seem obviously likely to continue
and
2) Creates a danger to others (including officers).
Obviously, 2 is not fulfilled in this case. I would have to look over their policies in Davis to be sure that things are written in this way, and I’m not familiar with California case law, but it seems very likely that they are violating procedure AND that this violation produced both actual harm and risk of harm. That’s usually enough to justify serious disciplinary proceedings, tho’ if it was cleared with a supervisor, the consequences are supposed to be minimal for the person using the weapon and fall hardest on the supervisor (in practice, the supervisors often claim that they were too distant from the situation to truly understand and *neither* gets punished, but that isn’t how things are supposed to work). It is up to the people of Davis and of California more generally to see that justice is done in this case.
A good start is firing the Regent, as has been called for by faculty and students. It was the school’s regent who ordered the police to violently disperse the students. But we will have to keep on insisting on more justice and less violence.
Yes, police officers committed this violence, but I don’t want all the blame to fall on them. We know what Milgram’s experiment showed. We as a society have to heed the warnings of that experiment and not assume that there is something uniquely bad about the people whom we have hired as law enforcement officers. Otherwise, every time we scream, “Vile,” or, “Shame!” the cops will dump another pint of pepper spray on us…and the people we elected to control them will give them another $2k in overtime as a nice thank you.
Derick:
The mere fact you can say that throws your morals into a very bad light. It was quite obvious that Rosa Parks did nothing wrong. She was a tired woman who simply wanted to sit down on a bus and not be treated like an animal who had to go to a special section because she might pee on the seats, or even worse, offend someone walking around with the “right” skin.
If you would have hesitated to support her because “well, you know, she did break the law”, then you have zero interest in actual human beings and have no ability to judge a situation on its merit. You paint yourself as someone who finds it easier to ignore people and to handwave them conveniently away because some authority declared that to be good.
Your morals aren’t worth spitting on.
Someone’s not familiar with how capitalism plays out in the real world. Those with the wealth write the rules. Turn off Fox Newz and evolve yourself some empathy.
That must be a piss poor attempt at satire.
———————————
I didn’t see the other police officers stepping up to stop these two.
You’re a fucking idiot. Is it so difficult to understand that they’re protesting income inequality? Do they really need a nice neat list to show you so that you can wrap your mind around that concept?
This is a joke right? You cannot be that fucking ignorant! Really? Are you fucking Herman Cain or something?!
Capitalism no, Predatory capitalism; using every dirty trick to get more money and giving absolutely nothing back to the people you stepped on to get there, in this case by way of taxes.
The poor can become middle class by learning a skill that’s in demand and then working hard at it. The middle class can become filthy rich pigs by working hard, living frugally, and investing in the stock market. If they feel disenfranchised it’s their own fault.
What if they cannot afford to go to school to learn that skill? What if that stock market is rigged so they cannot play it fairly?
Those are the issues being addressed.
Newtonian Astronomer
and Anthony, the same is accurately said of you:
You are anti-American.
You are traitors to those who fought for your freedoms.
You should be ashamed.
The Rat King:
A fine example of how it should be done. In Albany, when the cops were given orders to pepper spray, baton and arrest, they refused. It’s not a matter of the cops not being able to do it right, it’s been done right. It just hasn’t been done enough and those cops who are being cowardly thugs need to be called out, loudly and unceasingly.
@ Human Ape, #150 –
Protesting US capitalism is not the same thing as protesting capitalism. France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden are all capitalist, but they have much stronger safeguards against crony capitalism.
If the game is rigged for the 1% (Really the 1/10th of 1% or so, but it’s a useful slogan), then that **isn’t capitalism**!
Telling people to go to North Korea if they don’t like how the US is run is truly awful. Even if someone did want a North Korea style government in the US, telling that person that they have to (or should) leave for North Korea if they don’t like the current system is quite a bit more idiotic than protesting capitalism. what happens when your party loses? Will you leave for…Australia? Austria? South Africa? Israel? Brazil? Whichever country more closely resembles your ideal state than the current US administration?
Dissent. Get used to it. Then use it. It’s a good thing.
I absolutely agree and wish we could yell louder.
Human Ape, shut the fuck up. All the regulars here remember your psychopathic views about gay men and all the other vile shit you’ve spewed. You’re pure ugly.
Aren’t you precious, with your complete failure to understand labor as a commodity.
Perhaps you would be happier in a Horatio Alger novel.
Dumbass.
Thank you, Caine. This faggot remembers Human Ape’s bigoted bullshit.
Tone-trolling irritates me as much as anyone, but I can’t help but point out that this accusation is often flung about by the other side for the slightest difference in opinion…
Thank you, Caine. I wasn’t sure if Human Ape should be engaged. You’ve cleared that up nicely.
Crip Dyke,
Um, this is kind of off-topic, but I rather liked this essay on the incident I’m assuming you’re referring to.
The change in police training sounds like a viable rallying point though, one I haven’t heard expressed before. Wonder if there are any studies on methods.. *wanders off to scholar*
Caine @154 –
Actually, that Rosa Parks story is true in some ways, but a myth in the most important way. She did have days when she was just frickin’ tired & didn’t want to have to go to the back. There was a statement about her worth as a human being made when people sent her to the back of the bus and she was tired of that as well.
But for the day in question when she refused to move, she had told others in advance so that people could bail her out of jail if necessary & so that the right people could be prepared to give the right statement to the media. She helped plan the media response in advance. She was, in addition to a tired-ass worker, a tireless activist who knew how to plan a successful campaign. She didn’t luck into people supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She used her head & created that campaign. With a lot of effing hard work.
This has nothing to do with whether Derick is being reasonble or not. I just want Rosa Parks to get her full credit.
Incidentally, this myth of Rosa Parks just spontaneously being too tired to move is pretty rampant in mainstream media and among whites, but most Black people living in the US know it wasn’t like that. Interesting, no?
ahs ॐ, human ape thinks gay men are pedophiles and the world would be better off if you all disappeared.
@ Caine 162, Josh 164 –
thanks. I’m not quite regular enough to remember that. Guess I can ignore him now.
The videos made me cry. Rage and despair and pride and hope. How anyone can try to justify the acts of the police is beyond rational or humane understanding. Thanks to the regulars for the reasoned, passionate take-down of the foolish sheep.
Josh:
If I have my way, he’ll never forget it either.
cmv:
You’re welcome. Human Ape is a loathsome creature and has loathsome views on pretty much everything.
The poor can become middle class by learning a skill that’s in demand and then working hard at it.
no, they can’t.
this is the lie of capitalism.
In fact, the middle class in America was a very temporary phenomenon, and it had fuck all to do with “learning a skill that’s in demand and hard work”, even when it wasn’t damn near impossible to achieve.
First, they said hard work will get you rewards.
then they said the same about education.
then the same about higher education.
all lies.
always was.
just like: “Any person can grow up to be President”
lies, and the lying liars that tell them.
It would be nice if hard work would reward one with even the ability to buy a house.
that just isn’t the way it is. However, it IS more than possible to have a regulated economy that is much more egalitarian and DOES allow for success with hard work. It really isn’t hard; even the old Kenesyian economics were designed with utilitarianism in mind.
it’s just sheer, fucking, greed, the rationalization of it, and the ACCEPTANCE of that rationalization that have put us in the state we are in now; where we have the largest concentration of wealth in the fewest hands in the recorded history of humanity.
we CAN have a more sane economic plan.
that’s all this is about.
@ Josh
I’m unsure that I made an error there. Surely the protesters haven’t put it (camping on the university/public property) to vote and the majority agreed that that should now be allowed? That is, just become some people dislike the decision, doesn’t mean they overrule the university (and by extension the public’s) opinion?
That’s obviously a bad analogy. I’m not breaking any laws that were approved by the majority by being on this site. That is, you aren’t an approved police officer. Of course, you could be for all I know be a moderator of this site and could thus ban me, but that doesn’t actually hurt me and so I’d have no real legal complaint. I wouldn’t like that, however.
Maybe I’m taking that analogy too literally. I’m now sleepy, so my brain isn’t thinking particularly well (if it ever does.)
My point was that the police might have felt threatened. I’m just trying to put myself in their shoes a little. Maybe I’m going too far into their shoes though. I think I’ll call it good for tonight. Thanks for the actual arguments, it’s given me more to think about. I swear I’m not just trolling or anything. Just naive, probably.
From Therrin:
I agree with you that they weren’t in any real danger. But they don’t necessarily know that, and if I were in their situation (surrounded by people very angry with me) I might feel threatened. Of course, that’s why I would have a gun and all that, so the fear would be unnecessary really. The protesters are (as far as I could tell) unarmed, unarmored, kids, after all.
The police were probably overcautious — or as has been debated on this thread: cowardly. All police probably (always must make conditional statements it seems) need much better training when interacting with people, especially those that aren’t known to be armed or dangerous in any way other than being large in number.
@ Caine:
I didn’t mean that. I guess I meant that if I were living in that time I might be a different person entirely (the whole nature vs. nurture thing.) I can say now that I fully agree that she did nothing wrong and did not deserve punishment from a moral perspective (though did, from a legal one, unfortunately. By “legally responsible” I mean that she broke the law and deserved punishment. However, legally, I’d support her right to fight that law and get it overturned. That’s what I meant.
Does that make it better or any sense? :?
@ The Rat King
Very nice. I like that immensely. Thanks for that link! I’d much prefer this to anything else. If this is possible (and you can’t know if you don’t try) for every instance of civil disobedience, then my mind is instantly changed. (I feel I’m becoming less coherent, so I’ll shut up and go to sleep.)
That’s all that needs to be said. If you can’t figure out why that disposition of yours is sinister and ugly, there isn’t anything I or anyone else here can say that will help elucidate it for you.
Godspeed. Just not anywhere near me.
It’s their job to know, how you might feel in the given situation is irrelevant. Don’t you find it odd how much benefit you’re giving the police? Good arguments have already been made that they knew they weren’t in danger or being threatened. Don’t tell me you’re “skeptical” about climate change, too.
It is interesting. The American official narrative doesn’t allow for concerted, collective dissent. That’s pinko stuff, and we don’t like it, so we ignore or minimize it. At best we’ll recognize heroic individuals. The Civil Rights movement wasn’t about hundreds of thousands of activists working tirelessly for many years; it was about Rosa Parks just up and spontaneously deciding to sit in the front of the bus one day because she was “tired”. When I heard the story as a kid, I never even heard that Parks was, in fact, an activist. No, she was just a tired lady who’d had enough, and somehow magically the whole country noticed what happened to her.
Are you fucking Herman Cain or something?!
Ha!
I had no end of chuckles when I happened to catch Cain leading in the Rethuglican polls a while back.
Cain became a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992.
I wonder how many people know that?
I wonder how many people know that Rick Perry was a liberal democrat as recently as 1988, when he actually RAN Al Gore’s presidential campaign in Texas?
I wonder how many people actually bother to even *slightly* vet the candidates they end up voting for?
I’ll followup just before going to sleep: Perhaps the police, once they had been surrounded, regeared/rethought completely and gone the St. Louis route. Instead of retaliating with aggressiveness as they may have felt was coming from the crowd (with good reason too, I know I’d be angry if my tents were getting broken), they should have done what St. Louis did. Yep.
I’m convinced.
Thanks The Rat King again for the link. Ha ha. Only took a couple hours to get it through my damned thick skull. Why hadn’t I thought of that?! To be fair, it convinced me pretty quickly once I read it.
Anyway. Goodnight.
Derick:
So you don’t fucking pay attention. Or maybe you’re purposely ignoring what I already posted (which was a repost of something some else had already said, which is about what happened in the video).
If they were feeling fucking threatened, why the hell did they walk among and over the protesters? I certainly wouldn’t do that with people I felt threatened by.
You’re a fucking idiot. A disgusting, authoritarian idiot.
Derick @ 174 –
The students have the right to be on campus at any hour of the day, any day, every day. This is part of what they pay for. They also sign agreements that if their behavior on campus causes problems but doesn’t violate the law, they will be subject to honor code violations (not sure what they call it on Davis’ campus, but I’m pretty sure that the procedure is similar on all UofC system campuses).
They were not violating the law. They had every right to be there. If they violated an order of the chancellor, they are subject to campus sanctions. That’s it.
you can talk about rewriting the laws, but the laws as written defer quite a lot about student conduct to the schools. The schools can’t ban students from campus – many of them LIVE on campus. This is literally banning them from their own front lawn. They can regulate certain things, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a nebulous “catch all” power of the Regent to order quite a lot of things.
However, and this is important, a student violating an order of the Regent is not committing a crime.
That’s the law. They didn’t break it. If they broke anything, they broke the student honor code, and whether they broke that is not at all proven (just because a Regent says “don’t do that” doesn’t automatically make doing that an honor code violation…but it can, thus the ambiguity.
So…
Your question about whether the students put sh*t up for a vote to change the law about whether or not students are allowed on campus?
Couldn’t be more idiotic & disingenuous. Even if you don’t know anything about educational law, it should be frickin’ obvious to you that students have a right to be on the campus where they are paying to live. In fact, in California, they are covered by many more of the standard renter’s rights laws than is true in other states that make larger exceptions to landlord/tenant law for university students than California does.
Anyone specializing in landlord/ tenant law know any of the specific language used in CA to guarantee student tenant’s rights?
Derick: Fuck you.
If police policies were to that standard, no one would have reason to hate the police. Well, not rationally, anyway. A calm, intelligent and respectful police service is what every country should strive for, and if you think about it, would probably be a sign that the populace is happy and their economy isn’t being run by backstabbing leeches.
While it is stretching it a bit, the idea of ‘good neighbours, good neighbourhood’ can be applied.
Of course Derick doesn’t respond to something that’s been pointed out multiple times. Because it proves him wrong about a major point. Can’t have one of his rationalizations of police brutality crumble! That would be just so fucking annoying. He’d have to come up with another excuse for being a disgusting human being!
Starstuff- Derick intuitively and emotionally identifies with the police, not the students. That’s a deal-breaker because there’s no changing that kind of disposition. It’s enough to recognize it so one knows who one is up against.
Nope. Completely convinced that climate change is real. Lots of other things too. I wouldn’t classify myself as a conservative. Rather, a liberal atheist and pseudo-nerd. I like science, philosophy, etc..
Anyway. I’m convinced now that I was wrong and can rest peacefully. Yay :)
@ Crip Dyke
Good points. I was unaware of the specifics of all of that. Thanks. I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. On all counts pretty much.
Thanks again, and goodnight for real this time.
@Starstuff
You’re right. I missed that. Another good point. I was wrong again, imagine that?
Stop responding to me so I can go to sleep now! lol
Well, next time I’m out protesting with my Occupy group, I’ll hope there’s no Derick’s around. If there is, they might just break out the heavy duty pepper spray when I step on the grass. I’d deserve it, you see! The sign says right there: Do not walk on grass.
May it be a tortured and uncomfortable sleep where you wake up repeatedly questioning yourself.
If you want to go to bed, fucking go. I won’t stop saying what I have to say though. You must be pretty fucking thick to miss a point made three times. Especially since that point is clear from the video (which I doubt you actually watched).
But you can fucking go now! lol
I’m convinced now that I was wrong and can rest peacefully. Yay :)
*blinks*
wait, no denialism?
no whinging?
no projection?
no accusations of groupthink?
I gotta tip my hat to you for that.
That’s just fucking stupid bullshit.
Coming from a country with a long history of civil disobedience, one cop vaguely pulling an arm isn’t an attempt to clear the road.
You take two or three cops who target one person at a time.
The protesters will do their best to remain there, locking arms. curling up in balls (and it’s damn hard to pull or carry such a person.)
So it usually takes a lot of time and effort to clear the road. But nobody gets hurt. In hundreds, maybe thousands of such protests since the 1970’s, no cop has been shot carrying away protesters. And the number of protesters that have been carried away this way is huge.
Shooting pepper spray at point blank range at those students was nothing but assault. There was no danger for the cops, no immediate necessity to clear the road. Just people protesting peacefully.
Of course, if those pictures came from, say, China, the very same people who are now defending the cops would be all up screaming about what a bloody tyrany they are. The protestors would be praised. But if two do the same it’s still not equal.
I don’t know what disgusts me more:
The actions of the police or the responses from people who see nothing wrong with shooting kids with pepper spray.
Hmph.
Well, I can say that I disagreed strenuously with Derick, but I also respect that he’s willing to call his previous positions wrong.
That part, at least, I can get behind. There is absolutely nothing more important than each of us being willing to admit being wrong.
I can’t help but point out that this accusation is often flung about by the other side for the slightest difference in opinion…
did you stop to consider that was exactly the point of using it here?
some of us have a more nuanced sense of irony, I guess.
He wasn’t being an ass; hell, good restraint under severe pressure, just hadn’t had a good think about where he stood, I feel.
Likely; I am pretty much socially retarded.
And yet you respond anyway! Why are you still so hateful? I’m curious. I admitted I was wrong. What more do you want? To give you back the time you wasted on me? I can’t do that. For me to shut the fuck up when I have an opinion that I want to have a discussion on? I don’t want to do that. If I had, I would have continued on that path because I wouldn’t have bothered to read most of this thread if I weren’t personally involved in it (just being honest.) For me to be smarter already and not need anyone to correct me? That’s not very realistic, now is it?
This attitude just isn’t productive. I didn’t mind it so much when I was disagreeing with you, hell it jarred me a little and may have helped for all I know. I’m not an accommodationist at all, I love PZ. But to continue the remarks after I’ve admitted my errors is strange and not beneficial.
Eh, whatever.
I don’t know what disgusts me more:
The actions of the police or the responses from people who see nothing wrong with shooting kids with pepper spray.
or just shooting people outright.
What happened in Seattle with the wood carver isn’t exactly ancient history.
How about you say specifically what you were wrong about. And what you’ve actually changed your mind about.
And we don’t have to stop talking about what you’re saying just because you want to go to bed. Do you really have to have the last word here? If you want to go, then go. No one is stopping you.
He wasn’t being an ass; hell, good restraint under severe pressure, just hadn’t had a good think about where he stood, I feel.
that’s just so unusual around here, it’s actually hard to not treat it with skepticism.
You hang up first. No you.
Almost snorted toothpaste. -.-
@Ichthyic:
True.
@Derick:
The usual disagreements to be found in the forums here tend to involve mouth-breathing imbeciles who will never give in no matter what. The regulars are baffled and unsure about someone who is actually backing off calmly in honourable defeat.
Best just to hit the sack.
Clearly it is productive. It got you off your morally and intellectually lazy ass. I’m glad you’re thinking about these issues, Derick, really. But spare me the wounded histrionics. Stop being such a fucking baby.
“I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage. I have also heard from an overwhelming number of students, faculty, staff and alumni from around the country. I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident.”
Thus sprake Chancellor Katehi….
Then she must resign…immediately.. she is obviously a danger to students under her jurisdiction.
Her over reaction in summoning the campus police seemingly fuelled by a pompous ‘out of her depth’ arrogance is not her best hour in the spotlight.
As for the ‘cowards’ that decided pepper spray the better course of valor…
Then maybe urgent retraining in technique of crowd control including negotiation and non-violent, non-pepper spray, non-baton, calm intervention, might be mandatory, they obviously have no idea how to handle a situation without resorting to such draconian actions, and given the circumstances totally inappropriate and unnecessary.
In law in the UK even smacking your child is a criminal offence these days, presumably it is a similar situation in the US, but it is alright to gas totally young strangers, something is so rotten in the society that either condones or ignores this abuse of position it is WRONG….
Have all these pompous fools learnt nothing from Kent State?…how many more must die or be injured on college campuses because the authorities feel uncomfortable and vaguely ill at ease…and maybe just maybe in fear of losing with their expense account lifestyle.
If this is the level of care apparent at Davis…then it is a very poor and sick college not worthy of the task of education.
As for Coulter…don’t give the cretin a moments thought…evolution will take care of her and her genes in good time…wasted spaces just echo a bit.
And all she is after is to ingratiate her sorry derrière with the right wing loonies and flog a few tatty brain farts to the hard of cogent thought.
I am late to this, but whatever a John Morales is – if not a Poe and pun on “moral-less” – he can climb back up his own asshole and die in accordance with his ultimate destiny.
May we never meet, if you actually have physical form, JM.
Human Ape:
Riiigghhht. Until the skill is no longer in demand in the US because your employer has outsourced your job. Or moved the company where you worked to another country where workers are willing to work for pay that will keep them poor and never allow them to become middle class.
And then there’s the employer who decides that although you are skilled and hard working, profits will go up if they cut their work force and ask remaining workers to do more. Sad that you’ve got to be let-go. Maybe you can pay to go back to school and be retrained in a different in-demand skill with your unemployment benefits and the money you were saving for your kids’ education and retirement.
Of course, learning a skill in demand requires a good education, which costs money. Hard to justify paying and borrowing money to attain job skills when there are no jobs to be had after graduation, and if you can find a job at all it’s working part-time at a minimum pay no-benefits job that used to be held by high school students. Which means those poor high school students now have no way to earn money for an education to attain those in-demand job skills.
And as for getting filthy rich by investing in the stock market–you’re joking right?
@168 Crip Dyke (still slightly off-topic re Rosa Parks but…)
This is SO important.
I’m not American (UK) and until recently I knew very little about the Civil Rights movement in the US. However since my son is covering this as part of his AS level history course (exams taken at 17) I acquired a copy of “Eyes on the Prize” for him.
I quickly realised how many goddamn *fairy stories* that we’ve been fed about this time. I had never understood the level of long term planning, organisation and commitment on the part of black activist organisations.
The thing is, refusing to sit at the back of a bus because you’re tired, sore footed and totally pissed off with how the mainstream of society treats you can be explained easily – we all have emotional triggers that cause us to do unwise things. But to walk into that situation with the understanding that you are likely to be arrrested, that you are likely to be threatened, abused, beaten and even killed… and then to insist that you will never respond violently – that is the very definition of bravery.
Let’s just say I’d always admired the black people who took part in the fight for equality (and the minority of white people who risked themselves to support that cause)but by the time I’d watched a few episodes I was speechless at the levels of calm, dignified, intelligent courage displayed. It was humbling.
Should be required watching for the entire world.
And a late,additional fuck off to the Newtonian Asshole as well.
What shits you people are, and likely enough on all subjects.
And Anthony.
May you taste the flavor of the shit you eat, someday.
Derick isn’t even worth getting an insult out. Could there be a less impressive meat puppet on the face of the earth?
What does Constitution mean if “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” doesn’t mean “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”?
When authorities crack down on peaceful assemblies because they are inconvenient or annoying to someone, the right to assemble is pretty meaningless. Protest movements are surely always inconvenient and annoying to those whose power and privilege are being threatened.
Really, isn’t some poop in the park and some tents where they’re not normally permitted, a small price to pay for demonstrative democracy in action?
But, but, but. . .they’re BREAKING THE LAW@@!!!
A call for murder is definitely not protected free speech, is ot ?
Just for absolute clarity,
@ 61,
NO. They violated the school code, for which the school was entitled to bring them before the student honor code decision-making body, whatever it’s name is on UC Davis’ campus. Plagiarism is not a crime because it violates the school code.
Does NO ONE have any frickin’ clue at all what the difference is between a student code of conduct and a frickin’ statute?
CheeseWhiz.
Well, it’s 2:00 am and I have to work tomorrow/today, but, if you’d really like it, here is my mea culpa:
I was wrong for not reading every single point (including the one that you made several times prior, apparently) before commenting.
I was wrong that police could have possibly been justified in spraying those peaceful protesters. Instead of becoming aggressive, they should have done something similar to what the aforementioned St.Louis police did. They should have done that from the start. No need for aggressiveness at all (so long as the crowd would allow for it, of course, which I think they likely would have.)
The police should not have been authorized at all to do what they did. The administration of the university handled things extremely poorly by calling for the police in the first place like they did (such short notice, etc., etc..) The students were likely within their legal right to be there (I’ve still not read up on the details though, so I cannot guarantee it.) The whole situation, legally supported or not, was handled exceedingly poorly by the administration and the police while the protesters were reasonably restrained with the actions.
The students that “blocked” the police were calmly civilly disobeying and thus possibly expected to be arrested (even though they probably were not doing anything that would warrant such.) The police were morally and most likely legally wrong for causing pain and suffering to those peaceful people, especially when they sort of caused that situation to occur in the first place (going in with an aggressive attitude/plan and raiding the camp — an inappropriate use of force entirely and probably unnecessary in the first place.)
What else? I feel like I’m missing something (lots of things I’m sure). . . Also I’m probably wording things incorrectly, forgive me if I make some mistakes here. Let me know. (I might not respond though, but I’ll try to read the corrections anyway.)
@ Josh
. . . Never mind. I’m tired, and it’s just not worth the lost sleep. You’re just not the kind of person I’d like to hang out with, I guess (and vice-versa, I’m sure.) You made some good points though, interspersed with the ad hominems, so, uh, thanks. Goodnight nonetheless.
According to some arguments here, the protesters had it coming because they were breaking the law.
Well, I’m breaking the law every day by just living with who I live with (a cohabitation law is still on the books in my state). Should the police be able to bust into my living room and pepper spray me while I’m sitting on my couch?
I mean, I’m breaking the law, and the police don’t know if I have a weapon or not.
I don’t give one fat shit whether you find me agreeable, or “the kind of person you’d like to hang out with.” And neither should you. You don’t like my brash getting in your face? Too fucking bad.
You ought to care about the ethics of the issue we’re debating. And it seems like you do. Good for you.
Very good, Derick. Hopefully you’ll think before speaking out of your ass next time. But seriously, it’s good that you’ve actually learned from this.
I was hoping for a reasonable discussion of this here in the Pharyngula comments (I have quite a good respect for many commenters here), but found the first couple of dozen a shouting match between WTRA about the use of the word cowardly. Dictionary meanings or no, fear or no fear, PZ’s use of the word cowardly to describe a sadistic violent ass-hole misusing a position of authority to intentionally inflict harm on peaceful, non-violent individuals is wholly appropriate and perfectly consistent with the use of this word to describe wife-beaters, abusive teachers, sadistic prison wardens and others in similar situations. Such a use of unnecessary violence, with intension to harm *does* point to a person with internalised insecurities – a coward. It’s just language people! Words don’t have single unambiguous meanings, *especially* in English.
And either way this is just disgusting – that happened on university campus, that was frickin’ students well within their rights to demonstrate.
That Human Ape guy, I have disliked him ever since the first time I read his contents. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think religions are silly, but his comments on religion always seemed to border on slagging.
Interestingly, the whole OWC movement is in resonance with certain of Marx’s ideas about capitalism. Marx declared that capitalism brought about efficient industrial production and increased wealth. He also said that wealth would be accumulated primarily by a small elite and the majority of people would live in squalor and poverty. After a while, the proletariat would start objecting to the extreme wealth disparity.
The proletariat are beginning to realize just how wide the disparity of wealth is. Incidentally, this disparity has only become massive in the past 20 years. In the 1960s there were the rich and the poor, but the gap between the two was nothing like as large as it is now.
Rat King
Then you should think real hard about what you type next.
Yeah? So?
People call each other stupid, too. Sometimes unfairly. It doesn’t follow that no one is stupid.
There is such a thing as being or acting anti-American; that is, it is possible to act in opposition to the core values of the American people: freedom, democracy, the radically transformative power of peaceful protest, and all that jazz.
So instead of complaining that the term I used is popular among the authoritarian right-wing, you should instead ask: was the term applied accurately? Are Derick, Newtonian Astronomer and Anthony behaving in an anti-American manner?
I think so, and my argument is clear enough.
Yes.
#Newtonian: “It is not the police’s obligation to put themselves in danger to find a weapon on a perp. That is THE reason they have people walk backwards out of cars and spread their legs. Because the MUST assume that Everyone has a weapon.”
Yessir! Nuke them from orbit – only way to be sure!
Seriously, where do you draw the line? If after being peppersprayed, they continue to “hide body parts” (like their eyes?), then roll on to the next escalation level: predator drones and hellfire rockets, from a safe distance, to make sure that the armed, armored forces of law and order don’t feel threatened by a peppersprayed protester who may bawl and vomit all over them?
Using your argument, there can never be any such thing as police brutality, because they MUST assume that everyone has a weapon and is ready and willing to use it any time. No doubt that the Chinese gerontocrats would be grateful to copy this argument to justify the use of tanks on Tiananmen square – they HAD to assume that each of the students had concealed weapons, therefore the tanks rolling over them – only way to protect the heroic defenders of law and order against violence.
Where exactly do you draw the line? If there is not the smallest hint of weapons or rioting, the police can still use any non-lethal weapon on a sit-in? But if they MUST assume that anyone carries a concealed weapon – why SHOULD they not assume that every crowd of protesters comprises 1 or 2 suicide bombers, therefore: air strike?
I completely agree with Ann Coulter … when she said, back in 2005:
http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/10/31/ann-coulter-no-fan-of-first-amendment-republicans-cheer.htm
When I hear the crap that comes out of her mouth, I really, really have irrepressible repressive urges about her.
Courts hold that it is, if broadly stated. If for instance the speaker does not specify a particular person who should be murdered, that makes it less likely to be prosecutable. But it becomes more prosecutable if speaking to someone who is likely to carry out the action.
So, for instance, I recall a case where a white supremacist stood before an audience advocated that black people in general should be killed; later that night, someone(s) who had been in his audience attacked black folks in the area. The speaker was successfully prosecuted.
It’s vague, but these are the two major components of the law. I can safely say that “people who dress too formally for the occasion should be murdered” and insist that I am dead serious about it. I am not at any real risk of prosecution because the targets are too vaguely specified and there is good reason to believe my audience will not carry out my suggestion.
How one chooses to deploy a weapon is a good gauge of their moral temperature.
Which puts these cops around liquid helium level.
I try not to comment on her. I tell myself that it’s because I don’t want to give her any publicity, but in reality I think it’s more that I can’t find anything to say that would not be a vain wish of an AK 47 round in her face. Cus, you know… It’s fun to randomly kill people!
Caine
I don’t believe it!
I think he’s BobC, too.
This seems as good a time as any to mention Why Equality Is Better For Everyone:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why
(brought to my attention by Pharyngula commenter KG)
There’s an ‘Occupy’ movement where I live, in New Zealand, as well and while I don’t really think they have as much to complain about as those in the U.S have they’ve got a right to make their statements.
But naturally city big wigs don’t much like smelly people cluttering up their showcase public spaces and in Dunedin the City Council issued a trespass notice and asked the police to enforce it.
Who, rather honourably, refused to do so taking the position that no crime was being committed and the trespass order was an unlawful effort to deny rights to people.
Yay them.
The thing is, we did not randomly murder people: the people killed during the revolution were mostly aristocrats (12,5% of the nobility got beheaded) and Vendeans: commoners who sided with the nobility. If Americans started to go all sans-culottes, that would means intentionally slaughtering 400.000 members of the “1%” upper-class and at least one million and a half GOP voters. I mean, not only is her rant despicable, but the bloated cherry on the cake is that she knows so little about history that she ends up unwittingly demanding the slaughter of her own social class and her own customer base.
ahs @230
I took a look at the site and it seems like something I’ve been saying for a long time. Despite being a complex issue with lots of different causes and effects, it should be simple enough for most people to understand that inequality, especially the harsh version experienced in the United States, is bad for everyone.
It’s not touched on on the website, but a significant issue in the US that needs to be challenged is that solving inequality will only benefit the poor (along with the implicit assumption that helping the poor is a bad thing. Ugh). As far as I understand the economics of it, the way capitalism is working now in the US (with increasingly expensive goods and services and increasingly lower wages) we are, in effect, impoverishing large sectors of our labor force. The problem with that from the rich people’s perspective is that the American workers they’re impoverishing also happen to be their markets. With fewer jobs and less money, consumers can’t buy things.
The way I imagine it is that the rich and corporations are thinking of the lower classes as a well of infinite money that they can keep dropping their bucket in, when the truth is that we’re in a closed-loop water cycle here. As they hoard more and more of the water, everything’s going to start drying up.
I can read no more. I got to about 90 and decided that death from apoplexy – that’s my death – is probably better avoided. So just two things …
Josh OSG – I was on a different continent but I was alive and fully conscious for Kent State, Vietnam and, indeed, the Civil Rights Movement. Oh, and the Anti-Apartheid struggle. Every half-baked authoritarian argument you see above was indeed worn threadbare in those struggles. That includes stretching the definition of violent resistance to include saying boo to a goose.
Anthony @ 88 – you are first going to have to prove that an instruction, not a law, by university officials to some members of the university to leave a particular part of the campus would override the US Constitution. Without that proof your case collapses.
Contrast this with the response from (some) UK police when the Govt recently announced that plastic bullets were “available” for use in the next set of Student protests.
Lots of concern that policing in the UK is “by consent” and that once consent is lost, policing becomes impossible.
Human Ape, #150:
If you’re standing in the crowd at a busy concert, you’ll be able to see the stage better if you stand on a box. It does not follow that if everyone stands on a box, everyone will be able to see better.
I’mthecontentfreeasshole:
John Morales is a respected regular and an OM. If you have a problem with something he’s said, try constructing a valid argument. If all you have on offer is your usual content free crap, have a porcupine. You know what to do with it. Ta.
I used to be infuriated by Coulter. Then, I had an epiphany and realized she is just a 12 year old child, struggling to get attention, any attention, that she can. She could’ve been a leftist and constantly screamed that “private property is theft,” but she turned out to be a rightist (fascism pays better). I don’t really see her as religious (even though she talks about it enough), or pro-life (even though she mentions this alot). It’s all about shocking her parents with the Next Outrageous Thing that comes out of her mouth. And sadly, we the public are her parents. I would bet dollars to Rush Limbaugh’s donuts that she had a terrible relationship with her parents and she’s taking it out on us.
Too late. I’ve given up on this thread because you were so fucking obnoxious. Sooooo…well done. Thanks for ruining the thread. This is why you can’t have nice things.
@ ahs #226 –
Do you remember any more about the case you’re citing? It actually sounds reminiscent of a case with which I’m familiar, but in the case I know, there was no prosecution. His words were, in fact, protected by the 1st amendment from being the basis of a criminal prosecution.
What did happen was that he was sued successfully for wrongful death. Is it possible that we’re thinking of the same case and you said prosecuted but meant sued? In fact the general way that you’re describing things is very amenable to a “preponderance of the evidence” case and not nearly as amenable to establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which also makes me think it may be possible you accidentally wrote about a civil case as if it were a criminal case.
The 1st amendment’s free speech clause largely prohibits the **government** from coming after you. It doesn’t primarily protect you from being civilly liable (though it does have some effect. The press clause actually has more impact on civil liability, though this is confusing to a lot of people because they are both “first amendment” law). Felonious prosecution for speech only is notoriously difficult. Absent a case for actual conspiracy, it would be very tough to prosecute a person for murder (or even manslaughter/ involuntary manslaughter, etc). I would be quite eager to read more about the case to which you refer. If it does involve a prosecution, it would absolutely be appealed by any competent lawyer and the ruling of the appellate court would be published and very instructive about the local (state or circuit) thinking on the line between conspiracy and protected advocacy.
anyway, I’m certain you may be correct about the prosecution, but it also seems possible that that isn’t what happened, so any information that would make it easier to look up (a state and year would be very helpful, very possibly even sufficient in & of themselves; a name would be even better).
Coulter is well known for not living by the principles that she advocates on television. While I find it incomprehensible that any gay man would hang out with her, she apparently does have a fair few gay men in her social circle despite advocating for murderous responses to gay men at times. This is only one example.
Clearly what she took away from law school is that when you have a client (in this case the right wing of US politics generally, Fox News specifically) you are duty bound to make every argument it is legal to make that may benefit your client. Without the risk of suborning perjury that she would run in a courtroom, she makes not merely misleading but blatantly false arguments. I find her quite loathsome.
I don’t see them as cowardly. It’s clear even in the clip that they made several attempts to remove them from a road. The protestors refused and so they were pepper sprayed and arrested. Heavyhanded yes, cowardly no. My understanding is two cops were suspended because of it. It must rank as one of the lamest protests ever though.
I apologize if this argument has been made before in this thread.
These cops are either cowards or sociopathic thugs. If they do not have the courage to disobey orders that are clearly immoral, they are cowards. If they don’t understand that it is wrong to hurt people who pose no threat to anyone, they are sociopathic thugs.
see?
It’s truly blood-chilling to read the contributions from those defending the use of chemical weapons against peaceful demonstrators. They’re really not that much better than Ann Coulter. The Chancellor should of course resign; if she had a spark of decency in her she would have done so already. Disappointing to see the pointless squabble about whether the police were cowardly as well as brutal – really, John Morales, you should just STFU in cases like this, but maybe the same deficiency that leads you to make such stupid interventions prevents you recognising when it is going to lead you to say something stupid.
No, it isn’t, although it should be. Minor point in this context, but accuracy is important.
I’ve read through a chunk of the comments, but not all. I am thoroughly disgusted with the nutbars defending the cops.
One phrase I’m starting to consider using whenever this sort of thing happens again: “Rioting police officers” as in, it’s the police officers who are chiefly participating in a riot, attacking OWSers.
Annie knows her history, but it ain’t anyone else’s. I wonder what she “thinks” of the Boston Massacre? Those Redcoats were just defending themselves and enforcing the rule of law.
Just when you think authoritarianism in the US couldn’t get much worse something like this comes along.
However the really chilling element of this post is the large number of ostensibly “critical thinkers” coming out in defence of the utterly indefensible.
If this happened in Sweden the police involved would be risking a jail sentence not a piddling suspension; ditto Ireland.
What the hell is wrong the US?
Exactly so. This tendency began in the latter 1970s, and is by no means confined to the USA. Basically, the economic problems of that time gave the ruling elites the opportunity to reverse the trend toward decreased within-country inequality that had lasted since WWII: they brought in new anti-union laws, exported a lot of manufacturing industry (where workers tend to be best organised), pushed down tax rates on the rich, learned more sophisticated media control and news manipulation techniques, and went all-out to monopolise as much wealth and income as they could. For some while, the problem you point to was disguised by an asset/credit bubble, allowing the middle class* to keep spending on the back of the rising price of real estate, and even the working class to borrow (at exhorbitant rates) on credit cards. Now the bubble’s burst, as it was bound to do soner or later, we have the most severe systemic crisis of capitalism at least since the 1930s, possibly the most severe ever.
At present, global economic growth rates remain positive, as China’s industrial boom pulls along countries like Brazil, which are exporting huge amounts of raw materials to it – but with China’s foreign markets seizing up, it’s hard to see how that can continue. Currently, the weakest point of the system looks like the Eurozone, which was always an accident waiting to happen. The “solution” there, if there is one at all, looks like being the scarecely-disguised abandonment of democracy – governments will probably continue to be elected, but their budgets will be subject to veto by a cabal of the very people who caused the mess – bankers and right-wing economists.
In the 1930s, of course, the result of the systemic crisis (which also stemmed from the over-concentration of wealth) was fascism and world war.
*I mean the middle class in the European sense, not the American, where it often seems to include everyone not actually living in a cardboard box.
I’m not one who posts often, but I do speak up when I feel it requires it.
So, Let’s take a step back and really look at what’s going on. Full Picture then bring it down into the UC Davis case.
Why are people Protesting? / What drives the Occupy [location] movement?
– For the last 30 years, and only since 2008 on a hyper-accelerated path, we have seen the slow and methodical eradication of the middle class. Through the killing off of Pensions (becoming 401Ks) the stagnation of wages, the general workings of the Economic and Financial system to work against the common persons. Combine this with increasing costs of Fuel, Food, Tuition for Higher Education (and thus a near-requirement to take out Student Loans and such)
– in 2008, Banks and Financial groups were bailed out by the US Government and many other Governments around the world (see UK and EU Countries)
– Some (myself included at the time) thought that the change in Presidency and in Congress would give the Democratic Party (as of late the party who is better known to fight for said weakening middle class) This of course did not occur. In 2009 a Protest group was formed called “the Tea Party” which originally was for economic reform but was later to be found to be a hard-right idea with the Endorsements of some very very strange people (see Rep. Machelle Bachmann)
– In August of 2010, a deal was made that in the still painful and very touch-and-go recovery, would cut services and funding on the social safety net (see US Constution “general welfare” clause) which would if completely allowed (as it would take effect in 2012) re-create something quite close to the Great Depression Level Bread-Lines and such we only have heard about or read about (in my case, I know of those lines second hand thanks to my great-grandmother and grandmother who was born in 1909 and 1933)
– In addition with the Citizen United Decision from the SCOTUS we know now that we – the actual citizens – are not being heard or followed by those in the Political Class of our Society. When Corperations are considered People and Money is their form of Speech.
MONEY is MORE than SPEECH for Opinions may have value but they don’t buy me dinner.
What are Occupy’s Demands?
– Occupy Wall St. (the origin point) wishes for those who have caused this mess to be put on trial and hopefully found guilty of crimes of playing unfair in the markets (the creation of CDCs and other things like that for people to buy and for them to be against)
– Occupy UC Davis seems to wish more for fairer Tuition costs (why I’m not sure for I do not know that area well enough, but I stand with them for I too see the issue plainly.)
– Occupy DC not only has demands that align with OWS’s but also more on the Foreign Affairs side as well. Even going so far to craft Legislation that would help the US to recover from this horrible economic happen stance. (see “the People’s Plan”)
Why are they Camping then?
– the name “Occupy” is more of let’s say an description of the style of protest they wish to have. They wish to Occupy and area in which it would cause a disruption to the Status Quo (and if needed be a form of Civil Disobedience in it’s own right)
– Thus the tents and such are not just “Camping” but a form of Protest which is an expression and protected by (or should be based on my reading) the 1st Amendment.
OK, now UC Davis’ issues…
First, UC being “University of California” thus a public campus; paid for by the public for a good deal of it’s funding in addition to the cost of tuition and the money it racks in from the athletic and marketing departments as well as the gift shop.
Policy exists to have rules that are meant to be followed – the Campus does have the right to enforce those policies including a “No Camping on Campus” Policy and the Campus has the right to ask the police to remove those persons from the campus.
Clearly the Occupy Movement is in the wrong here if you find Policy and Law the highest authority. However Occupy UC-Davis clearly decided to utilise Civil Disobedience and openly break ONLY that law. (the Policy of “No Camping” and thus any happen-stance that would follow from that, i.e. a Police Order to vacate)
From there now we have all the back-story to see the video far above…
As described the Police in Protective Gear steps over the line of protesters (see Video Above 0:06 – 0:09) Although not shown in this particular video have I seen others where the warning was clearly heard and given previous to start of this video – again – Civil Disobedience.
From 0:11 to 0:26 in this video it clearly shows the Officer using the Pepper Spray – as they warned they would. Note: as said above Military Pepper Spray has quite the effective range and duration – a significant step above NYPD’s Consumer Grade Pepper Spray.
A Quick Explanation of Pepper Spray – Pepper Spray is mostly created to be a non-lethal burning sensation causing agent – the main chemical used is Capsaicin it’s what makes Peppers have that burning bite to them. Peppers are rated on the Scoville (as in How many 8oz glasses of Milk does it take to complete remove all sensation of burning) – Law Enforcement Grade rates around 5M to 5.5M, I can only guess that Miltary Grade is at least on the higher end if not more so.
Now let’s take a second and now knowing what has happened and seeing the back-story up to this point.
Did the Police do the right thing in using a semi-non-lethal weapon on peaceful protesters?
Is Occupy UC-Davis in the wrong?
Even if it’s to make a Political Point by Disobedience/Protesting?
Did UC Davis’ Chancellor violate a freedom of expression / speech?
Should THAT be grounds to have her removed from her post?
I know how I answer those questions – and so not to be confused those are rhetorical
Classic selection bias! The troglodytes suggesting that anyone who doesn’t do what Big Daddy says immediately deserves to be beaten, pepper-sprayed, tazed, etc., are exactly the people that want to become policemen. They’re also the exact sorts who preach Christian discipline in the home and beat their wives and kids. Might makes right, and that’s all there is to it. You got a different opinion, well, that’snothing that a little smackdown won’t cure.
As for thecomparisons with our armedforces in Iraq, well those are apt enough as well. We have an army that’s 90 percent Christian and 90 percent GOP and they sure do make the Iraqis feel a whole lot safer.
Rum, sodomy,and the lash, that’s what a boy needs to prepare him for a seat in Parliament!
It has been posted twice before in this thread, but it deserves another. Chancellor Katehi’s Walk of Shame. How she can do anything but resign is beyond me.
Pepper spray should only ever be used by the police when dealing with a person who is offering physical resistance as an alternative to the use of firearms.
The biggest problem with Police is not that they are cowards and thugs (though I concede that many are), but rather that most of them are uneducated dolts. It’s a bad idea to give uneducated and poorly trained people guns and badges. The Police lack the intelligence and the training to make good decisions, which suits the powers that be just fine. Smart Cops with consciences and good decision-making skills aren’t very useful to the establishment. Mindless animals with guns and pepper spray, however, can be quite useful indeed.
Even if you believe that the use of pepper spray in this situation was not excessive (though it was blatantly excessive);
You cannot deny that a cop deliberately using it contrary to required safety protocol by ignoring minimum safe distance, and blasting people multiple times in succession, is an absolute case of blatant assault with intent to cause lasting harm.
If the cop in question believed pepper spray to be an appropriate response, he would not have been so nonchalant in its use while ignoring required safety of it. This spraying was without any doubt an attempt to hurt the protesters, not subdue them.
I’ve been an Atheist for most of my life.
I was also a police officer for 33 years, most of my life.
I’ve never done anything like what you see in the video.
Am I a coward and a thug also PZ?
Terry Lorz
Police work attracts people with authoritarian personalities. “Live and let live” is not in their vocabularies. Just this morning, the transit cops in Cleveland were hassling a homeless guy who was sleeping on my train. It’s cold out, and he wanted a warm, dry place. I said “Leave him alone, he’s not hurting anyone.” They told me to stay out of it or I would be arrested. I got the cop’s badge number and will be writng a letter of complaint.
Actually PZ, the Real Cowards here are the one’s who post and hide under fake names.
If you don’t use your real name while posting, you are a Coward, Thug and a Dolt.
Terry Lorz
Newtonian Astronomer:
I suppose this has been hashed out already, but IMO bullying and cruelty don’t necessarily include cowardice. I think the conflation comes from the common reply to bullies, “Hey, pick on someone your own size,” which implies that bullies are just cowards. They might indeed pick on people their own size, if they got to use weapons, as they did here.
Mean, lazy, cruel, reckless — apparently yes. Afraid? Cowards? Needs more evidence.
More to the point: the use of violence against nonviolent protesters is completely unacceptable and should cost those in command their jobs.
Terry Lorz:
You don’t sound like a coward and a thug Terry, but surely you agree that these savage assholes should be debadged and probably locked up for a bit?
Ah, the ol’ “You’ve got nothing to fear if you’ve got nothing to hide” line: a favourite among cops.
Nice, Terry. Lots of people use pseudonyms on the internet, many of them for perfectly valid reasons – like avoiding death threats, employers who object to employee opinions, and so on. Way to paint with a broad brush – and isn’t that what you were complaining about in your last post?
As for hiding, you’ll find out a lot more about me and my opinions by looking for me as Tapetum (which I’ve gone by for more than 20 years) than by looking for my real name, which is about as common as John Smith.
Nor do I see PZ saying that every last cop everywhere is a coward and thug – but it’s been perfectly obvious for years now that there are plenty that are, and it’s awfully hard from this end of the baton to tell which ones are which. Is the cop I’m dealing with today a decent one, or someone who’ll dump a guy out of a wheelchair for not following an order to stand up? Or pepper spray protesters who pose no threat? Or pull a gun during a routine traffic stop because I failed to pull over instantly when he turned his lights on? There are far too many of the latter to make it safe to assume benign intentions.
@Terry Lorz:
Should I post under my real name knowing that associating my posts with my real name could get me fired from my job?
Should I post under my real name knowing that associating my posts with my real name could cause my family to disown me?
Should I post under my real name knowing that associating my posts with my real name could make my friends not like me?
Should I post under my real name knowing that associating my posts with my real name could direct actual violence towards me?
There are real reasons for posting under a pseudonym, and not all of them because we’re cowards.
Although I cannot speak for PZ and others who utilise a false name, I can certainly speak for myself.
Terry, I respect that you would take the risk that are involved with the line of work that police officers find themselves in. When they do the job in protection of the public good and order – I thank them for doing their job.
Not every officer I have met hold themselves to the high standards that should be placed on them as officers of the law and keepers of the general good, peace and order. Not that our media hasn’t done it’s fair share of both honouring and smearing the various police branches in various cities.
In the instance of the UC Davis event although the police were doing their duty they did it with a lack of understanding or compassion doing direct harm to those who posed them no harm.
I feel that is a breach of the public trust one would normally have in those of that station who have that type of power and authority. Some have seen those breach be unanswered and unquestioned by those within their own forces and even those above them. Constant and Consistent Breaches of the Public Trust in that manner can only lead to a general distrust in those who have such power.
As to those who utilise false names (as I do) do so because the feel and the possible outright need to keep ones actual name from being known due to possible repercussions for having certain stances (i.e. like being an Atheist in some parts of our Union)
Although I make no apology for my stances; I do not wish for my stances to discredit me from any future earnings. So if you wish to call me a Coward or a Dolt, then fine, but I do not find myself though my words alone to be a Thug.
Every year about this time our local police hit me up for contributions to something or other. This year, instead of bills, the envelope will contain a short, polite letter stating that I will be donating to the needy without any middleman this year, and that I will no longer be supporting any police actions until everyone in the department has signed a pledge that they will never use physical force against any person who is not actually attacking them.
I’m not going to read all 260+ responses, but but to the people near the beginning defending the police spraying pepper spray because the protesters MIGHT be armed I ask why didn’t they do that with the teabaggers? They’re far more likely to be armed. The police are being cowards and bullies. It’s easier to kick an unarmed man than one who you think is armed.
Also, PZ Myers is his real name…
Can’t seem to let this go …
Maybe, as PZ claims, as a police officer, (now retired,) I am a coward, thug and as another anonymous (true coward) poster stated, “an uneducated dolt.”
Lumped in with the “cowards, thugs and dolts,” that does hurt.
Consider this. I will grant that everyone posting on this board is smarter than me, probably not much of a leap. I will grant that the nature of police work is clearly weighted on the side of the “haves,” and against the “have-nots.”
That’s the way the world, as we know it, is set up.
If you want to change that, go after the people who MAKE the tools and rules, not the tools.
By the way, I once arrested a tenured professor for sexually abusing his 8 year old daughter. That doesn’t mean PZ is a child molester, does it?
Bush, Obama, the lot. These are the guys you should be angry at, not one of the “cowards, thugs or dolts.”
Terry Lorz
I dunno Lorz. Most of the commenters self-identifying as current or ex police seem to either have entered the profession with an authoritarian mindset or to have been rigidly indoctrinated to develop one. They all maintain a Nuremberg mentality. Hey, the Conquistadors were ordered by the Crown to subjugate and Christianize the natives, the natives didn’t comply, ergo it was the right thing to do, the subsequent genocide.
Or you could be the tank commander in Tianenmen Square who DIDN’T run over the man in the white shirt. I fail to see what Obama and Bush have anything to do with those personal decisions men with gunsmake, upanddown the chain of command. For Lt. Pike to do what he did means that the entire professional culture gave him full psychological validation for even considering it.
Just a couple of questions from a Canadian coward, thug and dolt.
Do all universities in US have armed police? (a followup WHY?)
What trained cop uses any weapon on an unarmed, nonviolent person?
Does UCDavis policy override a citizen’s right to assemble and seek redress?
Ok, that’s three questions, but I’m a dolt.
P.S. Edmonton police are not going to remove Occupy Edmonton from a park, the police are hoping the owners of the land (not the city) and the people can sort things out.
PZ. I agree with your comments about Coulter. We should be able to criticize her without resorting to bad comments about her gender or appearance. I avoid using gender-insults pretty much for that reason. It’s too easy to dismiss someone’s complaint on the basis of the complainer “just hates women”. Coulter would be a vile disgusting person regardless of gender and that’s what we should focus on.
As a former Davisite for 2 years (left almost 4 months ago) and current resident of Louisiana, I am shocked and horrified at the police violence that took place on my campus. Officer Pike should be arrested and charged with the crimes he committed, and Chancellor Katehi should be immediately removed from office. I have been heartened by the mass of faculty and student responses to this event, as well as the support shown by thousands of others across the country and around the world. Regardless of how you feel about the OWS movement or what the UCD students/faculty were protesting, there is ABSOLUTELY NO justification for pepper-spraying peacefully protesting students. No justification. They could’ve been protesting the flavors of yogurt offered at YoloBerry and still it would have been criminal to spray them down like that.
…. Still waiting for pepper spray/tasers/flashbangs to be used in the boardrooms of AIG, BofA and Goldman Sachs. After all, the “perps” in there are certainly breaking the law.
Oh yeah… I forgot — this is ‘Murika. Rich white men do NOT go to prison in ‘Murika.
That actually isn’t feasible. Whether or not it’s still the case I can’t say, but a member of my local force told me that their handbook authorises the police to take you down to the ground for disobeying a direct verbal order. It doesn’t mean they have to do that, just that they can. And there are situations where it makes sense to me, such as when trying to arrest a drunken assaulter (very common where I live) without having his similarly drunken and assaulting bros menacing you (they’re never far from their pack.)
Maybe I’m wrong here.
I understand that. And I agree with your argument “If you want to change that, go after the people who MAKE the tools and rules, not the tools.” But isn’t that what these students are trying to do? And it’s hard when the tools act exactly like that—tools.
As many posters have pointed out, there are some police forces that seem to recognise this, and show restraint, if not solidarity. They don’t plunge into the fray as if they’re gleefull for the opportunity to crack some hippie skull.
There you go. I’ve got my own issues with my local police force, but once in awhile they seem to get it.
A lot has been said about the police being ‘trapped’ by the protesters. However, the officer who actually sprays them steps over them (at 7 seconds on the video) before spraying them, and is then followed by several more of his colleagues (I saw at least two more in the first 45 seconds). Soon after that, the police were clearly dragging away people with their hands behind their backs, suggesting they were arresting individual protesters, or at least moving them out of the way. All this suggests they were not particularly worried that these people were armed (after all, they are liberals not tea partiers). Clearly, they were not particularly trapped, nor particularly worried about being attacked. As has been pointed out elsewhere by PZ, the police are professionals and should be trained to act sensiblly in high stress situation; this lot clearly didn’t.
Apologies if this has all been pointed out already (gave up reading the comments after the first 100 ‘dumbfuck’).
Also, interesting how this all compares (badly) to what is happening in the Middle East again. As far as I know, nobody dead in the Occupy protests (yet), but gotten close.
Good for you.
Alrighty, then.
That’s reassuring.
Lets find out:
Do you believe the actions taken by the officer in the video were appropriate to the situation?
My nym is clearly not my own name – it’s a minor character from a somewhat obscure anime based loosely on a popular movie based loosely on an Alan Dean Foster sci-fi story. I’m pretty sure that makes me a geek.
If that makes me a coward in your eyes, so be it – frankly, you haven’t yet said anything to lead me to belive your opinion of my cowardice is something worth listening to.
I’m not certain how my using a nym makes me a thug – I’d love to hear your explanation.
As to being a dolt, I would hold that people who go our of their way to post verifiable personal details about themselves widely on the internet are the ones a few iced-tea-spoons short of a silver set, if you know what I mean. And, of course, if you don’t post that sort of thing, no-one can determine that your nym is your name, making it just as useless as any other nym.
It worries me that three decades of police work hasn’t cured you of being that naive.
I’m Spartacus!
But that’s a good point, Anri. I could just as easily call myself Ian Brown and I’m sure that would satisfy the Real Namers™, but it would be just as thuggish, doltish, and cowardly as Brownian.
As a current UCD student, the pschyopathy on display by the cops and chancellor disgusts me.
A bit of local sourced background: the incident occurred during the middle of a school day on the main quad, which is just two giant strips of grass flanked by trees and divided by a path. While people cross cross the the quad all day (as well as lounge in the sun) it is not a critical thoroughfare: it is flanked on all sides by two lane roads. The quad could be totally impassable due to a press of people (like it might at today’s protest rally at noon), and there would still be minimal interference with the rest of the university functions and transportation.
Would comment more, bit phone typing sucks.
i find it amazing that in america, a country where pretty much anyone is allowed to own a gun, people are so quick to indulge in public douchegabbery in the media. i not saying someone should shoot these people or anything im just surprised they dont show at least the semblance of tact, given that they are in the public eye. i guess it feels pretty safe attacking peaceful protesters though
that was supposed to say douchebaggery. ive never typed that word before and confused myself
@ Laurentweppe 232
Bingo.
I was just thinking, she only said this because she knows she would have been among the beheaded.
Or worse, because she is secretly dreaming to have been on the Comité de salut public, next to Robespierre, deciding who was going next to the guillotine.
To be fair, during the Reign of Terror, the new officials indeed started sending to the guillotine about anybody suspected of aristocratic sympathy. But it was not a mob doing it (well, you can argue that the power had been seized by street thugs), it was all ordered and law-abiding: it was more akin to Stalinist trials.
More realistically, I suspect her view of the French Revolution is just of an angry mob of uppity commoners daring to question the social order and taking on their betters.
Douchegabbery works pretty well in that context, I think.
Human Ape needs to accidentally find themself stumbling into the blast pit of a Saturn V about 3 seconds before takeoff.
Are you a coward and a thug? Do you lend support to police cowardice and thuggery? Do you speak out against brutality when it occurs? You seem more concerned with arguing with a point that no one is making (that every police officer is a thug/coward), than discussing the important issue of peaceful sit-in protesters being fucking pepper-sprayed with military-grade spray. In my mind, it is thuggish to divert attention from the victim to defend the poor, poor oppressors. If you did spend your time as an officer doing a fine job and looking out for innocent citizens and protestors, protecting them from this kind of abuse of power, then this post wasn’t fucking directed at you. But anyways, all you have told us is that you are an atheist (irrelevant) and were a cop. You realize you haven’t given us any information yet that would allow us to conclude if you are a cowardly thug or not?
With that comment, you have given us enough information to conclude that you are in fact an idiot though.
Terry Lorz,
That is a pretty condescending view you hold towards the police, by the way. Why can we not go after the “tools”? Are they not intelligent enough to perceive that their violence was not necessary in this situation? Are their moral compasses not strong enough to know right from wrong? Why do you consider the police to be such dolts? I think those “tools” are capable of making their own decisions and taking responsibility for them.
I think Terry was making an unsound generalisation from his own case.
Terry Lorz, these are good points, and I am largely inclined to agree with you.
Let me share with you a couple of reasons that I’m hesitant to agree completely, though.
As we know, public policing, private security, and military jobs all present the worker with many opportunity to unleash violence and get away with it, sometimes even be praised for it.
I’m friends with some young men who joined the military precisely for this reason, because they wanted to kill people.
Among my friends who are police officers, as far as I can tell, none of them became police officers to express their violence. In each case it was a hopeful sentiment about wanting to keep people safe. Perhaps a bit naive, but understandable.
But I asked one of them, how many police, in his estimate, enjoy hurting people and getting away with it. He reckoned it was between 1/4 and 1/3. This is not the majority, but it is a considerable number.
(I’d be interested in hearing your estimate. For sure, I trust my friend and I don’t know you, so I’ll give some more weight to his opinion, but I would still value yours. Also, you’re of different generations; what you’ve experienced is probably different.)
Anyway, Terry, given that many of us have probably encountered at least one police officer who really does enjoy hurting people, don’t you think it’s quite understandable for us to be distrustful of the police as an institution? Especially considering how we’re aware of the opportunity for violent youth to self-select into the profession?
These heavy handed tactics are consistent with a counter-insurgency. There’s no reason why this kind of force is necessary for a peaceful protest unless there is a political motivation for suppressing their message.
Terry Lorz:
Sure thing, Terry. If that’s your real name.
I use a pseudonym because it’s fun. Also, because my real name doesn’t mean anything to anybody who might be reading this, so it doesn’t make any fucking difference what name I use to post. A few folks know who nigelTheBold is, and that’s all that matters — they have an identity that means something, not some stupid name my folks gave me.
And what you posit is stupid, anyway. Free speech is a fundamental right in the United States. And in any case, it shouldn’t even matter. What matters is whether or not the words make sense, if they are rational, if they are defensible.
What you are doing is an ad hominem. You’re trying to suggest that, because we don’t use our real names*, somehow our criticisms aren’t valid. You’re saying it isn’t our ideas that matter, but the ability for someone to track us down and pepper spray us that matters.
Is that really the world you want to live in?
* And how can we be sure you’re using your real name?
@Terry Lorz
PZ Myers is his real name. *facepalm*
Crip Dyke, that might be it after all. I’m afraid I don’t remember the specifics anymore. It’s been a considerable time since I studied it, and I’m not in the field of law.
Thanks for your expansion of the topic.
Terry, I would also like to share an essay with you, A Watched Populace Never Boils, by Brad Templeton.
«People often ask why a loss of privacy — as would come from increased surveillance, TV cameras on all the street corners and a national ID card — is a restriction on freedom.
Some wonder it because they have fallen for the old fallacy that if you are innocent, you have nothing to hide. Some wonder it because there is already a lot of monitoring in society, particularly in our credit card transactions, and the walls have not come tumbling down.
Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety.
But the truth is that invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn’t abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is.
When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions. Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in big ones.
We all know this. We all know the exhilarating freedom we felt when we first left home, out from under the watchful eye of our parents. Alone, unwatched, we could finally be ourselves, or even be new selves. Some people experience this even when they move to a new town. Some feel themselves reducing to their old, censored self during Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s a metaphorical version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which at the small end of things demonstrates how it’s not possible to watch something without changing it.
Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. The fringe is usually feared by the majority, and most subject to its oppression.
Yet the fringe is the lifeblood of a society’s future. When I say a watched populace never boils, I refer to the ability to bubble with change and novelty. Yes, it also means unrest, for there are both positive and negative elements to the fringe. Yet the fringe today becomes the mainstream in the future. That is how a healthy, dynamic society works. That is how our society works.
You can’t have the same sort of counterculture in a monitored society. It gets driven even further underground. You won’t find the counterculture in the small towns where everybody knows one another. Usually the youth, full of anger and novelty and art and invention, leave those small towns to discover themselves in the city. Will they do it as well if mom, or big brother, is watching?
Would you have liked to be gay 40 years ago in a monitored society? Or an enemy of J. Edgar Hoover with modern tools in his hands? A far-left philosopher 50 years ago? A cancer patient trying to use marijuana to alleviate nausea today?
Consider as well the plight of the shy person in the surveillance society. They are many, and they are a great deal more sensitive to being watched. In them, the feeling of being noticed sets off an anxiety the extroverted will never understand, and they will fear the public arena. For many, it is how their brain is wired. They can’t “get over it” and accept the cameras. Have they no rights?
Even just ask the famous today if they like their lack of privacy. They like the perks of fame, but surveillance just gives everybody the exposed life of the famous without the nice tables at restaurants.
The founders of the USA knew this. They wrote much of their founding doctrine anonymously in the Federalist Papers. That legacy exists today online. Some online communities are destroyed by anonymous abuse, but others (particularly ones for discussion of sexual matters, or support groups for victims of unpleasant diseases) could only exist with the anonymity they provide their participants. They are boiling, opening doors, and changing the world.
We might be safer if people had less privacy. We could be as safe as the people in the small towns, which have low crime rates. We would also be as lukewarm as the people in those towns; content but never boiling.»
I find “tool” much more offensive than “coward and thug”.
So, all poor cops are just good people following bad orders. Right.
I’m German, I’ve heard that excuse far too often.
As other examples in this thread show, lots of police officers have refused to carry out such orders. Those who haven’t, or even shown “initiative” are fully responsile for their actions.
I find the question whether the student actions were illegal or not totally irrelevant. The police actions were absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, unprovoked and brutal.
People break the law every day. Most people don’t make it to work and back without. But people who don’t endanger anybody else or the public mustn’t be assaulted by the police.
So John Morales’ first impulse is to quibble about the words used to describe the police actions, but to say nothing about the actual actions. What a surprise (not).
That may be his first impulse, but on second thought he did say this:
“Coward” is the only word to use. I hear over and over that the police HAVE to do this for their own safety.
Well, listen up, the job of the police is to protect OUR safety. Their’s comes secondary. Sorry, but when you wear the badge, you are taking a duty that requires you to risk your own life at times. If you can’t stomach that idea, quit. Even if it means a risk to an officer’s own life, assuming protestors could turn deadly violent at any moment, it is your duty to obey the very laws you say you uphold and that means risking your own life by NOT pepper spraying anyone who’s hands are concealed.
Next you’ll tell me it’s fine for a fire fighter to refuse to enter a burning building with people inside because that would unduly endanger them.
Kinda say sit all.
http://i.imgur.com/ZnWKr.png
*says it
I hate my farking typos. =P
One little historical point: of the four who died at Kent State, two were not involved in the protests, but were in fact on their way to class (yes, classes were being held that fateful day). One of the dead, far from being an anti-war protester, was an ROTC student.
Those National Guardsmen opened fire on a fucking crowd, and didn’t know who they were shooting. And Ann Coulter thinks we need more of that?
For information on Kent State, I recommend James Michener’s Kent State: What Happened And Why.
groan
Terry Lorz @ 258;
Firstly, as other commenters have pointed out, PZ is using his real name.
Secondly, you claim that using a pseudonym is ‘cowardly’. How so? In what way is it ‘cowardly’ to make a logical, coherent point whilst employing a pseudonym? Has it occurred to you that many of the people here have very good reasons for not using their actual names? As an ex-police officer, I imagine that you are aware of the ubiquity of stalking and cyber-stalking in our society? Don’t you see that a person taking a stand against vested interest in our culture is potentially putting themselves (and quite possibly their families, friends and colleagues) in a very vulnerable position?
There is nothing ‘cowardly’ about the use of anomymised protest – more often then not it is simply prudent.
@ 270;
Don’t take PZ’s words so personally. He was describing the recent actions of the police in relation to the Occupy Wallstreet protest movement, and I can see why he finds the use of pepper spray and batons against peaceable protesters offensive, and indicative of a total failure by the officers involved to ‘protect and serve’ anything other than unaccountable government power and corporate interests. Are you honestly able to unequivically endorse the use of such violence against peaceable protesters with a clear conscience?
“They were just following orders” is not much of a defence – when the orders are clearly unjust and abusive, it is the moral responsibility of the police officer/soldier/other government offcial to refuse to discharge them.
That is quite the false equivilancy you have there. PZ is not saying that every police officer, current or former, is a thug and a coward. He is saying that the actions of the officers in this video and others like it show them in such a bad light that there really is no other viable conclusion as to their specific behaviour in these instances.
You don’t seriously want to defend the use of pepper spray on non-violent protesters, do you?
UC Davis chancellor Katehi issued a statement: (via BoingBoing)
QFTX1000
When I was about eight or ten years old, I had the chance to punch Ann Coulter. I was at an NRA dinner with my dad, who was the person in charge at the time. Had I known then what I do now, she’d have had several black and blue marks in the shape of my tiny fists of rage. Also, probably have become deaf from my screaming obscenities at her.
Oh how that woman pisses me off.
Boo yah.
Terry Lorz: In my experience, cops are assholes. If there are honest cops out there who don’t get their rocks off intimidating people that they are sworn to protect, I haven’t met them*. And you can bet your ass that in this instance I will cower behind my nym, because even as a retired cop, you scare me. The difference between my cowardice and the cowardice displayed in the video, is that I am assaulting citizens needlessly.
I realize that my experience with the police may not be representative**. Maybe most cops are really protect-and-serve-types who would never use the shield to excuse needless violence, and who certainly would never allow one who did to persist in doing so. Let’s split the difference, and say that only 50% of police are dangerously unprepared to interact with citizens.
In the spirit of goodwill, I offer you half a porcupine.
*Maybe because I have learned to avoid the police like a sickness.
**Mostly small town cops with little training, and AFAICT, no oversight.
not assaulting citizens needlessly.
Dammit.
Atheistpolitic, hitting her wouldn’t have helped. I suppose at 10, you might not have had the sense to see that, but surely you don’t wish you had punched her …you might not like her, but violence isn’t a good response. As PZ has said, I wish the media would wake up and shame and then ignore her, publicly.
I can’t decide whether Coulter is simply an titanically irresponsible professional troll who doesn’t care what harm her ill considered blather might cause, or a sociopathic far right monster who actually believes that the proper response to peaceful protest is to fire randomly into a crowd.
Then again, that is the American religious Right for you:- so afraid of differing ideas that they think that a hail of bullets amounts to a legitimate counter argument.
I think Coulter just massacred the entire world’s stock of irony meters with this truly superhuman display of oblivious idiocy.
and;
Nothing like a side order of casual dehumanisation to go with your exhortation to politically motivated murder…
My suspicion is that most police officers are really protect-and-serve-types who would never use the shield to excuse needless violence, but who certainly would allow one who did to persist in doing so.
Because most officers look the other way, most of them bear some responsibility for their bad reputations.
I wonder how many people know that Rick Perry was a liberal democrat as recently as 1988, when he actually RAN Al Gore’s presidential campaign in Texas?
No.
No no no no no no no no no!
This is not so. The Al Gore campaign said he was at best on a “steering committee” or perhaps ready to work on the campaign for his home county in Texas. And that’s if the Gore campaign was organized enough for it–which is in serious doubt.
Perry supported Gore, yes–a million times yes–but he was not Gore’s campaign manager in Texas.
I’d heard the same, but it is not true:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/sep/07/legend-al-gore-and-rick-perry/
Wow. You’re right, Terry! I’m such a coward, thug and a dolt because I don’t use my real name on the internet. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Its not like we JUST had a conversation about the abuse women get directed to them online.
Okay, sure, my abusive, rapist ex – who, even 2.5 years later, still occasionally gets stalkery* – might be able to locate me if I used my real name, but hey! Don’t want to be thought of as a coward by some self-righteous, pseudo-brave dipshit on the internet!
FOAD, douchebomb.
* – want to talk about how useful and helpful the police have been on this matter? Hint: 100% worthless is putting it mildly. Fuck the police.
It’s a federal crime to torture peaceful protestors with chemical agents.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
List and discussion of who might need to use a pseudonym and why.
article on militarization of campus police in recent years.
Interesting – at Duke it’s a tradition to camp out on the public campus property for sports tickets.
The police were as cowardly as the administrators who had them be there.
And equally as cowardly as their cowardly Administrator, who couldn’t see the way out was… Right there.
Actually PZ, the Real Cowards here are the one’s who post and hide under fake names.
If you don’t use your real name while posting, you are a Coward, Thug and a Dolt.
Terry Lorz
So you’re saying that Founding Fathers James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, writers who used the pseudonym ‘Publius’ to explain the Constitution to the American people, are cowards and thugs?
Fuck you, you anti-American scumbag.
And another thing, scumbag: if you scumbag cops would take people seriously when they’re terrified of stalkers who have tracked them down online and are threatening to come to your town to kidnap you, then maybe people wouldn’t have to use pseudonyms! Some of us have names so unique that we can be found anywhere in the world with the simplest searches! And some of us with names which are that unique are single mothers with young children at home!
Fuck you, you scumbag.
Since I can’t trust you scumbag cops to protect me, I’m going to protect myself with a pseudonym, because you scumbag cops are too wrapped up in protecting yourselves to do your fucking jobs.
FUCK YOU.
petzl20, your comment indicates that you are incapable of dealing with the argument that private property constitutes theft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Property%3F
I would refer you also to this, brought to my attention by Pharyngula commenter Walton:
http://alh.houseofrussell.com/docs/hale.html
Disclosure: I am a leftist who is not convinced that private property constitutes theft. I’m also not sure that I’m capable of arguing against it at this time. But your vapid dismissal is completely worthless.
In the future, try not to show off how fucking stupid you are, unless you are also humble enough to admit you’re not capable of engaging with the concept.
Stupidity + overconfidence = Dunning Kruger.
Thomathy: But it would have been so satisfying. And then she and my dad wouldn’t have been friendly at that awful dinner. You know they make an action figure of her. She signed one to sell at the dinner to raise money for the NRA. Ugh, I can’t believe I begged my dad to go to those until I was 12!
Dear “Terry Lorz”,
Nice attempt at comedy trolling, but fuck off anyway.
“Real names”? Are you a guest demon from the world of Angel or something?
Lorne: This is Terrianophica, she’s a Lorz demon. She needs our help.
Fred: OK, Terry. Angel Investigations is here to help people. And demons.
Again, fuck off – you and any who even attempt to justify this blatent and cowardly abuse of power and authority. You don’t deserve status as human beings, much less Americans.
I want to hear that the Davis campus police got together at their station house in a display of remorse and revulsion at their brothers’ behavior, tarred and feathered the officers who led the charge against the peaceful citizens they were supposed to protect.
It’s too much to expect the guilty officers to voluntarily resign and give up the thrill of power. But it’s not too much to expect that the remaining decent officers should actively try to force them out and meanwhile refuse to serve on the same force as long as the pepper-sprayers remain free to torture civilians.
@ Michael Zeora #250:
Yeah…. maybe. Regulations that limit behaviors that are not ordinarily speech but may become speech in a specific context have sometimes been upheld and sometimes been struck. Absolutely camping has been incorporated into the theme of this protest from the beginning. It sends an unmistakable message: we are not going away, this is not a protest this week that will fade to the backs of our minds come election/accountability time.
This is seen as a vital message by the campers, who include some personal friends (I myself have not camped, though I visited the encampment that was closest to where I live on multiple occasions before it was shut down). Furthermore, awnings, pavilions, and other coverings are very much permitted in most of these spaces for many, many purposes (this is not a comment on the law in any one particular space, however).
Given that, it may very well be seen as content discrimination to prohibit this. But it also may not. Your reading of the first amendment notwithstanding.
This doesn’t mean I would argue for the power to remove encampments. It just means that “the first amendment does or should” protect the camps is not, in fact, anywhere close to clear.
hotshoe @ 323:
I encourage you to read my first comment on this thread. Police are much less motivated by the “thrill of power” than we civilians imagine. Do not let the jerk Terry cause you to miss the point that police have a particular culture, and from their perspective, it is the culture that we demand of them. That view has a great deal of empirical support. Quite a number of officers I’ve met have taken an, “I don’t like it that the police have become so militarized, but that’s what the police have been asked to become,” stance. Further, the “forcing out” you imagine is very much contrary to what we, as civilians, have told police officers is just in such a case. Our behavior as civilians matters. Terry is a jerk. It is in no way unjust to demand accountability for the officers involved (which include more than 2). However, there simply hasn’t been accountability for officers in the US – ever. So there is an implied social contract here, and we ignore it at our peril. It has real effects. If we assume that officers who did not participate but do not throw out their comrades are somehow evil, we fail to understand them.
Failing to understand them, we will then fail to change the police force because we won’t know **what** needs changing. This is too important. We must not let that happen.
Why don’t you overthrow the government? You only need some Toyota pickup trucks with 50 caliber machine guns on the back and American air cove … shit, flaw in the plan ..
Terry Lorz; the same officer out of Portland in October 1986, with the vagrant and the bridge?
I certainly wasn’t there and can’t make any comments on it… But I can comment on how a number of police act where I’m from, where the winters drop below -40. One of their favourite sports was picking up a drunk Native American, stripping them of his/her coat and shoes, and dropping them at the side of a logging road 20 kilometers from town.
Vagrant jumped from the bridge huh… no ID or anything. Shame.
You might be telling the truth, or you might have been like the disgusting excuses for human feces in blue like the cops from around my hometown. I don’t know.
But because we have your name, we can now speculate.
Do you understand?
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1345&dat=19861023&id=fTFkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yfkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3852,1768939
And before some wowzer goes off the deep end; when I said ‘Do you understand?’ it was not a threat of any sort.
I meant ‘Do you understand why some people prefer pseudonyms?’
Just thought I should clear that up.
@ craig – #282:
I actually like, “douchegabbery” for spurting injurious crap from one’s mouth. Quite a poetic portmanteau, associating careless wordplay with toxins forced inside a person from the outside.
Have you ever seen a toddler who does naughty things just for attention? You look over at them, and at the moment you make eye contact with them they knock their drink over and just keep staring right at you? It’s the same look you can see in Coulter’s eyes whenever she says something like this.
A Trotskyist perspective (one of many Trotskyist perspectives)
http://wearemany.org/a/2011/07/enemies-in-blue
Now some stuff by Kristian Williams:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=kristian%20williams
“Well, listen up, the job of the police is to protect OUR safety.”
The courts disagree with you. Unless you are a prisoner of the police they have no obligation to protect you.
Warren v. District of Columbia
Hartzler v. City of San Jose
Riss v. New York
DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services
etc,
etc,
etc…
@sailor, 314:
that’s great news.
It was amazing to me that they lost the case the first time through.
it was so obviously a case of torture.
In fact, I’m so happy to hear a positive result in that case finally, I’ll post it again.
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2451&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
I certainly fucking hope it does.
This is not so.
just to be clear:
Ok, I’ll accept he wasn’t an actual campaign manager, but you DID see the connection to Gore’s campaign.
what’s more, Perry DID initially start out as a liberal democrat in Texas.
which, at the time, WAS mostly a democratic state, btw.
and, lastly, PLEASE don’t miss the point of why I mentioned it.
which is, that Texans apparently have completely forgotten his “roots” as he spins himself as a conservative rethuglican now.
and, what’s more, you better fucking tell wiki they, and the two sources they reference, have it wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry#Early_political_career
I’d also note that at the time, and for years afterward, Perry himself did not dispute the claims he was involved with Gore’s campaign in Texas, and there were several sources claiming it, probably because he was in fact instrumental as an organizer in Texas at the time.
*shrug*
so, I’d also add…
stop screaming noooooooooooooooo…..
since it isn’t as clear as you try to make it sound.
up a ways:
One phrase I’m starting to consider using whenever this sort of thing happens again: “Rioting police officers” as in, it’s the police officers who are chiefly participating in a riot, attacking OWSers.
no worries; it’s been used before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_riot
It actually IS now in New Zealand.
too many abuse cases going unprosecuted; they finally decided it was necessary to just make hitting your kid illegal, period.
This doesn’t mean I would argue for the power to remove encampments. It just means that “the first amendment does or should” protect the camps is not, in fact, anywhere close to clear.
every single law that has ever been passed to prevent camping in public places was done so putatively to curb homeless squatting, and NEVER EVER to curb the use of these places for public meeting sites.
go on, take a look at the wording used in any law you care to examine relating to camping in public spaces.
as such, there being NO established law preventing public use of a public place for meeting purposes, it follows that apply the law to prevent homeless squatting does not apply.
ergo, any attempts to forcefully remove people from grounds that allow public meetings using such laws should be considered invalid, since it certainly isn’t because they are discouraging homeless squatters.
so, then, implicitly, I’d say you’re wrong. The “law” is actually pretty clear.
and has been misused, for decades.
I’ve never yet met a Trot who could see straight.
Crip Dyke:
Bullshit. Police who protect abusers are as evil as the Pope. It is not we (the citizenry) who need to understand that the blue wall of silence is an intolerable injustice. The police officers who maintain that wall at our expense must be made to understand it.
It is however not in the U.S. At least not nationally. There are states that allow it and I believe (I could be wrong here tho) there are states that make it illegal.
Just saying because when I first read the original statement my first thought was this. I’d scroll up to quote the original if I could.
This is not accurate – smacking kids is still legal in New Zealand.
People are confused about it because of the way some new legislation was presented and passed.
A few years ago a member of parliament presented legislation that would have outlawed any sort of physical disciplining in New Zealand.
The government of the day, though a different party, chose to support it.
During public debate it became apparent that popular opinion did not support the legislation, the popular complaint was that responsible parents would be criminalised for what was widely recognised as sensible means of disciplining children in unambiguous terms.
The government of the day feeling the wind blowing against it changed their story to pretend the legislation was all about clarifying the occassions in which excessive disciplining would be abusive.
In this they lied, and created the confusion. The original intent was to outlaw smacking entirely but what was passed, and what was pretended was the original ambition, was some legislation about excessive force.
So physical correction remains legal in NZ, and where we’ve long had laws against abusive behaviour towards children we now have another one.
There was, to all practical effect, no change in NZ at the end of the ‘Anti Smacking’ debate and passing of legislation.
@Antiochus – #341
(I write several days late, so this is only for the odd person who comes to the debate late)
You were responding to my comment of #325.
You have very much misread it. You say, ” Police who protect abusers are as evil as the Pope”
Sigh. Are you deliberately misinterpreting me? I don’t think so, I like to think that this is just an emotional topic, but you’re far from being on point here.
I did not and will not defend police who “protect abusers”. I was responding to someone who said that we should insist that the police must actively throw abusive officers out of their ranks.
There is a massive difference between the police setting up the equivalent of their own protest line and refusing to allow Lt. Pike and his ilk to work…and police insisting that their fellow officers, even the ones filmed red-handed, be allowed to have lawyers and go through codified disciplinary procedures.
I wrote:
“the “forcing out” you imagine is very much contrary to what we, as civilians, have told police officers is just in such a case.”
We have told the police over and over that they can expect a ‘due process’ analogous procedure before discipline will take place. A protest wall refusing to allow them entry to the precinct house is completely contrary to that procedure. They will insist that their comrades are “innocent until proven guilty” and will not act unilaterally against another officer coming to work. They do this because we, as a society, have told them that that is what they should expect.
We have also told them that they have to tell the truth about what they’ve seen – no blue wall of silence. I am not saying tolerating “protection” like a blue wall of silence or other tactics. I am saying that we can’t insist that cops are evil if they fail to throw out abusive cops before the procedures have run their course.
I argued against expecting police to throw out bad cops before disciplinary procedures had run their course. You will never find me arguing that we should tolerate cops protecting abusers. Please don’t accuse me of such offensive positions when I clearly did not take them.