Yeah, pretty much what I figured.

[trinityvixen]

On the heels of xannoside's post, and my response to it, evidence of what I was talking about. With numbers and everything. Non-lethal weapons may decrease the numbers of deaths in violent confrontations, but they increase the numbers of incidents that use force, period. Suddenly, you've got a lot of people being harmed who might not otherwise have been. It's problem.

So's this:

Understanding the psychology of policing is also very important, said Dunham.

“In their culture, it’s important to have authority. Most policemen will say that the only thing they have to protect them is authority, and they’re very sensitive to people who do not respect their authority,” he said. “When an officer gets on the scene, the number-one thing they’re supposed to do is take control” — and that dynamic is heightened when they know that other police will judge their actions.

Though I am equally troubled by the notion that policemen and women are thinking of how they'll be judged by their peers rather than by the people whom they serve (also: troubled that, in the estimation of police, acting with less force is the thing they perceive their colleagues will like less), I think the bolded portion makes me most nervous. The vast majority of people do respect, and, I think, even fear the police. The fact that respect is policed so heavily should worry everyone.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

It's a real problem--I just wish people cared about it more outside of the protest context. In the last year, the most I've heard about police brutality in the media came from Lt. Bologna's spraying in NYC (probably not justified) and the UC Davis spraying (definitely over the line). Bad, painful, violated rights, but no permanent harm. Meanwhile, tons of cases of "puppycide" (a term for the police practice of shooting dogs at the outset of all SWAT raids, regardless of the dog's threat or the violence of the suspect) and arrests of people for taking pictures and video of police don't get much coverage outside of left- and right-libertarian blogs (http://www.theagitator.com/ has really good coverage of both, but make sure you're psychologically ready to read about the puppycide incidents before doing so).

I don't have much sympathy for the UC Davis officers coldly spraying protesters, but I have a lot of sympathy for officers trying to control actual mobs. After seeing the damage done by Occupy Oakland and in London, it's tough to fault police for taking a hard line against young, leaderless anarchists. I am amazed at how good the policing was in NYC last Thursday, with the worst injury being done to a police officer from a thrown glass star. By and large, the incidents of police brutality against protesters seem to be more isolated incidents, compared to the everyday damage done in SWAT raids.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I care about this a lot, actually. I've been following stories of tazer abuse for a while, very chagrined the whole time. It has nothing to do with it just being used against protesters; clearly, as the article mentions several studies that investigated use of non-lethal weapons in years prior, most researchers aren't exclusively focused on anti-protest spraying.

I have to call bullshit on this, though:
After seeing the damage done by Occupy Oakland and in London, it's tough to fault police for taking a hard line against young, leaderless anarchists.

It is hyperbole to call the OWS people, smelly and intrusive though they may be, anarchists. It is just wrong, according to the defition of the term anarchy/anarchists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism). You can throw the word around all you like, but you just sound like you don't know what it means. Do not use words incorrectly.

It is likewise inaccurate to link protesters to rioters like the ones in London, despite however many rhetorical points you think you score for that analogy. You do it to condemn the one (protesters) by linking it to the other (rioters) and fail to make any other cogent point. It's inflammatory rhetoric, not evidence, not even psychology. (Except yours, really.)

But most importantly, you are basically calling the police reactionary cowards. It is the job of the police to react to the situation at hand, not to be scared by unrelated situations half a world away that have been over with for months before the situation they ARE facing happened. Your assertion that not-so-current events have made the police more on edge and thus could not be expected to respond with less force than they have. This is bullshit. The police are expected to be, above all, professional. Excusing unprofessional behavior, like using pepper spray in non-threatening situations, does greater discredit to the police on top of their already lamentable overreaction.

Frankly, I'm not at all distracted by your transparent attempt to change the subject from something that is legitimately a problem that you claim to agree is a problem. You're committing common strawperson arguments--"You can't be upset about this unless you're also upset about this!"; "Where were you when this happened?"; "Yeah, but [X] isn't as bad as [Y]."--otherwise known as your arguments, "What about the puppies?"; "How come you didn't talk about pepper spray when it wasn't in the news?"; and "The OWS are lucky they're not rioters because they could have it a lot worse." None of these arguments in any way derails the righteousness of pointing out injustice suffered now. My failure to be vocal before--to you; I would note that I have been vocal to others--does not therefore invalidate my points now.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I'm not criticizing you for failure to talk about the problem outside the protester context, I'm criticizing the media. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

As to anarchists, though...when the guy leading your march is carrying the black and red anarchist flag, it's fair to call your protest anarchist (firsthand experience last Thursday). When the protesters in Oakland try to disassociate themselves from violence by saying it was done by Black Bloc anarchists, it's fair to say that the protests have invited anarchist violence.

I don't excuse pepper spray at UC Davis, where there was no threat. I could excuse pepper spray in NYC (in the Bologna incident) where a mob of protesters was climbing on cars, blocking Broadway, and trying to break through police barricades. I can easily excuse tear gas in Oakland, where protesters shattered store windows and shut down a major commercial port, and where the city has experience with protests like this getting out of hand.

And yeah, we are allowed to look at the London riots as a cautionary example. Those riots started as a protest, and turned into riots and looting when the police failed to keep order. That doesn't necessarily mean that OWS would have turned into a riot, but it does set a worst-case scenario to be avoided. And frankly, having seen the scenes from last Thursday firsthand, I'm quite comfortable saying that without the overwhelming police presence, there would have been terrible property damage and violence in the Financial District.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm not criticizing you for failure to talk about the problem outside the protester context, I'm criticizing the media. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Sorry for the overreaction there. You're absolutely right that this isn't covered nearly enough. Just read about a 61-year-old disable man tazed to death. He fell off his bike and was having a seizure. Someone reported him as a drunk and the cops tazed him instead of trying to restrain him. He's DEAD. It's just...wow, the first thing you do when someone is having a seizure, whether it's a drug fit or not, is not taze them. That's not recommended by any group that makes tazers.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If you persist in keeping with the riots-were-protests, I'll have to note that the protests escalated to violent protests pretty much right away. A months-long peaceful protest does not deserve the reaction it got because one protest somewhere ever got violent. End of story. You cannot use past precedent in dealing with every new situation. Every new situation will not devolve into violence.

And frankly, having seen the scenes from last Thursday firsthand, I'm quite comfortable saying that without the overwhelming police presence, there would have been terrible property damage and violence in the Financial District.

An unprovable assertion about events that did not happen cannot really be a credible argument. I hope you realize that. It is just as likely that had the police not rousted the protesters, nothing would have happened. They would have just kept staying there doing whatever they were doing. There were things that changed that led to confrontation; it does not follow that confrontation/destruction would have happened had the changes not happened.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

A months-long peaceful protest does not deserve the reaction it got because one protest somewhere ever got violent. End of story. You cannot use past precedent in dealing with every new situation. Every new situation will not devolve into violence.

By itself, no. When you have guys on videotape shouting that they're going to hurl Molotov Cocktails at Macy's, and the OWSers around him aren't shouting him down, you start getting concerned. When the movement's website openly says its goal is to shut down Wall Street, an act that if successful would cause massive financial damage, then yes, I think it's fair to call out the riot squads.

And in practice, their anger wasn't directed towards the police--the goal was to shut down Wall Street. The morning mobs on November 17 were trying to forcibly stop Wall Street workers from getting to their jobs. The Oakland rioters were part of the same movement, and they didn't limit their attacks to police officers. The New York protesters were harassing little girls on their way to school! So yeah, I think it's fair to think that massive police response was necessary to keep downtown businesses safe.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

When the movement's website openly says its goal is to shut down Wall Street, an act that if successful would cause massive financial damage, then yes, I think it's fair to call out the riot squads.

Well, I can stop talking with you on this subject right here because that crosses a line with me. You openly advocate the use of force to protect money. I think we're at another one of those points where I will never agree with you and further discussion will only leave me further in horror of your opinion.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

So you don't believe self-defense is justified to prevent robbery? Because that's "use of force to protect money."

If you have so little regard for property rights that you think it is wrong to prevent people from invading private property to prevent a business from opening, then I suppose we do have nothing to discuss here.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Those riots started as a protest, and turned into riots and looting when the police failed to keep order. That doesn't necessarily mean that OWS would have turned into a riot, but it does set a worst-case scenario to be avoided.

Oh come, on. The root causes weren't the same, the provoking incident wasn't the same, the places and the people weren't the same, the actual protests weren't the same.

Setting London as a worse-case scenario would be no different from telling the NYPD that if they talked to the protesters, they would get set on fire.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

See my response to trinityvixen above. And as of November 17, if you don't want to consider London a worst case example, make it Oakland, which was quite bad enough. Same root causes, same movement, same sort of provoking incident (the eviction of an Occupy camp). As of mid-October...there wasn't really a good precedent, but it was clearly the same favor of protest as other left-wing anticorporate protests such as the WTO protests. The Seattle protests were bad enough; put them in the much denser and much more sensitive Lower Manhattan environment and you get a much bigger threat.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Except that there were actual riots in Oakland, despite the amount of police presence and their use of CS and rubber bullets. Police presence and "non-lethal" methods /= no riots.

And I'm truly amazed by your willingness to treat anti-corporate protesters as a monolithic singular mass of political identity, especially after you yourself have talked about their general disorganization and lack of message after having talked with them.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

It's not a problem with a good solution. If you let people run riot, well, you'll get a riot on your hands. If you remove nonlethal tools from the hands of cops, well, UC Davis is infinitely preferable to Kent State.

You could wish that in every case the police are clever and patient, the protesters are reasonable and law-abiding, and the hotheads aren't crazy enough to provoke something, but that's rarely the case.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

That pre-supposes that each of those incidents/events would become another London or Kent State if they hadn't had those tools.

You just can't make that claim credibly. Surely we've all seen student protests in person that involved hundreds of people and then just went away.

The point is not that the police always need to be clever and patient and hotheads not be crazy, but that there is a wide gap of escalation involved between talking to the protesters and using "non-lethal" methods on them.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

Not each. It's a question of how many. How many UC Davises are you prepared to have, to avoid a Kent State? How many police tazings of delinquents in libraries are you prepared to have, to avoid a shooting of the same?

Given the relative fatality rates, my answer to each of those questions above is "well over N, where N is a very very large number, but try to keep the number low if we can."

While I'm all for research, my suspicion is that you may be able to mitigate, but not end, the fact that you're going to have ugly incidents involving force, and more of them when the cops have nonlethal tools. If nothing else, people are less intimidated and willing to defy authority when they know they're going to get sprayed, not shot.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

How many UC Davises are you prepared to have, to avoid a Kent State? How many police tazings of delinquents in libraries are you prepared to have, to avoid a shooting of the same?

What on earth makes you think that there is an inverse relationship between the them, or a direct relationship at all? I could just as easily say, with as little research, that the pre-ponderance of non-lethal interventions and the community dissatisfaction they always generate is contributing to the likelihood of another Kent State.

If nothing else, people are less intimidated and willing to defy authority when they know they're going to get sprayed, not shot.

How do they know they're not also going to be shot? If non-lethal methods are as not intimidating as you suggest (which they would have to be for the relationship you suggest to exist), why use them at all?

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

What on earth makes you think that there is an inverse relationship between the them, or a direct relationship at all? I could just as easily say, with as little research, that the pre-ponderance of non-lethal interventions and the community dissatisfaction they always generate is contributing to the likelihood of another Kent State.

Um, the lead at the top of the post? "Non-lethal weapons may decrease the numbers of deaths in violent confrontations, but they increase the numbers of incidents that use force, period." If this is not the case, then what the heck are we discussing?

How do they know they're not also going to be shot? If non-lethal methods are as not intimidating as you suggest (which they would have to be for the relationship you suggest to exist), why use them at all?

Um, doesn't the article say this? On a per-incident basis, they reduce the expected injury? And, um, we don't use force purely to intimidate. Force is used to subdue as well. Would you prefer we stuck exclusively to subduing people by shooting them? What does that gain us?

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

"Non-lethal weapons may decrease the numbers of deaths in violent confrontations, but they increase the numbers of incidents that use force, period."

The use of pepper spray correlates with decreased numbers of injuries vs actual physical violence on a per incident basis. That's a very different thing from claiming that an increased number of UC Davis-like incidents will prevent another Kent State from happening.

A fair point on intimidate vs subdue. However, I'm still not sure how you know people know that they won't be shot, and will thus be less intimidated by the threat of being sprayed.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

A more logical conclusion than that there is an inverse relationship between uses of pepper spray and Kent State, from the data assembled, would be that there is a proportional relationship between the numbers of people injured and the number of incidents that use force.

To put it another way, you always have a greater chance of injury and/or death when you use a weapon, non-lethal or not. Because most often you're escalating a situation in which force would never have been used rather than deescalating from one where excessive/lethal force would have been.

You also end up with situations like the shooting of an unarmed man in the BART where the cop claims that he was reaching for his tazer when he "accidentally" shot a man who was down, on the ground, being restrained fairly well by several other cops. In any normal situation, a man on the ground being arrested should not be hit with any kind of weapon. If the cop who shot him was actually reaching for his tazer, and it wasn't the grosser crime of actually wanting to shoot this man, you still have to ask why he felt he needed to taze this person. Increased availability of weapons that one can "get away with using" increases the chance that someone will (and in Oscar Grant's case, did) try to get away with using it.

More weapons, more escalation. Period. And that's what the studies have shown. A department in CT discourages use of pepper spray and suddenly they have a greater than 50% reduction in the uses of force (with no reported concommitant increase in injuries to officers) despite crime increasing. That right there should tell you all you need to know.