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

[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.