Arrest for Dancing in Jefferson's Memorial

[Kraco]

P.D: I still find disturbing when you say that encarcerating, vicitimizing and killing elected representatives, legal parties, and politicians is some kind of extra-democratic principle. For me is a fragrant example of what anti-democratic acts are.

Haha. No, I don't consider them to be any sort of legitimate democratic methods. I'm not quite that twisted. They were crimes, through and through. I simply called them that because they used those methods to achieve a (really) superficially democratic victory. However, I should also mention here that I could almost count the American way of fabricating false stories about your competitors to be a crime equal in spirit to those the nazis used. Over here fortunately the candidates mostly keep to criticising their competitors' promises and plans, not imagined things about their background or person.

[Sapphire]

Wowwwwwwwwwww

A friend earlier told me about the protest. Apparently kids were trying to block their faces from the pepper spray, so the cops shoved their arms out of the way and sprayed the pepper spray down their throats.

Follow up video - The students basically shame the police into leaving. Beautiful.
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Summary: Students at UC Davis are super pissed because tuition went up because funding for the school systems is down.

That said, the school prices are going up in public schools in California because California is broke. Blame the idiot bankrupt government, not UC Davis administration.

[Buffalobiian]

I can only guess that the police issued multiple warnings, and that the "sitting" wasn't previous approved in the first place? (though exactly what type of protests are except from prior registration - if any, I'm not sure)

[Sapphire]

Protests typically aren't ever "approved" of by the people in power. People in power obviously don't want the dissenters to make noise against them. Is "approval" seriously relevant?

Anyway the Chancellor of UC Davis was crying for forgiveness about the whole thing so even she knows that this was a disgusting act of police brutality.

[Animeniax]

That city's budget is f*cked, several people will sue over this and the city will either spend millions on lawyers or millions on settlements. It's lose-lose for them. People are calling for the resignation of the school chancellor and the chief or police and at least that one fat officer who started spraying are all on suspension (with pay).

[Sapphire]

I would be shocked to see people actually be able to sue over this. I would be even more shocked if the case isn't immediately thrown out of court for "this or that" reason.

[Animeniax]

People sue or at least threaten sue for pretty much anything related to police use of power. They usually settle out of court, and your taxes pay their settlement.

There was a story today concerning the Black Friday yearly tradition. There was a commotion at a Walmart store in Arizona, so police body-slammed a guy face first into the ground. Video footage shows the police lifting his unconscious body up and a pool of blood is on the ground. This will be the greatest BF for this guy, he just made a lot of money when he sues. Bystanders (future court witnesses) said the guy wasn't doing anything, and that he was trying to pull his granddaughter to safety.

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[KrayZ33]

isn't it forbidden to protest/demonstrate without a permit in the first place over there?

retarted rules/laws, retarted police and retarded demonstration.

edit: horrrrry shit, replied to the first post in here, didn't notice that there are 7 pages already :/

edit:

Anyway the Chancellor of UC Davis was crying for forgiveness about the whole thing so even she knows that this was a disgusting act of police brutality.

I'm pretty sure using pepper spray is actually allowed to solve sit-ins, the same goes for water guns

[Sapphire]

"Solve" sit-ins? WTF? It's like you consider it to be pest-control. Gotta get the exterminators to pepper-spray out the vermin.

Whether it's "allowed" or not is irrelevant to whether it's a heinous act of initiated violence. I'm disturbed by your lack of empathy towards fellow humans.

[Ryllharu]

Well...some protests do have certain rules. Union strikes are one such example. The union can picket all they want, but it is illegal (and will hurt them in negotiations) if they refuse scabs anyone entry into a facility.

Sit-Ins are kind of the same way. The police can and should be allowed to arrest the protesters. Pressing charges, that's a different matter, as the protesters typically don't do anything illegal. Certainly they're not barring entry on a sidewalk. Forced eviction and arrests are pretty common outcomes of sit-ins.

Was this instance complete bullshit and the police stepping over the line? Yes.

[Sapphire]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us...ages.html?_r=1

To Kamran Loghman, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980s, the incident at Davis violated his original intent.

“I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Mr. Loghman said in an interview.

Mr. Loghman, who also helped develop guidelines for police departments using the spray, said that use-of-force manuals generally advise that pepper spray is appropriate only if a person is physically threatening a police officer or another person.

In New York, for example, a police commander who sprayed several women in an Occupy demonstration last month faced disciplinary proceedings. The New York Police Department says pepper spray should be used chiefly for self-defense or to control suspects who are resisting arrest.

@Buffalobiian: BTW, I've seen you find excuses for these wack acts of violence by saying it happened because they didn't get "permission, approval" to protest. I'll say once again that people here don't just beg their oppressors for the opportunity to protest or demonstrate against them because obviously they would say no. There is something called "freedom of assembly" in America, where America was supposedly founded on the right to assembly (protest). This doesn't mean you have to go through a freaking bureaucracy to protest and that isn't even something that is expected to happen in this country. They put this in our heads starting in elementary school, that it's an "inalienable right", a foundation that "America" EXPLICITLY set in place during its creation.

[Buffalobiian]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us...ages.html?_r=1There is something called "freedom of assembly" in America, where America was supposedly founded on the right to assembly (protest).

If what those protesters are doing is perfectly legal, then the police have no grounds for what they did. I'll agree with that.

BTW, I've seen you find excuses for these wack acts of violence by saying it happened because they didn't get "permission, approval" to protest.

My reasons are based on the assumption that the protesters were breaking the law in some way. If those assumptions are false, then my argument doesn't hold. I'm happy with that.

If you do need prior approval however, that's another thing. The police taking action is the expected and approrpiate way for things to happen when the law is broken.

What the police do, and how they escalate their actions is another matter that can be debated.

[Sapphire]

Why don't look at the situation regardless of the law? Some laws are completely irrelevant to logic and yet people still blindly think in terms of the law just because they exist. You should look past the law and see what is happening for what it is because people's lives are often put on the line, and people like you turn a blind eye to it because the "law" permit it.

I don't understand how people can turn off their empathy for living, breathing people being abused just because of some intangible rules. Don't you people who automatically excuse these heinous act of violence because you assume there must be a rule somewhere that permits it realize what you are doing?

[Buffalobiian]

I simply look at who is accountable for such actions, and whether such actions are deemed appropriate.

If you think these actions are inappropriate, then you'll have to pinpoint where the source is.

-If the police are following standard procedures, then you have an issue with the a) standard procedure, the b) law legalising such an action, or c) the fact that such actions performed by the "victims" are illegal in the first place.
-If the police aren't following standard procedures, then d) you have an issue with incompliance and police integrity.

You can't assess situations like this without considering the law, since the law is what sets the background for society and also allows organisations like the police to exist in the first place.

[Sapphire]

That makes sense.

On one hand. If the police are given the benefit of the doubt, they're simply doing what they think they're supposed to do.

But if that is the case, why don't these police officers exercise their free will and make the personal decision to not harm a non-violent people? Or are they really delusional enough to think their actions are somehow justified, noble, and righteous in order to protect the community?

Or are these police officers just acting in accordance with their horrific, sadistic desires? Are they deluded enough to actually think that they can get away with it because they're "privileged" members of society? (Reminds me of 7 Seeds)

Or do they actually detest what they are doing and know that it is wrong, but still do it anyway because they think that's what they should do just because it's a rule? That is pure insanity.

[Kraco]

Generally speaking there also has to be a way to deal with peaceful protesters if they hurt the society's normal functions for too long. In the end these protesters are relying on that very empathy and also the laws protecting from bodily harm. But if you consider for example the trains carrying nuclear waste in France/Germany that are with 90% certainty hampered by peaceful protesters who sit on the rails or even chain themselves to them, what would you do to them? A train carrying nuclear waste can't sit in the middle of nowhere forever, nor can the particular railroad be kept blocked from all traffic forever.

While I don't view Sapphi's incident of pepper spraying appropriate, there has to be some way to allow the uninvolved continue their normal daily lives if the protesters harmed it for too long.

[KrayZ33]

"Solve" sit-ins? WTF? It's like you consider it to be pest-control. Gotta get the exterminators to pepper-spray out the vermin.

Whether it's "allowed" or not is irrelevant to whether it's a heinous act of initiated violence. I'm disturbed by your lack of empathy towards fellow humans.

ya, ok... how about you start thinking for a second
oh my god. its not like pepper-spray does any kind of permanent damage in the first place.

how is the police able to do shit if you take away all their means
must be fun to pay alot of cash every minute for CASTOR-transports which get blocked by sit-ins... and you have pretty much no way to stop them

[Edort4]

People should auto pepper-spray themselves once a day just for the fun.

[Animeniax]

Would that be to develop resistance to it's effects? Very clever indeed.

[Sapphire]

oh my god. its not like pepper-spray does any kind of permanent damage in the first place.

Police officers could easily kill someone by spraying POLICE GRADE CAPASAISIN directly into someone's eyes, throat, and nose. It is a chemical WEAPON designed to cause crippling amounts of pain upon hitting mucus membranes. Not only is it a form of torture, but anyone sensitive to pain or shock could easily die from this. And WOW, and that you justify oppression with the notion that "oh, it's not that they kill you, just cause you pain"... Why would you ever say that in an argument.

@Kraco: Because even in a stateless society, sitting on train tracks and killing yourself, the people you were with, the train conductor who didn't see you, and anyone else by the consequences of your actions is considered something along the lines of murder. If sitting on a (public, even) sidewalk and being loud was lethal then half of the New York homeless population would be incarcerated.

And let's talk about federal law that every citizen is "born" into in the country of America. If you don't want loud people on your sidewalk, go to a privately owned University, not one that is public and therefore owned by you. See the copious amounts of links that I already mentioned where America claims that its citizens have the right to protest. It's ALREADY written down in the damn federal laws that "disturbing the peace" during a protest is not something you can just say to prevent a protest, so the cops obviously breaking their own law that they claim to protect.