The events in Portland & the plan to take it nationwide

[Purpelia]

Do those of you who claim that protesters have a duty to stop rioters care about the fact that cops don't have any duty to protect people and regularly stand idly by as people get hurt because they don't want to take any risks or even inconvenience themselves?

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/poli ... otect.html

If I punch you in the face does that make you punching someone else in the face on a separate occasion any less bad?

[Joohan]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

Debate and protest are the way we discern the good ideas from the bad - and that process takes years to filter through. The process is not a linear set of points; we dont know the proper path forward. That we dont immediately adopt all the changes demanded by extremists and radicals is not a justification for violence and mayhem.

[Page]

Do those of you who claim that protesters have a duty to stop rioters care about the fact that cops don't have any duty to protect people and regularly stand idly by as people get hurt because they don't want to take any risks or even inconvenience themselves?

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/poli ... otect.html

If I punch you in the face does that make you punching someone else in the face on a separate occasion any less bad?

If the actions of rioters are the equivalent of a punch in the face, police brutality is the equivalent of a mass shooting. Nothing rioters have done has come close to the carnage inflicted on the people by cops who are cowardly at best and bloodthirsty at worst.

[Vassenor]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

Debate and protest are the way we discern the good ideas from the bad - and that process takes years to filter through. The process is not a linear set of points; we dont know the proper path forward. That we dont immediately adopt all the changes demanded by extremists and radicals is not a justification for violence and mayhem.

So what do you propose we do instead?

[Nobel Hobos 2]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

Debate and protest are the way we discern the good ideas from the bad - and that process takes years to filter through. The process is not a linear set of points; we dont know the proper path forward. That we dont immediately adopt all the changes demanded by extremists and radicals is not a justification for violence and mayhem.

Change does take time, but should it?

The rate of change looks as though existing cops are not being improved or reformed, only that new cops are being inducted into a better culture while bad old cops are gradually retiring.

If that's so, the process could be greatly speeded up by inducting a lot of new cops (perhaps with promise of higher wages in future), booting out senior cops on the least suspicion of having been corrupt or covering up brutal conduct of the cops under them, and replacing them with the next down in rank. It would be generational change, but more swiftly than just waiting for retirements.

Mind you, I am biased by distrust of anyone in authority. Commanders who covered up brutality are worse than the junior cops who committed it ... like that.

[The Alma Mater]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

So people should just be patient until they stop getting killed ?

Yeah, no. That is an utterly disgusting point of view.

[Joohan]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

Debate and protest are the way we discern the good ideas from the bad - and that process takes years to filter through. The process is not a linear set of points; we dont know the proper path forward. That we dont immediately adopt all the changes demanded by extremists and radicals is not a justification for violence and mayhem.

So what do you propose we do instead?

Go about as you have for years - civil discourse and protest have proven effective despite what the hysterics would claim otherewise..

[Joohan]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

Debate and protest are the way we discern the good ideas from the bad - and that process takes years to filter through. The process is not a linear set of points; we dont know the proper path forward. That we dont immediately adopt all the changes demanded by extremists and radicals is not a justification for violence and mayhem.

Change does take time, but should it?

The rate of change looks as though existing cops are not being improved or reformed, only that new cops are being inducted into a better culture while bad old cops are gradually retiring.

If that's so, the process could be greatly speeded up by inducting a lot of new cops (perhaps with promise of higher wages in future), booting out senior cops on the least suspicion of having been corrupt or covering up brutal conduct of the cops under them, and replacing them with the next down in rank. It would be generational change, but more swiftly than just waiting for retirements.

Mind you, I am biased by distrust of anyone in authority. Commanders who covered up brutality are worse than the junior cops who committed it ... like that.

It absolutely should take time. We must discern good ideas and practices from bad ones, before comit to an idea whole sale - lest our solution cause more issues than the problem.

[Ifreann]

Yes, the current behaviour of your government towards your fellow citizens is technically not multiple war crimes because you are technically not at war with your government. It's still really bad.

These are routine policies and tools used in a lot of countries, including countries in the West and other liberal democracies, to disperse riots.

Yes, America is not the only country that subjects its own people to treatment that would, were it inflicted upon enemy soldiers, constitute a war crime. Personally, I think that that's a bad thing. I think that all of those countries should stop committing war crimes against their own people, and the fact that they are technically not war crimes when you do them to your own people is not something I give a shit about.

Yes, the objective of punishing an entire crowd of people collectively is to make them stop being a crowd and go away and not come back.

Except it's not a punishment. Just as an officer shooting someone in the process of assaulting the officer or someone else isn't a punishment. It serves a distinct purpose.

Another technicality I am not interested in.

The fact that someone, possibly a protester, possibly an undercover cop, possibly someone entirely unrelated to either, somewhere in the city smashed a window or punched someone else or tried to start a fire does not justify tear gassing everyone who happens to be outdoors.

Yes. Yes, it does. Because when enough of that happens your peaceful protest becomes a riot. And this is how riots are usually handled when you cannot cow them by the mere presence of the police and you're not willing to let them burn themselves out.

I cannot fathom how you can believe that it is acceptable to use violent force against people who you agree have not done anything wrong.

This appeal to technicalities does not excuse the behaviour in question.

The technicalities matter in this instant. You're arguing that it is morally wrong for the police to disperse an unruly mob that poses an active danger to the community.

I am arguing that it is morally wrong for the police to use violent force against people who have done nothing more harmful than be in physical proximity to someone who is suspected of committing a crime.

They are all equally subject to indiscriminate violence by the police. Can the police, therefore, not be subjected to the same kind of indiscriminate violence?

Does it count as self-defense or defense of others in the absence of an immediate threat? A riot poses an immediate threat. The police, generally, do not. And, before you argue that they pose a threat to peaceful protestors in Portland, the local PD seems to have only exercised violence against declared riots or when they could single out perps - so not peaceful protests.

A tear gas grenade is an immediate threat to everyone nearby. That's kind of inherent in the nature of chemical weapons, they're indiscriminate, and don't neatly contain themselves to one area. Even if I were to accept your grotesque proposition that people can justly be subjected to violent attack because the crowd they are a part of has, according to some legal technicality, ceased to be a peaceful protest and become a riot, tear gas grenades will still harm people who are not even part of that "riot". Tear gas grenades will harm journalists and legal observers. Or are they rioters too? Tear gas grenades will harm people who are walking by, people who live on that street. Don't fucking tell me that someone asleep in their bed becomes a rioter when the cops feel like dispersing a crowd outside their apartment.

They absolutely do if you believe the police dispersing riots is police brutality and unwarranted. I don't happen to believe that because it strikes me as silly and not an argument you would make in favor of rednecks storming government buildings in protest. I don't really view rioting being normalized, even for a short period, as a social or moral good so I'm not going to be keen on the police standing down when it happens, especially not when reforms have been proposed and we have momentum to make change in other ways.

As I have just argued, even if I accept your "they're dispersing a riot" justification, police use of indiscriminate violence harms more people than just the "rioters" they are seeking to disperse.

I think you view these protests with rose-tinted glasses and actively underestimate the potential for a small number of people who like burning things and looting to be in regular attendance and for an angry crowd to be moved to do those things. Portland has hosted groups of people like that not infrequently in the past. And I don't have a hard time believing that they're participating in these protests the same way they've participated in every other recent protest.

So now it is not actual attempts at arson, it is the mere possibility of an attempt, the mere possibility of the presence of someone who might have made such an attempt at some point in the past, the mere reputation an entire city holds for unrest, that transforms a peaceful protest into a riot. With this ever-expanding list of justifications for state violence against protests, how will it ever be possible to protest against the state? What do protesters have to do to be able to protest without getting gassed? Individually not being violent isn't enough, clearly, they also have to stop anyone around them from being violent. And also they have to keep out anyone who has ever been violent in the past. And also they have to keep out anyone who could possibly be violent. And also they have to keep out anyone who could possibly have attended protests in Portland before. Do you not see that this is making protest effectively illegal?

And rioting is not, at least if you want to remain within the law and not get sprayed with tear gas - while getting decent folks standing next to you sprayed as well.

What decent folks? According to you they are all rioters. Or are you saying that the police are using chemical weapons against decent people?

---

There was no need to arrest her using the method they did. I mean there could not have been a more stupid way about arresting her if they tried. First why arrest her in an unmarked car, do so in a marked car with cops who are in uniform. Second if they where scared because she was in the middle of a protest then so long as she was not currently being violent there is no reason not to wait to arrest her.

See, they have to use undercover officers and unmarked cars to arrest people because they're afraid of uniformed officers and marked cars being attacked.

But if you watch the videos of this arrest, uniformed bicycle officers acted quickly to form a barricade between protesters and the arresting officers. So any justification along the lines of what I offered above is a lie.

---

So people should be free to burn vehicles with no consequences?

That is nonsense.

During the height of the protests, cops were regularly observed slashing the tires of parked cars in the vicinity of protests, a tactic clearly aimed at stranding protesters. Where are the consequences?

[Joohan]

That people arent getting everything they want immediately is not a justification for mayhem. There have been significant advances in policing across the US over the decades: adoption of more non-lethal or maiming equipment such as tasers and pepper spray, adoption of sensitivity training programs, adoption of body cameras. Significant progress has been made since the bullets and Billy clubs of 70's. Things have gotten better - but change can and should take time.

So people should just be patient until they stop getting killed ?

Yeah, no. That is an utterly disgusting point of view.

What's disgusting is killing innocents and leaving communities in destitution because you dodnt get your way fast enough.

Beneficial change comes with patience. Extreme measures breed extremists, which cause only more problems.

[Plzen]

To quote what a transgender friend of mine said about transgender issues, because I think the quote is also fully applicable here:

Patience is a luxury held only by those whose humanity is fundamentally recognised.

People who feel persecuted often don’t - and indeed, shouldn’t - care about maintaining the same institutions and systems under which they are persecuted. “But your impatience is breeding extremists” is an argument that only appeals to people who feel like they have something big to lose in the event that extremists win.

[Ifreann]

Extremism is when you want the police to immediately stop murdering unarmed Black people.

Moderation is when you want open a discourse in which you hope to eventually agree to policies to reduce the number of Black men killed over the next several years.

[Joohan]

To quote what a transgender friend of mine said about transgender issues, because I think the quote is also fully applicable here:

Patience is a luxury held only by those whose humanity is fundamentally recognised.

People who feel persecuted often don’t - and indeed, shouldn’t - care about maintaining the same institutions and systems under which they are persecuted. “But your impatience is breeding extremists” is an argument that only appeals to people who feel like they have something big to lose in the event that extremists win.

That is exactly the fear. Imagine if the extremists actually had their way and we wound up abolishing the police., or reduce their effectiveness to the point they can no longer accomplish their duties? Both scenarios would put millions more people in danger than our current situation. Patience brings about clarity, and as our own history has shown, results.

[Vassenor]

To quote what a transgender friend of mine said about transgender issues, because I think the quote is also fully applicable here:

Patience is a luxury held only by those whose humanity is fundamentally recognised.

People who feel persecuted often don’t - and indeed, shouldn’t - care about maintaining the same institutions and systems under which they are persecuted. “But your impatience is breeding extremists” is an argument that only appeals to people who feel like they have something big to lose in the event that extremists win.

That is exactly the fear. Imagine if the extremists actually had their way and we wound up abolishing the police., or reduce their effectiveness to the point they can no longer accomplish their duties? Both scenarios would put millions more people in danger than our current situation. Patience brings about clarity, and as our own history has shown, results.

And you base these fears on what data?

[Plzen]

That is exactly the fear.

Why?

Let’s consider that scenario. The left-radicals (specifically, the absolute worst stereotypes that right-wingers have about left-radicals) completely triumph. Mayors and Governors across the United States becomes disinterested in maintaining public order. The Police are almost completely disbanded, leaving only a skeleton volunteer force that is just enough to maintain internal sovereignty and nothing else.

Neighbourhoods might become dangerous; people might be put at serious risk of being physically and economically abused by violent hooligans. Residents of particularly dangerous regions might feel that they can’t count on anyone except themselves, and maybe their friends. Pleasantness - things like taking the time to care about keeping your street tidy, well maintained, and tastefully decorated - becomes pointless and, indeed, even risky. Upstanding citizens from communities are murdered or kidnapped at arbitrary times for arbitrary reasons. There is a general distrust for life and society.

Okay. So for the millions of people for whom that is an apt description of their current reality, why would they fear that eventuality?

If the worst case scenario is that things stay roughly the same, why not take the risk?

You’re arguing that people on the bottom side of society should avoid taking chances that might finally improve their situation for fear that doing so might put the interests of the people above them into jeopardy, and if that’s not an absurdly privileged outlook on life then I don’t know what is.

[Fahran]

Don't fall for black men committing crimes at a protest.

I mean... it's not exclusively black men. In Portland, I imagine rioters are mostly white - much like the city's population.

[Purpelia]

If I punch you in the face does that make you punching someone else in the face on a separate occasion any less bad?

If the actions of rioters are the equivalent of a punch in the face, police brutality is the equivalent of a mass shooting. Nothing rioters have done has come close to the carnage inflicted on the people by cops who are cowardly at best and bloodthirsty at worst.

Irrelevant. Protests are about trying to convince the neutrals you are the morally correct one. Looting and burning convinces them Trump is right.
And rhetoric that supports it, that demands action now at all costs and demands success at any cost convinces us the same.

Your cause is judged by the means you use to achieve it. If the means are unacceptable to the public so is your cause.

[The Black Forrest]

CSPAN isn't exactly a news source at all, they just show you things people in the government say. It's up to others to analyze the truth of it.

Yes, you are correct, but the video speaks for the video.

You mean like when Trump used a photo of a Ukrainian cop getting attacked to show what was going on here?

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-c ... sts-2020-7

[Sundiata]

These events really don't need to be happening in major cities whatsoever. Frankly, I think the protestors should just go home and arrange more practical means of influencing the political establishment. For example, like running for office and donating to causes and political campaigns that they support.

[Vassenor]

If the actions of rioters are the equivalent of a punch in the face, police brutality is the equivalent of a mass shooting. Nothing rioters have done has come close to the carnage inflicted on the people by cops who are cowardly at best and bloodthirsty at worst.

Irrelevant. Protests are about trying to convince the neutrals you are the morally correct one. Looting and burning convinces them Trump is right.
And rhetoric that supports it, that demands action now at all costs and demands success at any cost convinces us the same.

Your cause is judged by the means you use to achieve it. If the means are unacceptable to the public so is your cause.

So all those people who've suffered life changing injuries as a result of police action during these protests should just deal with it because it's acceptable force?

[The Black Forrest]

Do those of you who claim that protesters have a duty to stop rioters care about the fact that cops don't have any duty to protect people and regularly stand idly by as people get hurt because they don't want to take any risks or even inconvenience themselves?

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/poli ... otect.html

Well? Anecdotally I have not seen it happen. Been an observer in a few police incidents. Last one was the police moving up on a car bunched together behind a shield.
Slow turtle walk. As I was watching it dawned on me that I and the group were in the line of fire. I mentioned it to the others and people quickly shifted

I have not heard others mention it either.

I admit I can't read the article due to the paywall. Constitutionally? I am not understanding how they would be required. Professionally? They respond. That's how my cousin died. He and his partner were having a coffee and they saw a truck driving erratically and stopped hard. He went to check on the driver and a gun appeared through the drivers window......

[The Black Forrest]

These events really don't need to be happening in major cities whatsoever. Frankly, I think the protestors should just go home and arrange more practical means of influencing the political establishment. For example, like running for office and donating to causes and political campaigns that they support.

So?........in about 10....20.... or more years they can expect a change?

Going through the process will not bring a direct fix. You have to remember the republicans (well now they are trumpests) are all about law and order. It's just a plot to make the police look bad (that was actually the comments of trumpest inlaws).

[Fahran]

Yes, America is not the only country that subjects its own people to treatment that would, were it inflicted upon enemy soldiers, constitute a war crime. Personally, I think that that's a bad thing. I think that all of those countries should stop committing war crimes against their own people, and the fact that they are technically not war crimes when you do them to your own people is not something I give a shit about.

The entire objection to tear gas is that it violates the Geneva Conventions. It's a far less dangerous tool than bullets or batons. It also accomplishes the basic objective of dispersing unruly mobs. If you're going to object to tear gas as a solution to rioting on technical legal grounds, it's valid to point out that those technical legal grounds aren't really applicable to the situation in question. The alternatives are beating, maiming, and killing rioters or allowing riots to go uninterrupted. Both are far less palatable in my estimation. Tear gas prevents the most permanent harm to the most people and it is the responsibility of law enforcement to employ it as needed.

Another technicality I am not interested in.

You're using legal terms and philosophical concepts that are misapplied or poorly defined. If the objection doesn't make sense when the appropriate context and nuances are explored, the objection is a poor objection.

I cannot fathom how you can believe that it is acceptable to use violent force against people who you agree have not done anything wrong.

Because you cannot treat an unruly mob involved in rioting as a group of individual persons while effectively preventing said unruly mob from committing violence. Tear gas is one of the safer options you have of dispersing an unruly mob, generally only posing a health risk to people with preexisting conditions. One person has died from complications due to tear gas during the protests. More people have been shot by looters.

I am arguing that it is morally wrong for the police to use violent force against people who have done nothing more harmful than be in physical proximity to someone who is suspected of committing a crime.

And, again, you do not have the luxury of treating persons as individuals when they're part of what amounts to a riot because of the actions of their fellows. The police are applying the measure against the crowd because it represents the quickest and safest way of ending crowd-based violence in the absence of self-regulation and citizens' arrests of rioters.

A tear gas grenade is an immediate threat to everyone nearby. That's kind of inherent in the nature of chemical weapons, they're indiscriminate, and don't neatly contain themselves to one area.

Tear gas is generally much less dangerous to everyone around than engaging in a physical altercation to beat the crowd away from buildings. It's a chemical weapon, yes. Rubber bullets and batons and fists are weapons as well. That's not really a substantive point. If I concede to your point, I pretty much concede that law enforcement should never intercede to halt riots and that we should accept large-scale communal damage and dozens of deaths as a necessary price for reform. That's problematic on many levels.

Even if I were to accept your grotesque proposition that people can justly be subjected to violent attack because the crowd they are a part of has, according to some legal technicality, ceased to be a peaceful protest and become a riot, tear gas grenades will still harm people who are not even part of that "riot".

And the harm, in the vast majority of cases, won't be severe or permanent. And it's not really a technicality when the substantive effects of your peaceful protests are buildings set on fire, windows shattered, and people assaulted. At that point, your peaceful protest is a riot.

Tear gas grenades will harm journalists and legal observers. Or are they rioters too?

They're not rioters. I've stated as much. That doesn't mean they're not standing immediately next to a riot in progress.

As I have just argued, even if I accept your "they're dispersing a riot" justification, police use of indiscriminate violence harms more people than just the "rioters" they are seeking to disperse.

If you smash someone's business to pieces and then steal everything they've amassed over decades, you're causing them substantive harm when you have no right to do so. If you set a building on fire, you're putting other people at risk of burning to death when you have no right to do so. If you physically assault someone or shoot someone, you're physically harming someone when you have no right to do so. More people have been killed by looters than have died as a direct result of exposure to tear gas in these riots. Dispersal is wholly acceptable from this standpoint and is in fact the moral responsibility of the police when riots would harm the community.

So now it is not actual attempts at arson, it is the mere possibility of an attempt,

They literally tried to set a court house on fire last week. Fires have been lit in numerous places. That's actual arson. That you accept the commission of violent crimes against the community as a cost of permitting protest is fine as a position but it doesn't give you the moral high ground by default. Hence why we're even able to have a debate at all.

See, they have to use undercover officers and unmarked cars to arrest people because they're afraid of uniformed officers and marked cars being attacked.

But if you watch the videos of this arrest, uniformed bicycle officers acted quickly to form a barricade between protesters and the arresting officers. So any justification along the lines of what I offered above is a lie.

Given multiple cruisers and vehicles were actually set ablaze and protestors, even many peaceful one, were arguably celebrating criminal arson aimed at law enforcement, I think that rebuttal is a good deal weaker than you think it is, especially if law enforcement are trying not to kill protestors and rioters en masse.

[Kowani]

If the actions of rioters are the equivalent of a punch in the face, police brutality is the equivalent of a mass shooting. Nothing rioters have done has come close to the carnage inflicted on the people by cops who are cowardly at best and bloodthirsty at worst.

Irrelevant. Protests are about trying to convince the neutrals you are the morally correct one. Looting and burning convinces them Trump is right.
And rhetoric that supports it, that demands action now at all costs and demands success at any cost convinces us the same.

Your cause is judged by the means you use to achieve it. If the means are unacceptable to the public so is your cause.

Considering that 65% of Americans support the protests, I say we’re winning.

[Fahran]

Considering that 65% of Americans support the protests, I say we’re winning.

I mean... I support the protests too.