Fahran wrote:Ifreann wrote: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.
Ifreann wrote: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.
Ifreann wrote: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.
Ifreann wrote: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.
Ifreann wrote: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?
Neutraligon wrote: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.
Trollgaard wrote: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?