Fahran wrote:Ifreann wrote: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.
Untrue.
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.
Tear gas is disproportionately, uncontrollably, and indiscriminately harmful. Which is why it and other chemical weapons were banned from use in warfare. That governments are inflicting such harms on their own people should be unacceptable.
Ifreann wrote: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'm objecting to the violence police are inflicting on people in an effort to force them to cease protesting and quietly go home. Your objections that those people are technically rioters and the police are technically not punishing them are quite clearly a load of shite.
Ifreann wrote: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.
If the state cannot achieve its goals without disregarding the concept of individual rights then maybe their goals shouldn't be pursued.
Ifreann wrote: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.
The safest way to handle a riot is to not have a riot in the first place, which can be accomplished by solving people's problems before they're pushed to rioting. And by not having the cops attack peaceful protests.
Ifreann wrote: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.
The police are hurting innocent, uninvolved people in an effort to protect innocent people. Big "We burned the village down to save it" energy.
Ifreann wrote: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.
What does it matter if the harm won't be severe of permanent? It is harm, it is an attack, and according to your reasoning around collective guilt, the police in general are responsible and can be collectively attacked in turn in defence.
Ifreann wrote: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.
So the police can legally attack journalists and legal observers who come close to the events they are trying to observe. I'm sure that power won't be abused.
Ifreann wrote: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.
Collateral damage, even deaths, are acceptable in pursuit of dispersing a handful of criminals and thousands of peaceful protesters? All because the police won't stop brutalising people.
Ifreann wrote: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.
You accused me of underestimating the potential of a small number of people who like burning things to be present at a protest. So again, you are now talking about the potential for the presence of someone who might commit a crime as if that justifies violently dispersing people. There has been arson before, there might be again, so people cannot be allowed to congregate.
Ifreann wrote: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.
If it is too dangerous for the police to be seen in their uniforms then why were there uniformed officers present? If it was safe for some uniformed officers then why weren't all the officers in uniform and using a marked car? I suspect that the NYPD are on board with Trump's use of secret police tactics. They want to intimidate people, to make them afraid that anyone they see on the street might be a cop, about to jump them and bundle them into a nondescript minivan, to make them afraid to even attend protests in the first place. I bet that's why they did this to a trans woman. Target a population that already has cause to fear the police and they'll get the most immediate effect.