Protest turned to riots, literally burning down police stations. Police action wasn't until much later, and they were perfectly fine with the daytime, civil unrest. During the evening, the 'protestors' went home and the agitators came out to fight police, and that's that.
When people are looting every store on a street, the police have no choice but to physically move in. There are very few options for anyone at that point.
It's shameful that you think that these protests aren't acceptable outcomes of police brutality. The protests are a direct result of the public not accepting the status quo anymore. The death of a person at the hands of the police started this fire. The police keep it going by aggressive unconstitutional protest containment actions. I don't agree with you at all, and I have laid out the legal and social basis why you are wrong to believe what you do. If I have failed to convince you, I'm sorry. I tried and will keep trying. If you choose not to agree with my interpretation, that's fine too.
Protest and looting are shades of the same idea. If you don't care about us taking up space in your streets, maybe you may care about being deprived of your corporate assets. Corporations aren't people. People are people. If harming corporations leads to an increase in human rights, that is a net gain for society. To question whether the cost is too high like you do shows you care more for property, capital, and the people who wield these asset classes, than you do for those who have cause to protest. Just because you don't share their cause célèbre does not invalidate it.
Reasonable people can disagree. It's impossible to be reasonable or disagree if you're killing someone or being killed. The police actions up to this point have been unreasonable, and so the response of the public is currently outside the scope of actions that can have a reasonableness standard applied to them. Protest is inherently justified by the Constitution. The response to police brutality and lack of internal reform proves the police think they are right to kill people and don't need to change. That's why the protests continue. To stop protesting now would be to negotiate with terrorists. The protests must continue as long and until the police come to the table with protesters and stakeholders, and they all negotiate a solution.
This implies that a riot was the intended goal of the protestors. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine militarized police showing up gave the protestors warm and fuzzy feelings. The implied threat of violence amps up adrenaline, and it only takes one person doing something dumb for the police to violently swoop in and for everything to fall apart.
At the very least, there should be a parity in force used. The current police strategy seems to be overwhelming force, which is both not working, and a moral failure in my opinion.
You realise not everyone is protesting peacefully right? Some people are taking this opportunity to steal and let out their anger by burning down shops and buildings. That’s nothing to do with the police, in fact that has happened most of all in places where the police have been weak so far. How do you propose dealing with that?
Look at their gears and equipment. The whole riot-police industry only focuses on anti-riot training and strategies. They don't practice for peaceful protests. They aren't designed for that and you can see it just by looking at what they are wearing and holding.
An armed protest without riot-police presence is normally more quiet than a peaceful protest with their presence.
It was a wrong call to send them to a peaceful protest in the first place. They should have published a proper schedule and location for the protest and let people to share their voices.
Police shouldn't guard the protesters. That's a recipe for chaos. They should guard the city, businesses, and take care of safety of protesters.
And it gets worst when the government focus is pushing police harder and harder to end the protest instead of helping them by telling people that their voice has been heard. Police under pressure starts overreacting to protesters instead of taking care of looters which has nothing to do with protesters.
No matter how much they try to control. Often they just get tired, things get messy and overwhelming and they start to beat people.
Now sadly there are also a small number of police force that are just waiting for a day to have an opportunity to enjoy and exercise all the anti-riot trainings they had with their fancy equipment. And that's where you see stupid unnecessary violence from police and no sign that they regret doing that.
They don't care about rioting or looting. Watch how the police have been arranged, in Los Angeles at least. They are there to make the protest seem dangerous, while intentionally allowing looting to go on 2 streets over.
The idea is to allow scary looking but ultimately meaningless damage to occur while blaming it on protestors.
The police protected buildings from being set on fire and their officers being attacked with lasers and fireworks. Dispersal orders were only given AFTER the protests turned violent.
Comparing 100+ nights of protests and riots with Jan 6th is ridiculous...one was night after night of the same thing and having a plan in place to defend and the other is a single day where the police lost control and they actually shot someone with real bullets.
What are the police supposed to do in this situation? If you let them protest unconstrained they will vandalize and loot stores, not to mention block traffic. If you tell them to disperse, they won't. If you try to politely move them they will resist. Seems like tear gas and moderate physical force is completely warranted.
I agree with you that the police are useless in terms of stopping or punishing most crime though.
I fully expect police officers in the United States to be able to give lawful orders to disperse rioters and prevent our cities from looting and destruction.
If you don't want to be told what to do, don't riot, loot, and destroy.
If you're trying to say that our citizens can just burn our cities down, and there's nothing that can be legally done about it, I really don't understand you.
In all the clips you see, they're no longer peaceful protesters. All of the clips cut out all of the context. That's the piece you're missing. Peaceful protests happen every day and the police don't order them to disperse. Police only order them to disperse when they've become a public safety hazard.
Maybe if the protestors werent so intent on disrupting everyday life and kept things peaceful in the first place the police wouldn't have to clear them out using such means. These protests are a serious nuisance and everyone is paying the consequences for the protestors actions
Reminder - in Seattle, looting and property damage only started hours after the police started throwing tear gas and firing less-lethal bullets into protestors, and the entire downtown area turned into chaos.
In Bellevue, the police did neither, and instead, talked with the protesters, and there was no looting anywhere near the protest areas.
If you actually cared about minimizing looting, you should probably not attack peaceful protestors on public streets. The chaos that starts is what gives looters cover to operate.
"Protesters say their peaceful assembly has been disrupted and escalated by the police. The police argue they've only been intervening in riots to maintain order and protect property."
They were "peaceful" - as in garbage everywhere, and blocking literally every road downtown in the middle of the day as people got off of work. When the cops tried to clear the roads, using megaphones only, the protesters responded by chanting fuck the police. When the police formed a line and walked down the roadway to clear it, hours later, people started throwing shit. Late evening, they lit the parking lot on fire, with regular people's cars. To retaliate to the police trying to clear the road for those cars trying to get out of work and drive home - at like 9pm.
In my opinion, there has been literally no police overreaction to protests so far. Even the old white guy who got pushed. Yes, when you're told to leave, and instead you don't, you get pushed. Maybe if you're old and fragile, and it's dangerous for you to get pushed, you should have left.
This was nothing though. The next days downtown was destroyed. You had dudes running out of a destroyed starbucks with boxes of coffee, chanting nwa. Yes, 99% of the looters in Chicago were black. Just like all the people who killed someone here (about 400 murders per year). The white people defending the rights of black lives were all peaceful, except for making people's lives difficult with garbage and roadblocks.
The next day the girl in the apartment next to mine started dumping out trash out her window on the people looting the stores on the ground floor. She had to move. Her apartment was covered in bullet holes.
No, I'm not a trump voter. not a biden voter. not a bernietard. Just a guy trying to live a difficult life and get through the day, like most people are. Black lives do not matter. No lives matter, or should matter to others. But interfering negatively with people's lives matters, to those people. So I cheer every time the protesters get gassed, or shot in the eye with a rubber bullet. Just like I cheer every time a cop gets shot.
The curfews in our area were put in place by elected officials as the violence was out of control at night. This was not a police action.
The Constitution provides a right to peaceful assembly. It does not provide a right to violence and looting. During the day people who wanted were and are generally able to march and peacefully express their views.
Protest turned to riots, literally burning down police stations. Police action wasn't until much later, and they were perfectly fine with the daytime, civil unrest. During the evening, the 'protestors' went home and the agitators came out to fight police, and that's that.
When people are looting every store on a street, the police have no choice but to physically move in. There are very few options for anyone at that point.
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