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Police mace the hell out of peaceful OWS protesters

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dainthomas said:
I'm sorry, but if sitting on a public sidewalk isn't peaceful assembly, then I don't really know what is. Does it have to be an approved sidewalk? It's not like they were throwing molotov cocktails or flipping cars over.
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When did private property become a "public" sidewalk?
 
"The Los Angeles Times has reported at least 61 deaths associated with police use of pepper spray since 1990 in the USA.[10] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) documented 27 people in police custody who died after exposure to pepper spray in California since 1993.[6][11][12] However, the ACLU report counts any death occurring within hours of exposure to pepper spray. In all 27 cases, the coroners' report listed other factors as the primary cause of death, though in some cases the use of pepper spray may have been a contributing factor.[6]"


So like 3 people per year and of the 27 documented cases the coroner said other factors were the primary cause. You are more likely to die driving or walking to your protest that you are being pepper sprayed by police IMO.

It's not like these protestors were arrested, stripped, beaten, raped, and put outside for public humiliation. They caught a little pepper spray to the face for failing to listen to law enforcement. Lets not make a ghost chili out of a jalepeno.
 
Although every situation has potential for wrong doing, in defense of the officers, they need to proceed in a manner that best insures their own safety. It is no easy task to bodily remove 30 of 40 adults and arrest them. There is significant chance of escalation of violence and chance of injury to an officer, should he attempt to remove these people. It takes very little resistance to cause injury to the officer. Routinely, combative individuals will be able to injure their subduers even with 5-1 odds (officer - assailant).
 
MotionMan said:
MotionMan said:
So next time they will just grab the lock-armed protesters and start ripping them apart regardless of the injuries that may inflict?

And if that fails, they should start hitting their arms with billy clubs until unlocked/broken?

Would that make you happy?

Or is your whole point that the protesters should not have been removed at all (which, of course, is an indefensible position).

MotionMan
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Yet another of my questions goes unanswered...

MotionMan
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I am still waiting for an answer.

MotionMan
 
Anyone have any real insight on how campus administrators participate in these kind of actions?

The three UC campuses, Davis, Berkeley, and LA had arrests on Friday. How much freedom is the police department given on each of these campuses? I imagine they have a command center where probably a few campus officials are involved with. Is this like a movie where the chancellor or someone he gives power to is standing inside and gives a go-ahead to the police chief for them to start beating up students or what? I'd like to know this.

Either way I'm almost 100% positive each of these police departments are trained in special ways so it's not just your typical NYPD or Oakland PD. They are trained specifically on how to deal with students, and I can bet on campuses like Berkeley, they probably have 200x the training to deal with idiotic hippie protestors than any ordinary officer. So yeah they're probably all dealing with this the best possible way any police department will, but any misstep and the public will always cry outrage.

mattpegher said:
Although every situation has potential for wrong doing, in defense of the officers, they need to proceed in a manner that best insures their own safety. It is no easy task to bodily remove 30 of 40 adults and arrest them. There is significant chance of escalation of violence and chance of injury to an officer, should he attempt to remove these people. It takes very little resistance to cause injury to the officer. Routinely, combative individuals will be able to injure their subduers even with 5-1 odds (officer - assailant).
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If you watch the UC Davis video, after being sprayed, the students are still there, with some resisting arrest. There's 2 cops at a certain point wrestling down a dude and it takes more than a few seconds to subdue him and cuff him or restrain him. When people kick and fight and get in your face, it's really a lot of work. If it takes 2 cops per idiotic occupier, you can tell that they're easily gonna run out of personnel. And plus I bet if they started pulling 1 guy out at a time from the stupid chain of students holding onto each other, it'll turn into a tug of war. It's not just a 1:1 match anymore because I'm sure other students will help out and pull the one being arrested away. So honestly, as nice as it would be for the cops to lift each student one by one and toss them into jail, it's not as easy as it sounds.
 
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MotionMan said:
Right. I get that. But since that is clearly wrong (I asked a lawyer about it), I am wondering how the protesters should have been removed.

MotionMan
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You normally play Slayer really loud and it disperses them because of the harsh sound of hatred. You can substitute any other good metal. It works, but isn't nearly as effective.
 
MotionMan said:
Right. I get that. But since that is clearly wrong (I asked a lawyer about it), I am wondering how the protesters should have been removed.

MotionMan
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You're not going to get an answer. No one cares to do the research so they'll continue to mindlessly shout that the 1st Amendment "protects" the OWS protesters and that they shouldn't have been removed.

This incident warrants reasonable debate over the methods used by the police to remove the protesters. And that's about it.
 
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Ideally for a situation such as this we need an otherwise harmless way to paralyse someone without apnea. Then you could simply load them onto stretchers and wheel them away. I can tell you, we do not have this technology yet. I can snow someone with haldol and ativan, or geodon, but I have to wrestle them down and put them in restraints first then it takes about 30min for an IM shot to kick in. Not the kind of thing I think the police should try. And in the process, I lose about 4 nurses a year to injuries, even with overwhelming odds.

Tasers knock em down but they start fighting soon after. Pepperspray only works on some, esp if their intoxicated. I have seen people that seemed to have buckets of the stuff on them, and still kicking and fighting.
 
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I can see it now. Because of this misguided outrage, pepper spray gets banned.

Then next time the cops need to disperse a crown, they break out their batons and smack a bitch up. "Oh no, why didn't they use pepper spray", say the hippies.
 
oldsmoboat said:
I can see it now. Because of this misguided outrage, pepper spray gets banned.

Then next time the cops need to disperse a crown, they break out their batons and smack a bitch up. "Oh no, why didn't they use pepper spray", say the hippies.
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Yep. Let it go too far and we end up like the UK, where the cops have to face violent rioters unarmed for fear of being sued.
 
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