StrangeSox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:41 PM) I particularly enjoyed the cops letting everyone stand around to film them in their planned brutality practice sessions. Pretty smart if you are going to be beating up a bunch of people. Pretty dumb, but I'm guessing that this officer isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and wasn't acting under explicit orders but of his own volition. Can you find any evidence of threats to the police in that photo? Or any other photo? Or video? Or report? Can you reconcile their casual actions with a claim of them being under duress?

Look at this image: There is a large crowd gathered around photographing and taping the incident. Several police are standing around passively, one with his face shield up. Is this the defensive posture of a group of police under siege? There are multiple videos and photographs from different angles of this incident from UCD students. None show anything other than unjustified police violence. No person has come forward with other claims.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:33 PM) And your point has been that these sweet and innocent people would never do anything wrong ever, and it doesn't matter what they do. No, my point is that police brutality in response to passive resistance is awful authoritarianism and I'm saddened that people defend it by standard victim-blaming techniques.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:32 PM) Would you really be willing to leave people behind your back in a potential violent mob riot situation? Again, how can you possibly reconcile his actions with a "violent mob riot" situation? Why has no one, not even the police, claimed any threat?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:28 PM) That is kind of my point. No, your point has been to further your anti-ows propaganda that they must have done something to deserve this sort of thing, police never brutalize civilians without cause or justification!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:26 PM) But if you want to draw sympathy you set up someone with a video camera trained on the people not doing anything wrong, while people outside of the camera shot throw rocks, or throw bottles, or threaten police officers, attack police lines etc. There were dozens of people standing around photographing and taping this. No one has reported any sort of actions like that. The official excuse from the police claim no such thing. Regardless, these people were doing nothing at all. They were students sitting on the ground, passively resisting. This officer was in no particular hurry. He was calm and casual in his actions. If there truly was a threat, you wouldn't see numerous officers milling about during the scene. There is no way to reconcile the officer's actions with some sort of actual threat. It was a single individual taking his time to spray mace into these students' faces. Furthermore, the actions of others in a crowd does not justify deliberate, targeted action against people not engaged in any sort of violence.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:24 PM) If officers are facing a dangerous situation, I have no problem with that response. The problem is that many times the dangers aren't going to be visible in the camera shot, which is the point. But under what scenario are people sitting on the ground on the quad presenting a dangerous situation? In what scenario can an office in a dangerous situation casually step over those people before taking his time to spray them all directly in the face? Why is it really, really difficult for you to believe that some people are giant assholes and some of those people are cops because it gives them authority? Why is it difficult to believe that yeah, sometimes police really do beat or harm people for completely unjustified reasons?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:21 PM) Well that certainly changes that answer... If protesters really want to elicit a violent reaction, there are more likely paths than sitting still on the ground with your heads down. If that truly is a good method for eliciting a violent reaction, then that's a condemnation of police forces, not protesters.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:20 PM) I can't answer that by simply trusting one video. My guess would be something else was going on there which was the trigger point. I'm not asking you to say what happened. I'm asking you to come up with some sort of scenario, hell, even an unlikely one, that justifies what happened. I don't think it is actually possible to do so. The officer nor anyone else was in any sort of danger.

that should have been "aren't."

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:13 PM) IF that was all that was done, which I really, really doubt it was, it was not justified. Like I said, I seriously doubt that was all that was going on there. Why do you doubt that? What else could possibly have been going on that justifies the actions? Why has no other evidence or claims come forth? What about the letter from a UCD professor describing what happened in detail? Under what possible scenario could an officer casually stepping over a group of sitting students, pulling a canister of mace, and then proceeding to slowly walk up and down the line spraying them in the face be justified? Do you agree that even if this is their desired outcome that it still doesn't justify the outcome?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:10 PM) Massive assumption there, and a leap of faith I am not willing to make at this time. Way too much goes on with creative editing to make a case for one side or another to make this assumption. It's a simple question to answer. Would you condemn the actions as depicted in an independent hypothetical scenario. And, again, what possible scenario could you imagine that justifies it? Even the department's attempted justification, that they were "surrounded," is absurd on its face. Sure, most police officers are authoritarian abusive assholes. It is certainly not because all police violence is justified.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 01:09 PM) You yourself stated that they knew what was going to happen, and went ahead and did it. Doing something to get a purposeful reaction is the very definition of eliciting a response. Violent police overreaction is a possible outcome of passive resistance, not the sole or desired cause. Will you plainly condemn the actions depicted by the officer in that video, or do you think it was a justified response?

Simple question: Do you or do you not think that the actions of the police in the UCD video are justified if we assume no extenuating circumstances outside of what is shown?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:52 PM) You're reading into it to further the propaganda from OWS. My contention all along was this was organized with the express purpose of drawing a response that could be packaged for TV and especially internet, where there is no context for anything, to draw sympathy and attention back to the movement. It is working like a charm too. Despite claims otherwise, the police have no good justification to, just for funzies, beating the crap out of people, like is being claimed here. The movement is intentionally breaking laws to draw responses. In some places it takes more to get that attention than others. In Oakland it took shutting down the port. Other places it has obviously taken less. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:53 PM) Eliciting violence is a step beyond any of that, which is what is going on here. First, I'd just like to highlight the ridiculous notion that sitting on the ground with interlocked arms is now "eliciting violence," as if they deserve that sort of reaction. But more substantively, I've asked for plausible context that could justify these actions repeatedly and have yet to receive any. This is because there is nothing that could justify what is seen in the UCD video. The deeper issue is a complete blindness to police brutality in general and the assumption that if a police officer does something, it must be justified. A complete blindness to the attraction of authoritarians to police work and violent reactions when people do not heed their orders. Some people actually do like beating people up and may go into a line of work that gives them the authority to do so. As I've said before, this is not new to protests or policing in general; recognizing that fact does not lay the blame at the feet of the victims of police violence.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:16 PM) I am not certain that is what he intended to have happen. I believe he was advocating for a "take any job and learn to work for a living" philosophy. He explicitly advocates for eliminating union janitorial jobs and replacing them with non-union child labor.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:20 PM) If you'll you notice, I have never actually made that claim. My claim was this was the purpose all along. LOL yes you have, you've presented a ridiculous dichotomy between beat/spray and doing nothing at all and you've attempted to place the blame on the victims by suggesting that they may have 'enticed' this violent overreaction.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:12 PM) So its common knowledge that the very actions that were being taken can draw violent responses. Yet, you want me to believe that these events weren't orchestrated to draw this exact response? I'm not sure how anything else could be argued. They were orchestrated to draw attention, which they would regardless of police violence. That protesters may anticipate and prepare for violent police overreaction does not excuse or justify it.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:11 PM) BTW, the unintended consequence of Newt's plan is kids will be competing with adults for those jobs. That's not unintended. He explicitly calls for them replacing union janitors. Which breaks the union, drives the adults out of jobs and lowers wages in general. Not sure how firing adults from decent-paying jobs in poor neighborhoods so that their kids could work the same jobs for less pay is some great plan to combat poverty.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:09 PM) Seems like I have seen protestors being dragged away by cops since at least the mid 60s. Basically two cops grab them under their arms and carry them away. You must be from the future, sir, these tactics are unknown in our times. Spray, beat, shoot are our only options.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 11:52 AM) Not what Newt said. He said the laws as they stand now are bad, which I took to mean, they need changing. If I grant you that it still doesn't make his idea less bad with respect to protection for children and fighting poverty.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 11:56 AM) I think StrangeSox has taken some of his stances on this to hilarious extremes. But... in THIS PARTICULAR CASE, I agree with him that other tactics should have prevailed. What should have happened was, if they refused the order to move, you handcuff them and put them in a bus to go to jail. I've been there and done this myself. Now, if in the process of doing this, someone starts struggling with the officer - hitting, biting, spitting, etc. - then at that point the police are plenty justified in using OC or a blunt weapon to get them into custody. UC Davis Police, at least a couple of them anyway, appeared to have skipped a step, and I would agree that was poor police tactics. Agreed 100%.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 12:00 PM) So getting past the Jedi mind tricks that police are supposed to be able to use to break up tresspassers and people who refuse to obey police orders, Please stop playing dumb. I'd imagine that the view that some police resort to authoritarian violent measures in response to people disobeying them is pretty common (note that this is not "for no reason," just an unjustifiable one). I'm not sure how you can argue against given video evidence of multiple incidents.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2011 -> 11:53 AM) I never said this was justified, but i'm not ready to say it wasn't justified either. At the end of the day you could be as peaceful as you want, but if you're breaking the law and you won't move, then I think that kind of action is justified. I don't see how the actions of that officer at UCD are ever justified in those circumstances. Violating some minor ordinance and then a police order does not give police carte blanche. There is a continuum of force. What's needed to break up a passive resistance chain is something less than forcibly spraying mace down their throats or hitting people with batons. You and ss2k5 are being intentionally ignorant when you pretend that the only options are beat/spray or let them sit (in a public space on their own campus). Have you watched the video? The first action was spraying a large amount of mace a few inches from their faces as they were sitting on the ground. And yeah, getting multiple officers to carry away a limp person is exactly the required response to passive resistance, not beating them or spraying them in the mouth and eyes with mace. I assume they were trying to set up a camp, though it is irrelevant.

totally justified response to sitting on the ground and not moving in a public area on their own campus.