I’ll be the dick, and point out that someone who’s never heard of “black swan” (no, not the movie) needs to get out more.
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Watch the videos I’ve put up. The majority of them don’t involve looters, protestors rioting etc
As I’ve stated, I don’t buy the narrative pushed by the protestors/BLM… nor do I buy the narrative pushed by Trumps base or law enforcement.
I don’t know what to believe at this point. It doesn’t help that I’m some 6000 miles away hence I can’t accurately gauge the situation unfolding, rather I can base my opinion through various news reports and from what my friends/aquaintences within America tell me.
I’m trying to fill in the gaps, having someone from Law Enforcement like @marine77 inform me of his perspective is very helpful.
Noted… I’ll keep this in mind.
What I’m getting at is this: you’re taking highly selective and edited Instagram videos from…shall we say “highly opinionated individuals”… at face value on a situation half a world away and using them to form a policy opinion.
What I was saying in the quoted bit was that hiring and training policies - as well as enforcement of discipline policies - vary depending on what department you are talking about. Not to mention that different states and cities have different engagement policies for these types of situations driven specifically by the political leadership.
For example, Tennessee had really no extended months of riots. Why? Because their political leadership laid down a policy and followed through with it.
Yes. This is mostly what I am referring to.
I’ve specified numerous times I don’t have a fully formed opinion on the matter
As to half a world away, this may be true yet I have quite a lot of family within the US. I also have friends who were near and/or directly in the protests/riots.
I’ve heard drastically different narratives from members of opposing political factions. Without having been directly near/within the riots myself I’m unsure as to which narrative is true.
Within the future I hope a clear cut consensus can be made.
FWIW, On the first night of protesting in Seattle after the Michael Floyd video came out, SPD decided that would be the night to train new officers on crowd control/riot control. This resulted in them resorting to less lethal weapons far too quickly, and miscommunication amongst themselves where one unit flanked protestors and then both sides closed in telling protestors to clear out… but they had nowhere to go except into the other line of officers where those officers then opened up with less lethal munitions. Combined with SPDs long and recent history of excessive force and racial profiling which led to sweeping changes in the dept ordered by the Justice Dept, this pretty much set the tone in Seattle for future protests and riots between citizens and SPD and cemented in peoples minds that SPD was still infact too brutal and overmilitarized.
What everyone should remember (and its tough to do if you were the victim of police brutality, or were a cop being attacked in a violent riot because that is the memory with by far the most emotion behind it) is that there are FAR more good cops acting as we’d all hope than there are bad cops like those shown in the video. And there are FAR more peaceful protests/civil disobedience than there are violent riots like the ones you see in videos.
At the end of the day, no one disputes that police brutality happens, or that its bad. The dispute is over the scale of the problem and what to do about it.
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Both Memphis and Nashville had riots with arson, looting, vandalism, etc.
Everyone knows how bad the portland riots were right? Actually, in terms of property damage, it caused about 1/4 the damage as the riots in NYC. Seattle, less than the damage in ATL. Really, the outlier is Minneapolis… but even the cost of damage from that citys summer of riots is about 1/3 that of the Rodney king riots in LA back in 1992. I think its good to try and put things in perspective.
Black Swan
Or perhaps get off of social media and read a book.
You’re such an anachronism; we listen to books now grandpa, jeeze
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Off my lawn kiddo.
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Sorry, I should have clarified my original post - I was referring to extended months of riots in the same boat as Portland, etc. You are correct.
A boneheaded decision if there ever was one. But this goes to what I was talking about with unreal: a decision by leadership that affected outcomes, caught on video, but that was not part of any systemic behavior issues.
Then you also have to consider that there were a lot of officers in some of these locations that were normal beat cops and not riot or crowd control officers. Someone in this situation has an increased likelihood of poor behavior, but again not because of systemic issues–in this case much like your example the cause is not having experience or training on crowd control combined with extensive elevated stress for a prolonged period of time.
When those actions come on the heels of this, it might indicate systemic behavior issues: What the federal consent decree means for Seattle Police Department | king5.com
By most accounts spd has met/exceeded the DOJ requirements, but people’s memories aren’t so short to forget what SPD was like in 2011. So they were/are very much on thin ice with the public’s trust.
Another example is police in minneapolis giving direct assistance and thanks to a child vigilante illegally wielding an assault rifle at a riot.
Maybe it comes down to one side wanting to hold police to a higher standard than the other side thinks is feasible? Maybe anonymous internet troll culture is crossing over to real life and people are, for the first time, suffering harsh violent consequences for their actions? Maybe the power dynamic taught to cops and present in PD culture needs to change?
Your paragraph about police / Rittenhouse is a bit hyperbolic. Child vigilante ? Illegally ? Assault rifle ? C’mon dude… He made several attempts to put distance between himself and 3 pieces of violent criminal shit.
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He was out past curfew illegally. He was in possession of an assault rifle illegally. He was a child according to our laws, and his purpose was to be a vigilante that night by stopping rioters with the threat of deadly force (or with deadly force). The cops are on camera thanking him, and offering water. Those are facts, not hyperbole. Also true that the folks shot had criminal records.
Will rittenhouse now be a violent criminal piece of shit when he is convicted of at least a couple low level gun crimes associated with 2 killings?
Your defense of him is telling of the thinking prevalent on many PDs (IMO), including kenoshas that night. Ends justify the means.
Why were they shot?
And one of those shot was also in possession of a firearm illegally.
With that said, that kid should have been home with his family.
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I think first guy was shot, in what rittenhouse believed to be self defense. Second and third were shot as they tried to subdue a 17yr old armed with an assault rifle who had just killed someone, looked like a typical rightwing gunnutjob, and was running from the scene of the crime while police ignored their calls to arrest him for killing someone. But again, this part is all up to interpretation, and he will be tried by a jury of his peers who will be privy to a lot more information than you or I.
The point is that Kenosha police encouraged him, and Marine77 took issue with the factual description of him that night… when really the only responsible response which i would hope to hear from cops is:
To be clear, I am not claiming that no systemic issues are present at all (I am on record saying otherwise). I was saying that what unreal was doing was accepting it as the sole possible explanation for incidences on highly selective video… Your example of new officers being trained during the riots was exactly the kind of thing I was referring to as additional possibilities for observed actions during the riots. And additionally that hiring requirements, screens, training and other policies vary by jurisdiction and state.
Both things I think are worthy, and have said so on this board in the past. But again, I do want to point out that not all jurisdictions have identical culture am are not necessarily monolithic, although they will inevitably share many characteristics.
EDIT - Spelling
This was a dumb move IMO but although I’m not fully getting the tactics used here, it shows how easy it would be to really fuck them up badly.
I would never deny the existence of police brutality. Ever. It’s like saying good politicians exist.
My questions are:
-
Is this is all going to far and
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Are too many opportunists taking advantage of the unwillingness of politicians to lay down the law at the moment?
Yes, absolutely IMO.
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Then I’m gonna say this again:
The “IT liberal snowflakes” I’m referring to, whom I hold in pretty high regard, are all from Europe btw.
EDIT:
The protest movement in Hongkong started as a “leaderless, decentralized movement” which allegedly had over 1/3 of the entire country on the streets in one single protest. Then they found out it was actually led by several separate groups of opportunists when these cowards decided to flee the country after the CCP introduced the new national security law. It’s why I have a little suspicion towards this BLM movement myself.
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