35 ms·

De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

• balls187 6y ago
  I was observing the BLM protest in DT Renton today. The Renton PD seemed to employ a "out of plain sight" approach. Patrol vehicles strategically placed, a few uniform officers were near occassionally chatting with protestors, and patrol vehicles driving by the scene. At one point a team of bicycle cops appeared out of no where rode through along side the protestors. Each "side" seemed to be respectful of each other. The approach of the Renton Police Department not antagonizing the protestors had it's intended effect--the protestors protested peacefully. In fact, when police vehicles flashed lights, or chirped sirens in support of the protestors, the protestors cheered in support back.
  • Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    It seems to me that almost every violent protest/riot started peaceful but then police make it violent. I have seen this so many times where police stay out of the way and everything goes smoothly. I think US police actually want a riot. They want to create violence.
    • meerita 6y ago
      Are you saying it was police fault people went to loot/destroy evertyhing in every city?
      • carb 6y ago
        Yes. If police departments properly charged their employees when they break the law, there would not have been protests, rioting, or looting. Trevor Noah's attempt at explaining this is very straightforward but adroit.
        • meerita 6y ago
          Buy, wait, the guilty cop is free? no charges?
          • jellicle 6y ago
            Yes, three of the four guilty cops are free with no charges, and the fourth is only being charged due to the protests and would not have been otherwise.
            • carb 6y ago
              I don't know why this was downvoted, it is an entirely true statement.
            • meerita 6y ago
              He was detained before the protests. Not after. Also, why you would protest BEFORE a sentence.
              • jellicle 6y ago
                Floyd was killed May 25, 2020, the protests began on May 26, 2020 and Chauvin was charged on May 29, 2020. Please don't lie.
        • meerita 6y ago
          Another point: Persona A goes and kill my neighboor, Can I (or is it good to) go out and do whatever a I want? Like rioting, beating people and destroying other people property?
          • carb 6y ago
            If you have proof that Person A killed your neighbor, and yet they were being protected from prosecution, of course I would support your right to protest. Sometimes the only way to get change is with large public support. Unfortunately, today's news focuses only on violence and fear mongering. You will eventually realize that peaceful protests have never successfully brought change. You will find yourself screaming into a void, without justice. Today, the police claim that there are only a few Bad cops but most are Good, and ask us to trust that. There are only a few rioting protestors, but most are peaceful. However, the cops across the US are rioting, beating, and destroying the lives of every protestors. Cleveland PD has banned news media from entering downtown. Seattle PD has fired flashbangs and rubber bullets at news reporters. A black CNN reporter and their whole crew was arrested live to avoid the public witnessing what was to take place. Nobody disagrees that rioting and vandalism and burglary are horrible acts. But I would rather the people riot if it leads to lives being saved and equal accountability for all citizens.
      • KuiN 6y ago
        This comment can surely not be in good faith. You cannot seriously be suggesting you believe that protesters went to "destroy evertyhing[sic] in every city"?
        • meerita 6y ago
          I didn't mention protesters, I'm talking about the huge amount of people destroying, looting, beating other people in most cities.
          • inerte 6y ago
            It is not a huge amount, and it is not happening in most cities. Take a random example here in California, probably 50 people looted Best Buy this weekend? For a city of 70k? Vast minority. In a country that has 20k cities. There is no way more than 10k cities are experiencing looting. There is “more than I would actually like”, and there is actual huge/most. It simply isn’t as bad as you make out to be.
            • balls187 6y ago
              I'm almost convinced instead of looting, in many cases (at least here in WA) it's some sort of organized crime syndicate working with street level gangs using the civil unrest as cover to commit grand theft. In DT Seattle, protests turned into violent riots, and many nearby businesses were damaged including looting. In other WA cities, criminals picked strategic targets (Target, Walmart, and BestBuy) and hit them in multiple locations. In Bellevue, there was footage of cars pulling up to take the stolen possesions and drive away. That was different than with looting, in which people typical take anything that isn't nailed down.
            • meerita 6y ago
              I don't know what's your number reference from. I watched several videos from cali and i counted +50 people looting all kinds of stores.
    • DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I think US police actually want a riot. They want to create violence. I think that's unlikely. Keeping the peace is an inherently challenging job that gets harder exactly when it is needed the most.
      • mayniac 6y ago
        Maybe not all of them, but you only need a few people like the over-enthusiastic COD cosplayer cop [1] in management positions to kick things off. Considering the vast, vast amount of footage of excessive force from the police in the last few days, I think it's likely the police want a riot. If they don't then they're beyond incompetent since they keep causing riots regardless. [1] https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gtg2cb https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/gtg2cb
        • DoreenMichele 6y ago
          You know, humans have a lot of built-in reactions that are very hard to resist in the face of certain stimuli. It's hard enough to get people to talk peaceably in an online forum where we aren't smelling pheromones, feeling an adrenaline rush in reaction to physical threats to our well being, etc. It's vastly harder to stay calm and behave "competently" in the face of that sort of thing. My ex was career military. One day, I was seriously set off by something and he accidentally got up in my physical space and bumped into me and his military training apparently had prepared him for how to de-escalate in the face of imminent physical violence because I was quite ready to hit him over it. The end result was that I left the house to go cool off elsewhere. So I've experienced first-hand physical de-escalation tactics and my ex was one of the calmest people I have ever known. I'm the only person he ever raised his voice at (when we were fighting). Most people were incapable of getting a rise out of him. So I think I have a pretty fair idea of just what it takes to actually de-escalate physical violence when faced with imminent physical violence and most people have neither the temperament nor the training. He had been in the military quite a few years at that point. I don't intend to argue this further. I've said what I wanted to say. I was surprised my initial comment got any upvotes at all instead of being just stomped into the ground, given the current climate out in the world.
    • creato 6y ago
      Seems to you based on what? Reddit posts? More realistically, I think it is rarely this simple, on either side. I'm sure that usually there is a feedback loop of escalating responses.
      • balls187 6y ago
        > More realistically, I think it is rarely this simple, on either side. I'm sure that usually there is a feedback loop of escalating responses. The premise of the article is Police showing escalating force, increases escalation of protestors. While likely it's a feedback loop, the police are expected to keep the peace; so there exists a higher standard for their behavior. Yet, an oft criticism is that LE agencies don't always get the de-escalation training they need.
        • johnsonjo 6y ago
          It’s interesting, because I’ve taken a personal firearms course that involved concealed carry in the US and they talk about de-escalation there (I’m pretty sure they have to). I would at least expect the same from police (obviously their training would be much more in depth with all the tools cops get).
    • thinkingemote 6y ago
      The aim is usually to end the protest locally and generally. Often one way to do this is to turn it into a riot. This makes the general population oppose the violence and property damage generally and also disperses the peaceful people on the street locally. Agent provocateur.
• Skgqie1 6y ago
  I've noticed that many people create a distinction between the police and the rest of society - as though they're separate to and apart from normal people. Given police officers are in fact a part of the same society as the people protesting against them, it seems likely that the issues with brutality, and racial prejudice, are not endemic to police themselves, but indicative of problems of the overall society at large. If people are protesting the symptoms of these broader cultural issues, and not the underlying cause, it seems an inescapable conclusion that any change will largely be ineffectual. I feel that the difficulty with this, is that noone likes to admit that there are systemic issues in the way their society functions. From a sociological perspective, most people don't want to be beating a drum that runs counter to popular opinion. Similarly, most people are reluctant to engage in confrontation on an individual level, when encountering behaviour that ultimately leads to these type of outcomes. Just as importantly, most people are awful at taking responsibility for their role in a problem. People prefer to create a false dichotomy, and position their impact on problems as meaningless, and view solutions as outside their locus of control. This effectively leads to a kind of tragedy of the commons, where responsibility belongs to everyone and is taken by noone - similar to what we see with climate issues. To effect meaningful change, it's usually required that both individuals and groups make their voice heard and actually do something. Yet most people go about their lives, and only take action when the collective does, in response to some climax of conditions. This is better than the inverse - of individuals taking action while groups do nothing - yet usually results in neglibile change, if any. I suspect a part of the problem is that a sizable demographic cares, but only insofar as they care to signal their virtues. Yet when it comes to doing something themselves, the it's a much lower priority. I also suspect most people in this situation engage in a cognitive dissonance that's almost automatic too - and probably aren't even aware that they're doing it.
• nolsoniente 6y ago
  Police violence and stupidity are a big problem. But why Americans make everything about race? See this white guy suffocated by police while crying out "I cant breathe": https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/01/police-laughed-joked-he-lost-consciousness-handcuffs-minutes-later-he-died/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/01/police-laug... Why no riots and street violence then?
• gadders 6y ago
  I think for demonstrators, yes, de-escalation is the key. However, for the Antifa/domestic terrorist groups that exist only to smash property and cause violence, they should be arrested on sight and prosecuted.
• glangdale 6y ago
  This is an interesting story; however, much of it seems predicated on the idea that the police want things to be safer, which seems false. There seems like a open determination to make things worse - to be confrontational as possible and demonstrate their impunity. All the people making "you'd think they'd manage to not do police brutality at the rally about police brutality" jokes are missing the point - the overtness IS the message.
• yters 6y ago
  i wonder if the rioters realize that violence in the streets is exactly how dictators gain power
  • ikeyany 6y ago
    Rioters don't care about the goals of the protestors.
    • yters 6y ago
      i've conversed with a couple of people on HN who seem to think rioting is aligned, and in fact more effective than peaceful protests they weren't downvoted, whereas my counter comments were so, it seems this opinion that violence is the way forward is not the minority position
      • ikeyany 6y ago
        If rioters are aligned with protestors in your mind, then aren't cops who murder innocents also aligned with good cops?
        • yters 6y ago
          perhaps if i saw protesters actively stopping violence and looting instead of just spectating and filming and cheering, as well as comments supporting violence getting flagged on hn otherwise, plenty of people may not be personally willing to risk themselves by being violent, but are happy to stand by as others are violent anyways, i hope the protesters look forward to trump 2020, because that is the current trajectory they are pushing
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
          • ikeyany 6y ago
            Protestors actively stopping violence and looting: https://facebook.com/fox11la/videos/2620823021579078/ https://facebook.com/fox11la/videos/2620823021579078/ https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Al_OCpYFk https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Al_OCpYFk Consider why you are so unwilling to admit that bad cops who murder innocents are also the problem.
• gerbilly 6y ago
  One suggestion that has been made is to not call the cops at all for certain kinds of emergencies: * Mental health (otherwise nonviolent) * Animal problems This alone could reduce deaths dramatically. I witnessed an incident where the cops were called about a stray dog. They shot it. When you have a gun, every problem looks like a target. I think it should also be made clear who has priority at a 'scene' firefighters, paramedics, or police? Personally I think it's implicitly assumed that it is police that have that authority. I believe this should be flipped so that medical and fire officials have authority at the scene of an incident, not police. In the case of George Floyd, then the paramedics would have had the authority to get those three cops off the guys back possibly in time to save him.
• archeantus 6y ago
  Just like parenting, police should never resort to violence. Why? It’s a short-term fix that causes way more problems down the road. So what kind of parents/police beat their constituents? Men who are angry and want to assert themselves as macho and in charge. It needs to stop.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• olliej 6y ago
  Yes, but police are functionally just wannabe soldiers, without the actual training. They want to beat people up. They want to be tough guys who have no consequences. Talking about how to fix policing means nothing until: * police go to jail * officers who do not report other officers go to jail * bosses/chiefs etc who are aware of abuses of power and brutality and do not arrest those officers go to jail * police are tested regularly to ensure they actually know the law, and psychologically tested to ensure that they can still be safely an officer * restrictions on officer IQ are made illegal * police union members who are aware of misconduct and fail to report it go to jail * all lawsuits are settled with funds from police pension funds * dismissal or jail due to misbehavior bans the former officer from ever being part of any law enforcement, body guard, or security position. * police officers are required to get malpractice insurance. The tax payer should not be paying for criminal behavior. Talking about training when the entire police system is designed to ensure police have no culpability is pointless.
  • peteretep 6y ago
    What’s striking to me is the stark differences in policing with the US vs other common law/Anglosphere countries, where policing is by consent. I guess the other countries were still much more under British influence during the formation of policing?
    • tareqak 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
    • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
      The roots of policing in the US have it's origins in slave patrols. Very different from the rest of the Anglosphere. https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a... "Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities."
    • 6y ago
• coldcode 6y ago
  Of course it does. But politicians who ramp up the rhetoric and threaten to have people killed does not. Flint and Camden and other cities where the police sat down or walked with the protestors have no issues. People connecting to people with understanding rarely results in violence. I think places where the police still walk a beat (or other regular outreach over a wide area) and get to know the locals rarely have issues with regular people. But cities don't want to spend that kind of money on these things as they would rather not tax people to pay for it. Yet it's an investment in cities' future; otherwise you wind up with this.
  • Consultant32452 6y ago
    There were reports of planned riots in rural Polk County. Knowing they didn't have the resources to cover wide spread area, the sheriff instructed citizens to shoot anyone who broke into their home. I support this. Telling citizens you can't help them, and they must protect themselves is very different than threatening that the state itself will kill you. https://twitter.com/FOX13News/status/1267539936401592320 https://twitter.com/FOX13News/status/1267539936401592320
    • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
      You can shoot a home intruder during and outside of riot conditions. I'm not sure why he posted this.
      • Consultant32452 6y ago
        I think it's clearly a message to people watching the looting in the cities thinking they can get away with that in a rural area. He says it plain and simple, rural people have guns and they will kill you.
      • userbinator 6y ago
        Laws vary depending on the state.
      • scruple 6y ago
• WillDaSilva 6y ago
  "Of course, as Gillham pointed out, negotiating and managing a protest can’t really work if the protest wasn’t organized ahead of time. That goes double, he said, if the topic of the protest is police brutality. It’s hard to negotiate with someone about the best way to demand they be fired." This point is important. The police can't police themselves, and for a lasting solution to this problem to emerge there'll have to be major structural changes to the way police oversight and review is carried out. I hope these protests are a turning point that'll lead to such reforms, but I suspect no significant changes will occur. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.
  • catssie 6y ago
    “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” If you want change, make lasting change.
  • m0zg 6y ago
    > wasn’t organized ahead of time Protests might have been unorganized, but riots most certainly are organized. Torching a police car carries a minimum 5 year sentence. It's not the protesters who are doing that. Moreover, it is still being "organized". Someone keeps dropping off pallets with bricks. There are agitator leaflets all over twitter. People have been recorded on video handing out cash to "protesters" from a thick wad of bills. Someone is organizing and funding the riots.
    • TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      > People have been recorded on video handing out cash to "protesters" from a thick wad of bills. It would be trivial to contrive that exact scenario. I’m not say that it was contrived, just that it would be trivial to do so.
      • m0zg 6y ago
        That I do agree with. A lot of other things would be trivial to contrive as well. I would not be surprised if the scenes of devastation we see in the media are far smaller in scale IRL, and we're just being shown the same smashed storefront from different angles to drive clicks. But at the same time I think peaceful protesters would not burn police cars or loot, seeing how looting does absolutely nothing good whatsoever for their cause. They would especially not burn or loot minority businesses, churches, or low income housing complexes. Someone is very deliberately and efficiently pouring gasoline into this fire IMO, that much is pretty obvious by now.
• inputError 6y ago
  ACAB
  • dang 6y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • rectang 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B. This violates the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
    • CameronNemo 6y ago
      In his defense, all technology is an instrument of political and ideological battle. If the site admins really want to enforce that guideline, then we should not be discussing current events here.
      • dang 6y ago
        You might be misreading that guideline. It's not trying to exclude political discussion—only one form of it. Technological and political topics overlap (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). That's why politics has never been excluded from HN (other than an experiment we once briefly tried and quickly rolled back). Maybe your formulation of that overlap is the right one, maybe others are better, but they all point to the same fundamental, which we agree on. HN has always, or nearly always, hosted a certain amount of political discussion (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 for some history). The distinction that guideline attempts to draw is not "political vs. apolitical", but rather between two different forms of discussion: discussion whose purpose is communication and discussion whose purpose is battle. These are remarkably different in practice: one seeks to hear and learn from the other, one seeks to defeat and destroy the other. People are generally in very different states when they're doing those two things. It's not primarily a distinction of views; whatever your views are, you can either do battle or do communication about them, depending on what state you're in and what your intention is. This distinction is existential for a site like HN, where the intention is to survive as a place for curious conversation and somehow escape the default fate of internet forums, which is to destroy themselves—or at least stave it off for as long as we can (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20stave&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). By now, we have a lot of experience with moderating the site according to this distinction, and if there's a better way to do it, I'd love to know what it is. If you want to take a look at past explanations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20primarily%20test&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... are good entrypoints. If after reading that material, you or anyone still have a question that hasn't been answered yet, I'd like to know what it is. And if you know a better way for HN moderation to relate to political topics, I'd really like to know what it is. Just make sure you've familiarized yourself with the material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.
• just_steve_h 6y ago
  Folks - don't be obtuse. Police commanders know exactly what will happen when they escalate with tear gas and rubber bullets. Pro-police forces WANT mayhem. It makes people watching on TV afraid of the protests, and it changes the subject away from the widespread peaceful opposition to racist police violence.
  • emperorsclothes 6y ago
    What is the evidence for racist police violence? Black people are killed by the police in proportion to the rate at which they commit violent crime.
  • dfee 6y ago
    Many people want mayhem, but I think your comment is wrong. > Pro-police forces WANT mayhem ... it changes the subject away from the widespread peaceful opposition to racist police violence. I don’t think that typical “pro-police forces” want to own the narrative of their cause being racist and violent.
    • somebrody 6y ago
      > I don’t think that typical “pro-police forces” want to own the narrative of their cause being racist and violent I think they do. Many cops seem to be very racist and very violent. It doesn't seem like they care who knows it. Even when they do care, they might not turn on body-cams which should be a fireable offense and now it finally is in at least one case in Kentucky.
      • booleandilemma 6y ago
        Many cops seem to be very racist and very violent Citation needed. I think most cops are just normal people trying to earn a living.
        • somebrody 6y ago
          I said many. Here's many cops being very racist and very violent: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAqt_gHgAxk/?utm_source=ig_embed https://www.instagram.com/p/CAqt_gHgAxk/?utm_source=ig_embed https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-video-appears-show-george-floyd-ground-three-officers-n1217476 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-video-appears-show-...
• davros 6y ago
  From afar, it seems to me like the big problem in US policing is a lack of calm professionalism. The de-escalation approach in the article would to me but just one aspect of taking a professional approach where safety and following rules and best practices is paramount (and prioritised over 'winning' against criminals).
  • rectang 6y ago
    I have always suspected that US police are shunted into sub-optimal patterns because there are so many guns here that the odds a simple interaction will involve a firearm are much higher than they are in less-well-armed societies. Does anybody know if I'm right about that? That doesn't mean that they can't do more de-escalation or take other steps, but the high prevalence of guns does seem like it would be a contributing factor. (I realize this touches a hot topic (guns) but it's an honest question, and sympathetic to law enforcement.)
    • Shacklz 6y ago
      > will involve a firearm are much higher than they are in less-well-armed societies. Does anybody know if I'm right about that? Switzerland (disclaimer; I'm Swiss) has also lots of weapons around, but if the police are ever shooting someone it's usually big news with investigations on whether it was really necessary. From my laymen point of view, police training and holding them accountable to their actions is probably even a bigger factor than gun availability (although this is certainly a factor too). If I'm not mistaken, Swiss police training strongly encourages to back off if someone draws a weapon, trying to keep it cool, talk softly/slowly etc. It seems that in the US, the first hint of a weapon will result in drawn weapons by police and a 'drop your weapon'-shouting-contest; that's at least what seems to often happen in footage that ends up in the news where something goes wrong and someone ends up being dead. Edit: One of the more memorable examples I saw was a video via NYT, where some guy was being arrested, tried to adjust his pants and was immediately being shot because the officer thought he was going for a gun. This is absolutely unimaginable in Switzerland; I would have to look it up for the facts but I think to remember a case where someone was shot holding (and threatening with) a fake-gun, and the officer who did so went to jail if I remember correctly.
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  Imagine being a cop and having to deal with stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4L97igDjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4L97igDjY They literally save this man's life and he kills the guy who saved his life. Cops don't work in a safe space. Years of working in a violent and hateful environment must take a serious toll on them.
  • arkades 6y ago
    While there's a kernel of validity to what you're saying, cops in every state and every nation have to deal with a violent and hateful environment. The variation in outcomes suggests something else is at play.
    • partiallypro 6y ago
      to be fair, in other nations rarely is there a risk of a gun being pulled on you
      • _RPM 6y ago
        Have you ever been outside the US?
        • partiallypro 6y ago
          Yes, several times.
      • hackissimo123 6y ago
        In some nations there absolutely is.
    • tasogare 6y ago
      Variation of outcome in other countries can be easily explained by low availability of weapons (that the case of most places): policemen are less susceptible to make use of their weapons when people they arrest as low probability of holding one.
• xvector 6y ago
  Unpopular opinion: The newfound delusion that peaceful protests have ever engendered any real change as opposed to their violent cousin is perhaps the nail in the coffin of freedom and democracy.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    That's extremely reductive - easy counterexample, the P/IRA completely failed to unify Ireland but their political wing did make progress towards their aims (GFA)
  • troughway 6y ago
    Very unpopular opinion: wait til the military steps in, then you'll see how much more ineffective the violent cousin is.
    • ncallaway 6y ago
      You're right! That is unpopular! If the military fires on unarmed civilians, it's going to take things to a whole other level.
    • xvector 6y ago
      When the military starts shooting civilians, those that are shot become martyrs and the movement becomes explosive. The military will not shoot civilians without extremely good reason - they aren't cops, after all.
  • iphone_elegance 6y ago
    Things tend to break down when the leadership gets off on harassing the otherside, add to that a feelings of disenfranchisement and it's a recipe for disaster
• bayonetz 6y ago
  Why would you de-escalate when the POTUS says stuff like this: https://soundcloud.com/the-daily-beast-politics/trump-audio https://soundcloud.com/the-daily-beast-politics/trump-audio
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• beloch 6y ago
  We should expect police to us less use violence and improve their crowd management and deescalation skills. The increasing militarization of police is a trend that must be reversed. However, we should not neglect the other side of the equation either. This article is, in large part, about just that. The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organizers meeting and jointly managing protests, but that this practice fell into disuse after the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting in which protesters violated the negotiated terms and police responded with violence. While some recent (and ongoing) protests have turned violent, many didn't. In the coming months we'll have time to do a postmortem. I strongly suspect spontaneous protests without organization will be found to have the most potential for violence, while those with organizers committed to self-policing and, ideally, cooperating with police will be found to have fared much better. Individual people may be intelligent and responsible, but crowds have their own rules of behaviour and need to be managed. Protests are more dangerous when unplanned or when their organizers give no thought to self-policing. There will always be organizers who want violence because it reliably brings press coverage and attention to their protests, but social media is also creating new problems. Coordinating a large number of people to show up at the same time and place used to take considerable planning and effort. When you have to work hard just to get the even to happen, why wouldn't you plan how it will unfold as well? Now a couple of tweets or posts on the right reddit subs will suffice. How can police meet with the organizer of a protest when it's really just some dude who had a lot of social media followers and might not even bother showing up himself?
  • lxmorj 6y ago
    It is flabbergasting to me that we expect self-policing from protestors, but not the literal fucking police.
    • xendo 6y ago
      Policing by police usually leads to escalation. I think that's the point of this submission.
      • 6y ago
• vxNsr 6y ago
  @dang ppl on both sides of this discussion have lost all decorum. Can we have a moratorium on this subject until ppl calm down enough to not resort to reddit style replies and responses that fit better in 2005 blog comment sections which are essentially just flamewar bait
• monadic2 6y ago
  At some point society will realize that this “de-escalation” would be better served by social workers without guns.
  • johnsonjo 6y ago
    I don’t know my brother showed me a very uncivil and awful video of a black man trying to defend his business by telling looters to go away and being beaten and at least knocked unconcious with a pool of blood around his head. There were many other videos I saw where people stood outside their businesses with guns and their businesses didn’t seem to get looted at least. (I know it’s all anecdotal, but at least it says there are cases of the opposite being true.)
    • monadic2 6y ago
      Sorry, what’s the connection to replacing police de-escalating with social workers de-escalating? You’ve lost me.
      • johnsonjo 6y ago
        Sorry, I should do a better job at explaining why I said what I said. I'll try to do better at that next time. What I meant to imply is that non-violent forces like the social worker or the man defending his business (using pleading and non-violent force) can very easily be met with violent force. Whereas sometimes even the fear of violence is enough to stop the escalation of force. I honestly don't even know if that black man that defended his business lived. I can agree with you police need to be better at de-escalating they and their departments should be striving for that. Maybe training could help? Also at the same time I feel, and I'm not saying this is something that always happens but it's a thing that always happens under the given circumstances, when something isn't de-escalated without force (such as a failed de-escalation by a social worker or non-violent de-escalation by police) it by nature will escalate, so to prevent loss of life sometimes force can be necessary (such as what the police can do). So, leaving the police completely out of it in the first place could be dangerous to the social worker and other parties involved.
  • 6y ago
• mdoms 6y ago
  You Americans need to be way more angry about what has been happening in your country for decades (centuries even). Way more angry.
  • dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, such as by preaching self-righteously at some other country. That helps nothing. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• golemiprague 6y ago
  What about small business owners and members of the public subjected to violence and looting, who keeps them safe? I don't care about the police or protesters, they put themselves in this situation knowing too well what they are putting themselves into. But why regular members of the public need to suffer from this? Any policy should take them into account first and foremost.
• chx 6y ago
  Here is what absolutely boggles my mind: this information is so well know the USA Department Of The Army Field Manual on Counterinsurgency contains: > Security force abuses and the social upheaval caused by collateral damage from combat can be major escalating factors for insurgencies. https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=468442 https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=468442
  • whymauri 6y ago
    Unfortunately, the theory does not translate into practice or hiring. The military and militarized US police force seem to actively recruit agents who fundamentally misunderstand principles of de-escalation. Whether that be riot police antagonizing civilians or armed forces provoking people abroad. The standards for these positions must be higher, especially domestically (police).
• js2 6y ago
  I'm going to copy/paste the experience of a local state senator from Facebook because, well, I found it insightful and relevant to this article. This is from NC State Senator Jeff Jackson. He represents a district in Charlotte. ---- Last night I went into uptown at around 7:00 p.m. to do my part to help keep the peace. Our city had already had a peaceful and powerful protest earlier that afternoon with a message of love and justice and it was important that the evening protest stayed safe and civil. At the beginning there were roughly 1,500 people. That’s about half the number who were at the afternoon protest. The evening group was also much younger. I’d put the average age at about 24. That meant the tone was audibly different. The conversations I had were different. It was a more personal perspective from people who weren’t just marching for others - they were also marching for themselves. There were more people in this crowd who felt that this issue directly concerned them and their friends, and you could hear that in their voices. The leaders of the protest had met earlier that day with CMPD to discuss how to ensure the event was safe. As a result, the leaders placed experienced activists at the front of the march, in the middle, and in the rear. They kept the march moving, occasionally stopping for a few minutes to let people re-group, but not letting too much heat build in any one spot. Alongside real anger and frustration were constant displays of compassion. Lots of people brought water bottles and were handing them out. I saw a woman trip and hurt her leg and the crowd immediately stopped and tended to her. Law enforcement was present in various ways. There were some officers in regular uniform walking among the crowd, answering questions and chatting. There were also several officers on bicycles and motorcycles. Most of the police presence was blocking certain streets to keep the march from heading certain directions. By the time the march got to the police station it had been going for over two hours and it had shrunk to maybe 300 people. About 10 officers stood outside the front door, motionless. The protesters got as close as they could to the police without making contact. One officer raised his fist in solidarity and was greeted with loud applause and cheering from the crowd. At one point someone threw a water bottle at the police and everyone turned around and yelled at him. There were some very tense moments near the police station, but after about 30 minutes the march headed back uptown. Now it was about 10:40 p.m. The march had been going for over three hours. It wasn’t a coherent group anymore. There were less than 200 people. It had splintered into lots of little groups and there wasn’t any organization that I could see. I thought it was basically over so I started to head back to my car. At 10:50 p.m. I heard the first flashbang. Then I saw the tear gas. I was two blocks away so I couldn’t tell what, if anything, precipitated its use (although I later read a CMPD statement that bottles and rocks were being thrown). But the flashbang had a catalyzing and organizing effect on the remaining protesters, who instantly re-formed. This marked the point of a clear shift in police tactics. Officers lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and walked block by block, toward the protesters, who similarly lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and waited for the police to move toward them. Officers would then proceed down one block, wait five minutes, use a loudspeaker to tell the crowd to disperse, and then start walking toward the crowd. Then they would use tear gas and pepper bullets, which would cause the crowd to retreat one block. This continued for several blocks, until eventually the remaining protesters scattered. Nine arrests were made. I’m not aware of any injuries. As far as property damage, I heard a few reports of a few broken windows, but nothing extensive. It’s really easy to see one picture or hear a snippet on the news and draw a conclusion about an event like this. What I saw was much more complex, much more human. If it’s one thing we all owe each other right now, it’s looking past the surface and trying to learn a little more about what’s really going on underneath. What I learned last night is that the tenor of these events can change on a dime. But you can feel it when it happens. I also learned that the vast, vast majority of protesters were there to engage in peaceful, safe protest. Although many of them felt genuine anger, they understood what it meant to channel it productively and what type of conduct would undercut their message. My thanks to the leadership of this event for working hard to keep everyone as safe as possible. - Sen. Jeff Jackson https://mbasic.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1320995611436357&id=245711905631405 https://mbasic.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=13209956114... https://www.jeffjacksonnc.com/about-jeff https://www.jeffjacksonnc.com/about-jeff
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• beepboopbeep 6y ago
  What has stood out to me, even above the violence, is the sheer fear and stupidity in the eyes of officers. They have zero control over themselves. They aren't doing a job, they're just fighting people. It's incredible just how bizarrely amateur they all are. Like it was all one violent LARP to them until they met their first riot
• lsh123 6y ago
  Could we please stop calling “protesters” all the people looting jewelry stores, Target, Nike, etc? These are not protesters, these are looters. Police should use any means at their disposal to protect lives and property from looters and rioters.
  • parhamn 6y ago
    There are a ton of heavy, non-looting protests going on as well.
    • lsh123 6y ago
      Absolutely and I don’t think that any reasonable person will have any problem with those. I can’t speak for all the places in US but my observations in San Jose (both personal and through FB/media) is that police was cool with peaceful protests. I saw a few times police and protesters hugging each other, doing fist bumps, etc.
      • runarberg 6y ago
        From my experience a protest usually becomes exactly as violent as the police initiates. In every protest I’ve attended the police is always the most violent actor.
        • komali2 6y ago
          This is my experience as well, and that also is the conclusion drawn from this article we're all commenting on as well lol.
      • empath75 6y ago
        Did you just start paying attention? People complain about any protest no matter how anodyne. Meanwhile people keep dying.
  • komali2 6y ago
    Could we please not waste a second of thought on the relatively minor issue of broken store windows until we sort the issue of cops indiscriminately killing black people? If you care so much, how about petition your local police force to dump their tear gas at the range and stop firing on peaceful protesters, turning a lot of sitting people into a riot.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tomcam 6y ago
  Police should use the minimum violence necessary. But some people refuse to de-escalate.
• asenna 6y ago
  I highly recommend checking out Trevor Noah's recent video on the protests - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4Bg8mu2aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb4Bg8mu2aM He mentions how society is at its core a contract on how to engage with one another. Everything we do is in some form conforming to that contract and when this contract is violated (like the stores being looted and vandalized), it angers you. However, to the people who're really affected by this issue at the very bottom of the society - they feel they're being ripped off in the contract and are being cheated every single day. After a breaking point they can feel like they don't really have to adhere to the contract anymore themselves when no one else sticks to it in their oppressed world. PS - Please note, he's obviously not justifying the lootings, mainly tries to make sense of it and how we got to where we are right now.
  • aaronchall 6y ago
    The sense I get of it is that he is making excuses for looting behavior.
    • nikofeyn 6y ago
      if that's the case, then why is that bad and the fact that the most wealthy, corporations, and our politicians get away with their excuses from looting people? their looting is stealing data, not paying their share of taxes, abusing power, etc., and just because they aren't physical acts doesn't excuse them. but it's because they are the status quo, and they define what's looting or not. i'm not in favor of stealing and violence, particularly because the ones getting stolen from are at the bottom as well, but it sure seems those at the top sure live in a different society and under different rules that conveniently favor their form of "looting".
      • lobotryas 6y ago
        One is legal (whether you like it or not) the other is illegal. If you don’t like that, vote to have the law changed. No one gets to be a vigilante/looter without legal/social consequences.
• alexashka 6y ago
  It takes just a few rotten apples on the side of the protestors to make it go violent. It also takes just a few rotten apples on the side of the police to make it go violent. Protesting is largely a modern witch hunt. It lets people blow off some steam, rather ineffectively in the modern protest case, because you don't get to burn anyone alive at the end of it. Enough people long for that witch hunt finale, and that's why protests turn violent so often, it's the modern day equivalent of burning a witch. I don't know if protestors realize that it is up to them to come up with ways of fixing systemic issues they're upset about (people in power are fine with the way things are, by definition) - burning down your local neighbourhood or yelling out in the streets can only lead to the powers that be going 'ok fine, go find some witches to burn to appease this mob'. It's never going to fix actual systemic issues, but perhaps burning witches is good enough, given our history, and going in circles indefinitely is the way of this species.
  • shigawire 6y ago
    >It's never going to fix actual systemic issues, but perhaps burning witches is good enough, given our history, and going in circles indefinitely is the way of this species. Counter point - the Civil Rights Act of 1968. People pay attention when they are forced to. I won't pass a moral judgement as it's not my place, but nothing will change until force is applied. I think that is the lesson history teaches.
    • alexashka 6y ago
      Well it depends on where you think we ought to be going - then we can then decide what history is teaching us :) History written in textbooks tends to teach the narrative that was sponsored. Modern pop-history tends to teach what will sell the most copies, so history is teaching us all kinds of selective facts about life. Regarding force - force needs to be applied for anything to move - that's just a fundamental law of physics :) The question is where and how do we apply force and in what quantities? My stance is that witch hunting did not solve the issue of witches causing droughts, scientists along with engineers and people willing to work today, for a better tomorrow, solved hunger in many places of the world. Now imagine somebody that does believe that his or her witch hunt of year 1543 did fix drought for a decade in his/her town. What evidence could you possibly provide to convince them otherwise? They know there was no drought for ten years, they know they burned a witch in 1543. Now if there is a drought ten years later, clearly we just didn't burn enough witches! This is the difficulty in dealing with people who rely on emotion, not cold hearted rationality, to solve problems. Cold hearted rationality has its dangers too and one can argue until the cows come home that we may have been better off never industrializing, never inventing agriculture and sticking with hunter gathering, at one with nature and all. Not me, I like hot showers, anti-biotics and all the other modern amenities too much. I'm in the rationality over emotion camp. The people out there protesting I'm guessing are in the other camp and that's totally fine with me.
• kingkawn 6y ago
  Instead of optimizing protesting don't kill black people.
  • KuiN 6y ago
    As an outsider watching from across the Atlantic, I am astonished at what is being posted in these comments. There are hundreds of videos on social media of wanton police violence towards peaceful protestors. Of course there are non-peaceful protestors (and I do not defend them) but they are responded to in incidents of heavy handed violent escalation. Bellingcat have collected more than 100 reports of protected media representatives being beaten, blinded and brutalized by police action. This is all happening during unrest caused by police brutality. And Hacker News wants to fix the protestors?!
    • kingkawn 6y ago
      In America there is a culture of rushing to find center ground between two points regardless of what the points are. So now they rush to make false equivalence between large groups of many kinds of people protesting in public and a professional militarized force with government funding.
• Rapzid 6y ago
  It's not entirely surprising, but it has been rather shocking to see the groups, some more organized than others, that have been coming in and inciting these confrontations between police and the rest of the public present at the location. From what I've seen of videos posted of the vandals and looters in my own and other cities it seems a certain, very small, percentage of bad actors are provoking escalations to the detriment of everybody else. Some of these parties seem to be doing that as a primary goal, others are simply causing the escalations as a side-effect of their actions. Certainly this doesn't account for everything we have witnessed, such as the NG shooting rubber bullets at people on their porches(srs WTF?), but it has contributed substantially to the escalation IMO.
• drocer88 6y ago
  The buck stops at the mayor's office. We need to hold these officials accountable. Blaming the police is like blaming the soldiers in a war. It's the regional ELECTED leaders responsible for the budgets and operations of the police departments who are the problem.
  • noobermin 6y ago
    The police (particularly police unions) are very politically powerful with their endorsements and contributions to politicians. Many mayors across the country are afraid to discipline their police departments.
• rowawey 6y ago
  OR: If the police were more Sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show and less Captain America meets Commando. This is what happens when frightened, under-trained, under-experienced, over-militarized, desensitized "police" optimize for the wrong thing and defeat their fundamental mission by becoming an military occupation force of psychopathic a__holes who don't interact with "civilians" except to harass people, rather than a community service of human f__king beings.
• partiallypro 6y ago
  I'm no fan of the police, but I think it's a lot easier to say something should be deescalated when you are miles away in your home and not on the ground with some people throwing objects at you, some of which have in the past included molotovs. Mob mentality is a very dangerous thing, that goes both ways.
• mempko 6y ago
  Police escalating a peaceful protest to a violent one is part of the plan. It's a feature not a bug for police. They do this to scare regular folks from not participating in protests. Because good and honest people will stay home if they worry about getting hurt. The goal of the police is to make protests undesirable and that's what they do. Undercover cops, for example have been video taped in many instances of breaking store windows abd starting fires. The goal being to give ab excuse for police to disperse crowds. I know many don't believe me but veteran protesters under this. Go to a protest and find out for yourself.
• ilaksh 6y ago
  I was watching someone stream the protests near the White House last night. The police were being hit with water bottles and sometimes fireworks, but still they mostly just stood there. The police did not escalate at all until the protestors lit two fires. One completely took over a small building and another was like a bonfire in the middle of the street. So the question is how many fires should you let them light? After that they became very aggressive and used the year gas and batons and rubber bullets to take over the area and force the protestors to retreat back a few blocks. Later on the looting a few blocks away from the police escalated and it does seem like it could have been partially motivated by the violent tactics from before. But if you look at the amount of arson and destruction in Minnesota recently when there was no real police presence, it seems like the result was worse.
  • voganmother42 6y ago
    No police presence? Oh! You mean where they waited to announce anything and defended the house of the police officer while everything burned? Or do mean where people on their porches were fired upon for filming? Or maybe that cnn crew that was attempting to comply?
• spicyramen 6y ago
  I lived in Mexico City downtown for 15 years. If you don't know if there is a problem anywhere in the country, people would come to Mexico City main plaza to protest. Many peaceful protests never really achieve anything, others utterly violent neither. I witnessed farmers being beat up by the police, women and kids fighting riot police and building destruction. One common element is that certain police officers are aggressive by nature and suddenly get a free card to hurt people. I agree with the article, communication is key. In many protests I believe there is a lack of miscommunication in all parties, and others are not well planned or are infiltrated to diminish the reason of the protest. Some groups advocate for violence as the only way to be heard (which in some cases is a valid reason, e.g. fascism) but destroying normal people business vs government Infrastructure I don't think should be permitted
• MadNinjaSkills 6y ago
  But if the police are trained to use violent force... just how does that work? The fact that police will never really be of service to a suicidal person (who can point a toy gun at them, and then they shoot him/her- granting the individual's wish to end his/her own life) comes to mind. (Oh, yeah, don't commit suicide!)
• js2 6y ago
  > That, experts say, speaks to a cultural attitude that is endemic to the profession, and is hard to change with new chiefs or rules. Thomson encountered this when he tried to make change in Camden. The police department was so dysfunctional that the city took the unprecedented step of disbanding the force and reconstituting a whole new agency from scratch. This American Life did a story about a new chief trying to reform the Firehouse culture in Amsterdam in order to combat discrimination: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/684/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/684/transcript Spoiler alert: he failed. It's hard to turn an organization around.
  • Animats 6y ago
    I didn't know that any city had reconstituted their police department. But Camden did, in 2012.[1] They fired all their cops and started over with new ones. [1] http://archive.is/BfQIx http://archive.is/BfQIx
• gdubs 6y ago
  I remember being in Grand Central Station, NYC, not long after 9/11, and noticed a student sitting on a step — right next to their head was the barrel of a casually dangled rifle, hanging off the shoulder of a cop who happened to be standing next to them. We’ve become pretty normalized to it, but a militarized police force wasn’t always a thing in America. The scenes of the WTO protests in Seattle two decades ago, of cops in riot gear shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds of people — those images were pretty shocking at the time. Now it’s a familiar scene, one that is currently playing out in cities around the country and beyond.
• bobmaxup 6y ago
  Why not make universal laws that apply to anyone that can be proven to injure another human being with economic deterrents? For example, if you hit a man in the face, cause bruising, lets say that costs $1,000 across the board. $1,000 for any hematoma, $5000 or any broken bone. $25,000 for a GSW, $100,000 for a life-threatening injury, etc. To take it further, if you discharge a weapon at another human being, the fine is something like $1,000 per bullet, etc. Additionally, existing laws still apply. Following the above guidelines, you don't need to prove mens rea. It is just the cost of doing business. It would be a violence tax at the individual level.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    Because that would be either insane or pointless? You think people who shoot at people are thinking about money?
    • bobmaxup 6y ago
      Yes, I think people who at shoot people consider the consequences to their immediate actions, like everyone else. Unfortunately, there is rarely a significant cost to the individual cop in most acts of police violence, and many are more likely to shoot a second time. https://theconversation.com/police-officers-accused-of-brutal-violence-often-have-a-history-of-complaints-by-citizens-139709 https://theconversation.com/police-officers-accused-of-bruta...
  • genuinebyte 6y ago
    The Rich would be allowed to level anyone they see fit with minimal financial loss.
    • bobmaxup 6y ago
      The hypothetical policy wouldn't replace existing laws, it would just be an additional tax on violent behaviors that apply to cops, criminals, school children, etc. Another thought I had around this was to just fire any police officer that fires their weapon at another human. If they truly believe that their life is in danger, they value their life more than their job. Either of these things would at least add some actual cost to the idea associated with performing an action with extreme consequences on another human being's life.
• systematical 6y ago
  Good thing we have the de-escalator in chief.
• PeterStuer 6y ago
  You should not underestimate the extent of undercover/false flag instigators of violence at protests. At least here in Belgium this is a practice that is uncovered nearly every time when some violence erupts at demonstrations. The individuals that start the aggression are later photographed to be chilling and changing attire behind police lines. Usually people at large anti-establishment rallies know very well there is litle to be gained by violence. Those in power otoh know very well how they can turn media coverage spotlights away from the issues and towards any disruptions to discredit or mute the actual grievances.
  • edanm 6y ago
    That's fascinating, do you have any references that discuss this? (preferably in English to avoid Google Translate)
    • ncallaway 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
  • sfj 6y ago
    It actually seems systematic. Pallets of bricks have been placed ahead of time at many of the planned protests around the country. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-setup-mysteriously-staged-bricks-appear-throughout-major-protest-cities https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-setup-mysteriously-s...
  • JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    If media coverage is diverted from the real issue, then why are Fortune 500's publicly posting statements and making donations? Just about everyone consumes social media these days; it would be hard to ignore the grievances of peaceful protestors unless you watched exclusively cable news.