> Journalists covering a protest in a Minneapolis suburb Friday night were forced on their stomachs by law enforcement, rounded up and were only released after having their face and press credentials photographed.
> The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists, according to court documents.
Sounds like the police don't care about the judge's order, nor the rights of journalists.
Exactly, we have shown these people that no matter what they do we won’t hold them accountable. That needs to change otherwise we’re headed somewhere I don’t want to go.
...hence these very protests. And thus the outsized extra-legal response.
This is a gang war, fundamentally. Cops view the protest movement as an existential threat (and strictly, they're not wrong) and are going to use whatever tools they can find to fight it. They aren't trying to enforce the law, they're trying to put down their enemies.
Don't the police already use kid gloves to handle most of the situations? I've been watching livestreams of these for a solid year now and that seems to be a common theme: the police are in general far nicer and accommodating than they could be or even should be.
The dramatic brush you're painting this with is extremely unrealistic.
> [...] temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists
I'm sorry, I'm not from USA, can somebody explain why it has _just_ been _temporarily_ banned to use "force or chemical agents" against journalists? I was under the impression that using such things against journalists was banned a long time ago in most of the developed countries, what with the freedom of the press and so on... Is Minesotta an exception here? Or USA?
The order here[1], which the OP did not cite/link to, is a temporary order to provide relief while a court case is decided.
My understanding of the argument is that the journalists claim that physical force is being used to prevent them from reporting on protests, and that their presence is lawful. The police claim that they are issuing disperse orders to people on the street. The cause of the disperse order is not clear to me: it seems like it could be that there is a curfew presently establish — however, the curfew exempts the press, and so would not apply to them. It could be that they believe the crowd unruly & are trying to maintain safety, however, that action needs to (IMO) be enforced against the individuals that are the cause of the unsafety/riot if there is one, which press acting solely as press cannot by definition be. As the order states,
> Accordingly, in order for the State Defendants' general dispersal orders limiting the press's access to be constitutional, the State Defendants must demonstrate that general dispersal orders are "essential to preserve higher values and [are] narrowly tailored to serve that interest." The State Defendants fail to do so here.³
> ³Indeed, although the State Defendants argue that their general dispersal orders were "necessary for obvious safety reasons," they make no attempt to demonstrate that the general dispersal orders were narrowly tailored to address those safety concerns.
There have been many cases of rioters claiming press credentials in attempts to bypass responsibility for criminal activity. "I'm not with mob of rioters attempting to burn down that courthouse, I'm a journalist. See, look on my helmet - P R E S S."
I think that was common in Portland over the last year.
> While law enforcement leaders say they had hoped to continue facilitating the more peaceful elements of the demonstrations with a more distanced approach, there were pockets of aggressive behavior that posed a threat to officers, as well as attempts to breach the station's outer ring of fencing, which spurred action from law enforcement to clear the immediate area.
The protests became unlawful and rightfully so.
> A lot of journalists like myself were slow to leave the area,” Colt said. “We didn’t think we needed to, and we wanted to cover what was happening.”
> Colt described police then corralling protesters and media into one group and yelling for them to get “flat on our stomachs.”
Sounds like if you had the full context it wouldn’t be so outrageous.
How do we know people are press and not pretending to be to sneak behind police lines and set fire to the police station or things like that.
"Sounds like you enjoy the taste of boot" is trivially against the site guidelines regardless of what view the commenter holds or how right they are or feel they are or you feel they are. Anyone can see that, no matter how passionately they hold their opinions.
HN has had tons of comments about police brutality including tons from what I assume is a similar view to your own. For a while it was by far the most-discussed topic on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962.
The vast majority of people never have negative interactions with police and actually are thankful for them keeping their communities safe.
The ones that do have problems are those that resist arrest and detainment in a society where everyone is armed.
Hence, I wouldn’t know the taste.
I acknowledge the historical precedent but it’s been a long time since such things and I prefer to look at the facts of the situation at hand (as would be done in a court of law) rather than implying conspiratorial motives from history.
I know that bit, but other commenters have implied that this is a direct signal that the police don't care about what the judge says.
I'm just wondering whether that is the case and it's a conscious decision made by the officers on the ground, or if they just don't know an order has been issued.
Oh they knew alright. Someone in leadership came up with this plan as a way to follow the letter of the order but not the spirit. Technically, they didn't use physical force against the journalists, at least as police see it.
If anyone in leadership gets called before the judge to answer for this, I'm sure they will argue that they needed a way to identify the journalists so they can keep them "safe". The intimidation is just a fortunate byproduct.
This would be an excellent opportunity for Joe Biden to show what kind of president he is, clearly the behavior of the police is unacceptable but what to do if the police doesn't care.
But frankly I don't think he will do much. About the only two things I can recall being reported from Biden are tripping when entering a plane and him calling the lifting of the restrictions in Texas a huge mistake.
You stop relying on blanket dispersal orders, curfews, other things like that. Arrest people for shooting, looting, throwing bricks, setting fires, you know, crimes that matter.
The journalists would see this as an impediment to them getting the "true story" (for whatever value of "X" that is) as it prevents them from "embedding" with the masses along with identifying the journo for violent actions. Not every "reporter" has a full camera crew.
That being said, there were examples of the vest you describe at the DC "insurrection", or at least I saw some some journos wearing neon-yellow reflective vests stenciled with "REPORTER" on the live feed.
Personally, I agree with you totally. Police & journalists should be clearly identified to better control things as it seems the default these days is to riot.
"After about 30 minutes, law enforcement told protesters to the leave the area in a loudspeaker announcement calling the demonstration an unlawful assembly."
Unlawful assembly.
"In England, the offence was abolished in 1986, but it exists in other countries."[0]
"while freedom of association is used in the context of labor rights and in the Constitution of the United States is interpreted to mean both the freedom to assemble and the freedom to join an association"[1]
I wouldn't be too excited about police in my area invoking "unlawful assembly" willy-nilly, especially when followed up by the "identification of press" actions as described in the article.
I don't want to go too far off the deep end in commentary, but it's more anecdata pointing in an uncomfortable direction.
I think the distinction is pretty straight forward...
> Unlawful assembly is a legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace. ...if the disturbance is commenced, it is then termed a riot.
Now you might say "Arrest those people in the crowd actually committing crimes during the riot.". ...but the obvious counter-argument there is that since they are assaulting police officers with rocks, bats, etc... then there's no way to do that safely for officers.
The protests seem pretty well segregated between the peaceful crowd before midnight, and then the violent crowd after midnight after the order to disperse is made.
What's strange to me is why the same violent participants are released from jail each morning to participate in the riot again the next night. This seems like a significant disconnect between the police action and the prosecutors office/local judges.
I would love to know more about the conversations going on behind the scenes between those two groups.
You ignore the facts of this specific case. Anecdata indeed.
> Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington says throughout the night, and particularly from 8 p.m. onward, officers came under threat from a variety of new individuals who began to approach and contest the area around the police department with items like baseball bats, plywood, shields and "liquid products."
> There were reports of some protesters shaking the perimeter fencing, while lobbing objects over the fence at officers on the other side.
> Harrington outlined how attempts to breach the outermost ring of fencing by more belligerent protesters was handled with some amount of restraint, with officers repairing the breach and backing off rather than immediately proceeding to clear the area around the station.
That specific article is quite flamboyantly written. But then looking at just the intro page of the "Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act"[0] the uses cases are very wide-ranging in a way that I don't have the experience or knowledge to judge its 'normality'.
eg:
The Act introduced simpler, more effective powers to tackle anti-social behaviour that provide better protection for victims and communities.
The Community Trigger and Community Remedy empowers victims and communities, giving them a greater say in how agencies respond to complaints of anti-social behaviour and in out-of-court sanctions for offenders.
The Act also:
- tackles irresponsible dog ownership and the use of illegal firearms by gangs and organised criminal groups
- strengthens the protection afforded to the victims of forced marriage and those at risk of sexual harm
- enhances the professional capabilities and integrity of the police
- amends the port and border security powers in Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, to ensure that they strike the right balance between the need to protect public safety and the protection of individual freedoms.
- amends the Extradition Act 2003 to strengthen public confidence in, and the operational effectiveness of, our extradition arrangements
I agree about the writing style of the article, and while I unfortunately don't have anything better than anecdotal evidence, while visiting some friends in my teens in England we were routinely approached by police while in public spaces, as loitering (or whatever they would call it) was illegal.
Mass arrests and harassment of peaceful protesters. Including my niece. People are picked up by the police, but not 'booked' until 9-10 hours later, and they sometimes have unexplainable injuries by the time they are booked. Cell phones are confiscated as evidence; good luck getting it back in less than 5 years.
Police are not the good guys. This is not the country I was taught to believe in.
Minnesota has less than half the population of the US city I live in. That metropolitan area is less than a third of the metropolitan area I live in. My area, as well as many other large US metropolitan areas, does not seem to observe that animosity of police aggression and civic unrest though some do. Could this problem be regional, because it isn’t evenly distributed based upon population density alone?
The problem is "agitators". For at least the last 10 years a good many of the riots/protests you have seen on TV have been fomented and/or inflamed by paid parties. This is a 100% proof case of "Wag the Dog". I highly recommend it if you haven't seen the movie.
I don't live in the US, so I'm not familiar with the law there, but I don't understand why a peacefull gathering would be illegal ? Are large gathering illegal somehow ?
These protests start off as peaceful, but then turn violent after midnight.
It's easy to take pictures of a group of peaceful protesters, and then some pictures of the police arresting people after midnight to construct a false narrative that the police are assaulting and arresting innocent people.
The reality is exactly the opposite. ...and that deception is exactly why the police are frustrated with the press.
This is very accurate. Anyone that watches the videos banned on YouTube, not shown by most media, and uploaded only in other sites, see just how much damage, looting and violence is occurring. Literally entires malls of hundreds of stores are getting destroyed each night.
Things like this happen often and every time it does the media takes the position that they should be protected and held in a special position because of their employer.
I wish we would collectively agree that press is a thing people do, not a certain “class” of people.
All people should be able to observe and report on (to the extent they wish or do not wish to) actions of the state without being interfered with.
What about the professional journalist who stays past the curfew announced 10 minutes earlier, remains in the middle of a protest to live interview the event, and then gets caught in the police corral? Once the police collapse a large group of people into a very small area (say, with gas and shields), is there anyway that this journalist is not "involved"?
Or, should this journalist, to remain an observer and not become a participant, immediately leave when the state commands them to do so... perhaps going to an authorized "observation area"?
Civil disobedience has proven critical for societal progress. Why shouldn't those who are career professionals at documenting these events be given deference, acknowledging their service to the public interest?
Civil disobedience means breaking the law for a good reason and taking the punishment when it comes.
The modern method of suppressing it is to impose a penalty of twenty years in prison and three generations of bankruptcy for anyone caught ruffling the wrong feathers, when the offense in question would otherwise justify a night in jail or a modest fine. That's a problem we need to solve for everybody and not just state-sanctioned journalists.
> Law enforcement quickly identified media and escorted them to a line where they were asked for credentials and identification. Law enforcement took pictures of journalists' credentials and IDs as well as photos of the journalists’ faces.
The fact that the police are often the ones issuing the press passes seems like a serious conflict of interest: why would they give passes out to news outlets that are critical of their departments? They have almost nothing to gain from doing so.
I think if "everyone" is press, they'll just ruin it for actual press (kinda like emotional support dogs). Don't want to do a mandatory evacuation when there's a wildfire near your house? Just say you're press and exempt from the evacuation order.
If you’re part of a press organisation you’ll have things like risk assessments and training to mitigate those risks, fall back plans, people who know where you are and are responsible for your safety, people who liase with emergency services, etc
If you can prove you belong to such an organisation that’s great, you’re press. In the U.K. press have a card to prove this, issued on behalf of the police. It doesn’t give you any rights by law, but if the police started locking down the press like they do in countries without guarantees on the freedom of the press - China, Myanmar, USA, etc, then it becomes a political matter.
> Don't want to do a mandatory evacuation when there's a wildfire near your house? Just say you're press and exempt from the evacuation order.
So let them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The government's job is to make people aware of the risk, not to stand between worthy recipients and their Darwin award.
So do journalists. If you want a compelling picture of the fire, or the ability to document what it was like, you kind of have to be in the general vicinity of the fire.
And most people aren't suicidal, so most of the people who go there and take that risk are going to be doing it for a reason. We can suffer a few people lying about which reason it was when there aren't all that many of them and they still fundamentally had one.
Not necessarily, government agencies don't issue credentials, the news agencies give them to their staff. So we run into problems when independent journalists, freelancers, and citizen journalists either have passes they make for themselves (which cops probably won't respect) or no passes at all.
If the purpose of to get people to leave, then kettling them achieves the opposite. Having seen kettling used, I've yet to see an example where it was not abused as an authoritan means of punishing people.
So I don't buy the premise in the first place. In practice it's an authoritarian, abusive method.
If you have a legitimate reason to disperse people because elements are threatening violence, then disperse them - don't lock the those who are peaceful in with the violent elements.
This is more difficult than you expect. Police are drastically outnumbered in any crowd control situation. You can watch videos from Minneapolis riots where police just watch windows being smashed and shops being looted because they don’t have enough people.
It takes more than once officer to arrest someone too so things like Kettling need to be done for safety of everyone.
The rules are simple: if you get dispersion order it’s time to go. It’s not like they are not given a choice. I think a lot of people showing up to protests are just a bit unaware of the law. The number of times you see someone complaining about being asked to move on and they shout back that they are “on the sidewalk - can’t I just walk in my own city blah blah”. It’s just a misunderstanding of the law or a willingness to violate democratic law.
No, I fully expect it to be difficult. But that does not justify authoritarian abuses of power.
If you believe keeping everyone squashed together in a small space is safe, then you've basically admitted the crowd is not a risk to each other and can be contained, in which case there is not justification for it.
I don't care that the "rules are simple". Every authoritarian governments tends to have simple rules like that. That does not make this kind of authoritarian use of power justified.
Read the article, clearly the actions by police go against the order by the judge.
So what is the point ? Why assume the risk ? What is the goal from law enforcement, and what is being achieved by the picture taking?
Do cops think there are thugs cloaking themselves in fake press gear ?
Do cops think press staff is actively participating in the riots?
Where cops ordered to intimidate ? Who is the beneficiary from such a campaign ?
So many questions, and the article explores almost none of them. Come on gents.
Because there is no risk for the police. the risk / reward payoff-function is a flat line.
do good job: same pay just grind to pension.
do bad job: same pay, just grind to pension
many govt employees have this issue because there is no risk when they screw the public. its more than police that lack accountability (but the guns and traveling in packs makes them a bit more dangerous)
> many govt employees have this issue because there is no risk when they screw the public.
It is even worse. In many jobs the only time the public employee takes any risk is when they actively try to do some good for the public they serve. Whoever that is benefitting from the status quo, often with significant resources amassed from those benefits in the past, comes down hard on that employee. The public shows very little concern or support when this happens. So we get the situation you mention.
Who is Leo? You capitalized it like you intended the abbreviation of "Law Enforcement Officers", but there are none of those here. Just a gang of lawless thugs in costumes.
I mean, for all the attempts to mock them, they are law enforcement officers. They do have legal rights of ones, they do have power and they have different set of laws that applies to them. They are not in costumes, those are really uniforms and they are really real cops.
It just so happens that real cops are real people. And real people don't create pristine pure organizations straight from Hollywood movie. So what happens when the organization gets too much benefit of doubt and too little accountability is descent toward abusing power more and more.
It's not mocking, but rather pointing out that they're doing the exact opposite of what they claim authority for, and are thereby false. We have to stop contributing to this idea that these crimes are some exceptional behavior apart from their norm - they've chosen the Punisher as their symbol because violating the law is the straightforward way to obtain what they perceive as justice.
Only the ones who speak up against (or ideally arrest) their corrupt coworkers deserve to be called Law Enforcement Officers. If the rest stopped existing, law and order would actually increase.
I think that such comments do opposite. Because of this implication:
> Only the ones who speak up against (or ideally arrest) their corrupt coworkers deserve to be called Law Enforcement Officers. If the rest stopped existing, law and order would actually increase.
This sort of thinking is what prevents real steps to stop abuse of power. Because it assumes these are individual issues, that those doing something bad are different and apart from the rest. That if we removed bad apples, all would be good.
In fact all are law enforcement, including bad ones. Being named law enforcement is not badge of honor that makes you better person then everybody else. It does not make you less prone to abuse power, to act on peer pressure or to act on irrational fear. As long as people assume that law enforcement is or should be composed of better people, they wont be able to implement proper limits on their power nor proper checks on what they do.
I see where you're coming from, but what are you thinking could be "proper limits on their power" ? The original cases of murdering cops could be solved by prosecuting the specific murderers and the system would likely hold, and I agree we need that kind of accountability nation wide.
But this mass action is different. Here, they are acting together to defy a court order as well as the Constitution. Even the mayor is powerlessly criticizing them with "gassing is not a human way of policing". The entire organization is in open rebellion against our civil society. At this point, it seems the only things that could contain these lawless thugs are actual "law enforcement", the national guard, a citizen militia, or maybe cutting their funding.
And one of the necessary steps to doing any of those is to delegitimize this group of goons. They're no longer called "law enforcement", because they've chosen to not respect the law. They're wearing those uniforms to fuel their own ego, not because they're granted any authority by our society - their abuse should bother all legitimate law enforcement. And they need to be treated like any other lawless paramilitary force.
Only comment on the entire thread that makes sense.
It’s amazing that every comment seems to imply sinister motives to every action by every police officer, when the more obvious answer is that most police actually do their jobs well and there are circumstances they must deal with that commenters here are not privy to or want to perpetuate a narrative.
The same commenters of they met police or had friends who were police would think very differently. Police are dehumanized to the extent that people want to go out and attack them in the streets
I don’t think any officer goes out wanting to attack people and start fights. Look at videos of police. They stand in a line and have projectiles thrown at them and verbal abuse yelled at them. 90% of the time they have to stand there and do nothing. And if it gets too much they clear the protests.
The vast majority of society do not want to go yell at police in the street.
The biggest problem is takeovers of protests by anarchists and I don’t know the solution to this. If anarchists consistently escalate protests then it takes away people’s rights to protest. But I see this as a problem to be solved by protestors.
That seems like an oxymoron. Isn't it considered detaining someone as soon as a cop goes up to someone and asks questions like "can I see your press pass?"?
Fair enough, the word is ambiguous (it can either mean “keep under restraint or custody” or “delay”). Checking someone’s ID should be the second, not the first.
> Do cops think there are thugs cloaking themselves in fake press gear ?
Yes. Everyone has phones now. Everyone can claim they are press or they have a YouTube channel. These people don’t wear press gear.
A lot of the time the police are not suspecting press and they get more access so people claiming they are press are more of a threat, which is why they must verify.
Say you are trying to light a fire in a police station or break a barricade. Should police allow you to loiter and go wherever you want rather than stay with the crowd?
If you think it through you will realize that unless identification is done it creates immense risk.
Journalists will always complain on an individual level, but police are working on reducing threat level and maintaining order of a wider context.
No, it's pretty much an American thing, you should learn a little American history. America has no problem killing its own citizens:
> That night, the city of Philadelphia dropped a satchel bomb, a demolition device typically used in combat, laced with Tovex and C-4 explosives on the MOVE organization, who were living in a West Philadelphia rowhome known to be occupied by men, women, and children. It went up in unextinguished flames.
The point you are responding to was that this is something America done and is doing. It is not something foreign to America and it has nothing to do with China.
Trying to change the topic into what is happening in China serves only to obfuscate discussion.
When Chinese imprison people, we don't call it Americanization of China either.
Had you said "This is the most authoritarian thing I've seen" that'd be fine. But the racists in the 1800s were using "Chinese" or "yellow" as derogatives to liken things not related to Chinese culture at all.
Political violence is sometimes justified. Just hard to see how it is in this case. If Derek Chauvin is acquitted this week. There's a good chance he will be at least partially, based on the trial evidence of drugs and heart disease being the main cause of Floyd's death. If so, this whole incident, will be the ultimate example of misleading video, amplified by lying journalists, for clicks and violence for political gain.
As soon as one side is allowed to use violence to achieve political goals, what is to prevent the other side in acting the same way. It will be interesting to see how Biden will react when the shoe is on the other foot.
The vast majority of these protesters are expressly non-violent. They camp to bring public attention to injustice. Some stay past curfew, deliberately practicing civil disobedience. They anticipate being gassed, maced, shoved, dragged, and otherwise abused by police -- and do so without retaliation.
Of course, there can be other actors with their own agendas. Some looting. Some rioting. However, it does us a disservice to blindly clump those practicing civil disobedience with those practicing violence, or to write about the former as if they were enacting violence, when the opposite is true.
> Some stay past curfew, deliberately practicing civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience is a term that I don't equate to many of the violent actions that they are engaging in.
The protesters that are peaceful early in the evening are not the ones being arrested, pepper sprayed, etc...
The protesters that stay past midnight and assault the police are.
The notion that the "vast majority of protests are peaceful" is irrelevant, because the police actions we are talking about are against the violent protesters.
No doctor that treated him or performed his autopsy has given any evidence of heart disease, or drugs contributing to his suffocation. A defense witness speculated, but had no evidence.
Labelling it "suffocation" is begging the question since the original autopsy didn't include suffocation or asphyxiation as a cause of death (although the autopsy commissioned by the family did, and the prosecution is arguing this).
Anyone else get 1984 vibes? I can't fathom how one can see a man kneeling on someone's neck for nine minutes and then say "there must be another reason he died," but apparently that's the level of discourse we find ourselves in.
I don't doubt that the knee on the neck was a necessary condition for Floyd's death at that moment, but was it a sufficient condition?
If we replaced Floyd in that moment with a randomly sampled person from the adult population, what percentage would've died in that same situation? 1%? 5%? 30%? 100%?
It's not automatically murder when someone's action was a necessary condition behind another's death.
For the sake of argument, suppose that we know that some action leads to a death 0.0001% of the time. In such a situation, murder would be an inappropriate charge, because a person shouldn't reasonably be expected to have known that their actions would lead to that death. For example, imagine that someone has a stress-induced heart attack as a consequence of a police encounter. Is that murder? Obviously not, even though in this example the police's existence was a necessary condition behind the cortisol spike which lead to that heart attack.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you shoot someone intentionally, you know that there's a ~50% chance that they'll die from that, so your intention to kill is implied from the act and murder is therefore appropriate.
I don't believe that 0.0001% is the correct figure for what Chauvin did to Floyd, it's certainly higher, but it's not an irrelevant question.
If Chauvin believed he was following MPD procedure (which he wasn't exactly, but it was fairly close to training materials), and that procedure leads to death only a very small % of the time, there's a plausible case for a lesser manslaughter charge there, or even no criminal charge at all in the general case where procedure was followed closely (which it wasn't here) and that procedure is generally safe.
This is incorrect. Chavin is charged with felony murder, which is when a death is the result of another felony (in this case, 2nd degree assault). All the state has to prove is the assault charge (that he intentionally took action, that action was not a justified use of force, and that the action caused harm), and that his actions were a significant cause of death. They don't have to prove intent to kill or that a reasonable person would realize it would cause death. Only that he assaulted Floyd, and that his actions did cause (not did exclusively cause) death
I don't believe it's incorrect. For the third-degree murder charge, the defendant must commit the act "evincing a depraved mind".
If the defendant thinks that they're following official protocol correctly and their training told them that that protocol was safe, then they're not "evincing a depraved mind", and are therefore not guilty of third-degree murder. The belief states of the defendant are relevant in this particular charge.
"(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years."
Supposedly, though, the jury in this case thought that Chauvin was indeed "evincing a depraved mind" (given the guilty verdict).
In America, guilt beyond reasonable doubt must be determined for someone to be found guilty. Both sides get the opportunity to state their case, and above is their list of why there is potential doubt in guilt. It's our legal system working.
Generally police officers are not held responsible for suspects dying from a heart attack during arrest. Either while running away from the police officer, or while resisting arrest.
You could use the same argument against vaccines and say because someone died shortly after receiving a vaccine that vaccines kill people. It’s the same with this police interaction, given the amount of police interactions and often the nature of the interactions, drug related, it is a statistical certainty that a death with occur during the interaction. Coincidence does happen, it isn’t a myth. Did his interaction trigger anxiety in the individual that made issues more likely, of course, but that is the risk you have to deal with when you are committing crimes and doing drugs.
The people downvoting should refute, not downvote, as this is just a list of claims. If there’s falsehoods would be more effective to clarify than dismiss.
No, they shouldn't. Piling on claims is a well-known bad-faith argument tactic called the Gish gallop[1]. The poster has provided no source, and it would take hours just to verify all the claims, before even getting to whether or not they were material. It works precisely because it's much easier to make claims than refute them.
It’s not a gish gallop, it’d have to be claims not supporting a single thesis or hard to refute. Each of these is a small claim directly relevant. If you could find even 2-3 to refute that’d do.
The problem with fallacies is they are not always clear when and how to apply, which creates a whole new fallacy where people mis-apply fallacies to try and “win” quickly (is there a name for this? The fallacy fallacy?)
A good faith argument would at least call out one or two incorrect points here.
I disagree. Engaging implicitly validates the argument. If you refute X, they can just come back with "yes but what about Y?" and, should you eventually get bored or run out of time, they use your failure to properly rebut as evidence of their thesis.
I'm also not familiar with any argument that a Gish gallop must make claims not supporting a single thesis, or that they must be hard to refute (as opposed to simply harder to refute than to state). Whatever it is, I don't subscribe to it, and I don't believe those are the traits which make the argument style inappropriate.
Engaging with an argument validates it? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Gish gallop was invented to categorize the specific style of politicians and charlatans that will throw out myriad claims to dismantle and confuse conversations with too many directions, and to have many of the claims be hard to even refute as they are vague. The vagueness and multi-directionality is the usual marker of it.
I don’t see how these claims are meant to move in diverse directions, or how any isn't relevant, each is a pretty refutable small piece of evidence connected directly to determining the truth of the case here.
> As soon as one side is allowed to use violence to achieve political goals, what is to prevent the other side in acting the same way.
Power. It being completely hypocritical means nothing to them. The romans conquered Europe, even though they were surely told that they wouldn't like it if they themselves were invaded.
> drugs and heart disease being the main cause of Floyd's death
It's Floyd's fault, he was minutes from death's door, wheezing and barely hanging on to life, when the police showed up and tried to extend his life by kneeling on his neck, but he was too ill and he passed away as if by coincidence
It is interesting how police is wildly different between countries.
In France they are routinely attacked and their reaction is gentle (recent example: explosives and molotov bombs were thrown directly at them, they responded by lacrymogen gas). Paris streets were being destroyed and they did not attack the hooligans.
For attempting to kill policemen by burning them alive in their car (it was a trap, police was called to come), out of 16 attackers only 8 were jailed for 8 to 16 years.
I miss something in between France (the world of teletubbies) and the US (Mad Max)
> The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists
They are kind of burying the lede here.
How the hell did we reach a point where judges have to intervene to order police to stop tear-gassing and beating up journalists? As a society, this is not a good place to be.
I don’t understand the point to begin with. Assume competent malice by the police. What do they stand to gain by unlawfully photographing journalists that they could not have obtained by simply lawfully checking their credentials?
"troopers checked and photographed journalists and their credentials and driver's licenses at the scene in order to expedite the identification process."
Now they know who they are, and where they live. It's a classic intimidation tactic.
Right but checking credentials was okay and I assume their credentials had their name (or gathering their names was surely okay).
It was just the photography that wasn’t okay. However, what do you need a photograph for when you can just go pull up their file back at the station using the name on the credentials you just took down?
Yeah, I'm pretty much here. We have a few guys like Greenwald who dare stand up and nothing like a peep from everybody else. Those of us who are big L or F have just given up at this point and have kind of figured out an alternative- let's call it plan dolphin!
Meanwhile fake press like we've seen over the past year at protests trying to garner sympathy... that won't work in the era of 5th generation Russia. Everybody's too polarized already to care.
This is an old passive aggressive tactic I've seen used in many protests here in Europe for well over a decade.
Either right wing people film left wing people, or undercover police film everyone at the protest. I'm sure the video might be used for training or mapping some organisation but in the end I don't think it's used in any face recognition software.
There is no scenario where this behavior by the police is acceptable. This is intimidation pure and simple. The police have learned nothing from the past year of protests and continue to give us reasons why they should be replaced. Police are under the rule of law just like the rest of us.
Unsurprisingly, this title grossly misleads. RTFA. The journos didn’t leave the area after they were ordered to by police and that is why they were “rounded up”.
I believe your reading is incorrect. The police are not allowed to order journalists to leave the area or to "round them up." The police were given a legal order by a judge not to do this. They did it anyway, issuing an unlawful order as applied to journalists.
If the police can't themselves operate within the law they're sworn to uphold, why do they deserve any deference or respect?
I’m saying the conversation should focus on whether or not the police were allowed to do this, not colorful language like “journalists being rounded up.”
This is ultimately the question though. The Press is the so-called 4th estate of government. They provide information to the people about how the government (and it’s agents) operate. The police didn’t tell the press to disperse, they told the protest to do so.
So are the Press part of the protest? Are they impartial and there in an objective observer capacity only (can they be?)
I don’t know the answers to those, but it’s not hard to see police using this tactic to prevent press from observing and reporting.
At this point, sounds more like both sides are just hell bent on hurting each other.
With the US producing Leaders all well trained to chase Likes/Followers ie Pander to their Fan clubs, de-escalation is not possible in such an environment, leave alone solutions.
The only way things change is if social media algo amplification is shut down as soon as a serious incident occurs. Let people from all sides vent, but strip out the counts. Amplifying opinions algorithmically hasn't shown any promise as a route to solutions.
Thats the only way local leaders on both sides get breathing space to stop pandering and do something useful.
One side has guns and has been shown to literally kil. I don’t think this is a particularly good example of “each side has done something wrong” or mutually equal war. The police are the “bad guys” here.
The argument against this is noting that the media has a clear financial interest in riots (crises boost viewership), and it could be argued that many media outlets have worked to foment this kind of outrage by stirring the pot, running emotionally charged headlines, justifying the riots, and so on.
I’m not saying I personally feel this way, but I know people who do and taking this perspective seriously is the only way we can find true resolutions to these problems.
That is not an argument at all. You can call it rioting if the journalists actually riot, or even incite. You’d have to be specific and show that these particular journalists were guilty of it, otherwise you’re just punishing random people for things they haven’t done. Also, you cannot punish someone for doing something legal.
Otherwise, the fact that their business model depends on things happening is immaterial. It’s like calling doctors mass murderers because they benefit from people getting sick.
These are separate: media has a financial incentive in crises, media has on several occurrences taken recent actions that stir up their crises more than reasonably incident in getting the facts.
These two are separately supported, one does not suggest the other independently, but considered together can be argued to be a motivation and resulting action.
Doctors make money from more sick people: true. If we found that doctors we’re poisoning the water supply frequently, we might take that observation and consider it in the light of their financial incentives.
> These are separate: media has a financial incentive in crises, media has on several occurrences taken recent actions that stir up their crises more than reasonably incident in getting the facts.
How would it matter, in this instance, even if it were the case? A judge has explicitly ordered the police to leave journalists alone. So, the police is enforcing its own version of the law, in disagreement with the judiciary?
So your excuse is that it’s ok, it’s just the police going rogue?
> These two are separately supported, one does not suggest the other independently, but considered together can be argued to be a motivation and resulting action.
Punishing people for things they might have done hypothetically because of their profession is a strange conception of justice. Either they are guilty of doing something illegal (which inciting riots is and should be), in which case you try them and punish them for that, or they aren’t. This is irrelevant to whether they should be intimidated for covering protests, which they most certainly have a right to do.
> Doctors make money from more sick people: true. If we found that doctors we’re poisoning the water supply frequently, we might take that observation and consider it in the light of their financial incentives.
And harass them, round them up, and intimidate them, regardless of what they have done or not? Somehow I doubt it.
I don’t know if you’re genuinely confused or just willfully leaping to assumptions. I’m going to assume you just genuinely misunderstand what I’m saying.
My original point was to argue the idea that journalist aren’t some innocent class of truth seekers getting a bad wrap, but that there is an observable strong and growing anger/distrust at journalistic institutions and so we should consider those perspectives and treat them seriously.
I’m not saying to round up the journalists, I’m not saying the police are justified, I’m not even saying hating journalistic institutions is justified. My direct and explicit point was to mention the counter argument against the idea that journalists are innocent and getting unjustified blame/anger directed at them.
I implore you to reread this comment chain with an open mind instead of what you currently seem to be doing, which is falsely trying to predict which ideological game I’m playing.
The antidote to relativism is to look at cases that we can objectively judge in isolation. For this topic it's quite easy - there have been many murderers who have escaped justice due to being employed as police officers. For example, Breonna Taylor's murder is a clear cut example - she was gunned down in her own home during a deadly home invasion, yet the public prosecutor refuses to do their job because the assailants are police officers. This case should make every American's blood boil, and most especially those that believe in the 2nd amendment. If someone is able to do mental gymnastics to end up thinking the actual problem there is the media blowing things out of proportion, they are truly lost - and most likely suffering from media psychosis in our postmodern environment.
Besides all the obvious replies about how silly that argument is, most journalists are pretty removed from the business/financial side of their organization.
Aside:
> I know people who do and taking this perspective seriously
No. It is not a serious argument. Take people seriously, belittle bad arguments in respectful ways to the individual.
Sure, and so are developers, but surely the business side gets passed down and percolates through management. Not to mention I made no assumptions about HOW the business side percolates, but noted that there is observational evidence of journalists acting in ways one could interpret as fomenting. Stuff like: running headlines about a shooters race then being wrong later, running stories from an “anonymous source” with devastating consequences or getting the info seriously wrong like the Steele Dossier, the Covington kids, the George-Trump “find the votes” call. And so on. I don’t purport to know why or how the financial interest and the observed actions are physically connected, just that they almost look like a motive and a lack of alibi
Not because they have guns, because they use guns.
> ...and has been shown to literally kil.
The argument is much more complete if you finish the sentence.
Police kill to get their way. Its not their job to kill. People should not get killed by police. In the case of this article, the court literally told the police to leave the press alone... then they corral the press and intimidate them .
The argument is that police pointing guns (which they actively use!) at the press (who are reporting on a protest centering around police over-use of deadly force) is not comparable in the sense that "both have done wrong".
It's objectively the police that is the problem in the US. The killing rate per 10 million inhabitants of the US is about the same as in Columbia and Iran, and about 2000% (not at typo) of the rate of most European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
I live in Germany and it's true, German police uses their guns seldomly. I guess that there are two reasons for this
* Police force here is especially trained to de-escalate
* We don't have liberal gun laws; when a police officer has to deal with somebody, it is highly unlikely that this person ever pulls a gun.
That all does not mean that German police doesn't have problems. For example just a few weeks ago eight policemen beat up a 15 your old. Or deaths in police custody. Or they constantly turn a blind eye to right wing crimes. Or the police fore themselves is soaked with right wing activists. The list goes on.
I think people fail to accept that it’s not a difference in police culture but a difference in gun culture. Consider that Switzerland has far more guns per capita than does the US and their gun crimes and gun related violence are very low.
According to Wikipedia, Switzerland is 19th [1] (the list includes some territories that are not independent countries, though) in terms of civilian-owned guns. With the US having twice as many per capita as number 2.
If you go by households with a gun the numbers are more reasonable, however. The US is driven up by a small proportion of gun owners that own a large number of guns.
I don't think that contradicts your argument that it's a difference in gun culture, though. On the contrary - I think it's a demonstration of one aspect of the difference.
It's not that more people have guns in the US, but that more people have guns for self-defence. And a subset of those hoard large number of guns.
From what I've read most police officers in the US are barely high school graduates.
Even in Romania, which is kind of low on the European ladder of development, the Police Academy is an actual university. You go there to study for ~4 years, if I recall correctly, and there's stiff competition to get in (back when I finished high school I think there were 5-10 candidates for 1 spot).
> From what I've read most police officers in the US are barely high school graduates.
I recently worked with a police officer on a side gig. Most of the officers in that police force had a baccalaureate and several were former attorneys. The distinction of rate of education seems to come down to level of compensation.
Where a cop should be required 4 year degree at a minimum, with required courses in sociology, communications, psychology, anything else that might help them w/ behavior and de-escalation and staying calm under pressure.
They should also have the same requirements for continuing education as nurses, doctors, teachers.
I can't say I have statistics, but I've been involved in enough online forum debates to find out (and be horrified) that the US police academy is at best a 6 month long thing (post high shool).
I'd love to be proven wrong and find out that the majority of US police officers are well educated, and I mean that in the sense that they have advanced training about their jobs, de-escalation, law, etc.).
I haven't looked into the question myself, but admit I misread your comment to mean "barely graduated high school" not "barely [more than] high school graduates."
I do know that there is no "US police academy" or standardized national training curriculum; it's all at the state level, and within states even municipalites can have their own requirements and standards.
> I think people fail to accept that it’s not a difference in police culture but a difference in gun culture.
That would be a reasonable assumption if the number of unarmed victims were 0. Over 15% of the victims are unarmed though. https://jech.bmj.com/content/75/4/394
> The incident occurred hours after a judge issued a temporary order barring the Minnesota State Patrol from using physical force or chemical agents against journalists, according to court documents.
Sounds like the police don't care about the judge's order, nor the rights of journalists.