Come to think of it, they never did specify who it is that they protect and serve.

As an former anarchist, I can say there is no such thing as a peaceful protest.

Accept this as law, or piss off.

Happiness: As beautiful as a rock in a cops face.

So I am supposed to feel bad that a bunch of hippies who were breaking the law imposed by the City of Denver and were challenging police in riot gear got pepper sprayed and tuned up a little?

I'm sorry, but every single one of those 'peaceful protester' received exactly what they set out to receive. What would they have done had the police just stood aside and let them run roughshod all over the city? They would have started breaking things in order to antagonize the cops OR they would have shot video of the cops standing by doing nothing and then complain about that.

What I saw there was a bunch of cops doing the job that was tasked to them by the city of 'keep the protesters away from the convention'. I didn't see any Rodney King beat downs and pepper spray, while painful and extremely unpleasant, goes away with no lasting ill effects. Get over it pussies, you got the footage you set out to get.

Sez the guy who's dad is a retired cop.

Jus sayin'.

Not an unfair statement.

But it is also fair to say that this group went out with the express intent to getting this reaction. For the express reason of putting it on a website and propagating it around the interwebs.

The cops here were in a Catch 22, if they do their jobs, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs'. If they stand aside, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs not doing their jobs' and then lose that job when the city fires them for not doing their job.

It didn't matter what the cops did here, they were going to lose. They just chose to lose by thumping a few hippies. And who doesn't like to see hippies get beat up? I mean, they're hippies for Christ sake.

'if they do their jobs, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs'. If they stand aside, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs not doing their jobs'

Something so sadly true about this. Why is it that the grunts of the police get so much flack, yet they have the least power and the least control over what they do as far as law enforcement is concerned. 'Kill the messanger!' says the crowd. Had their bosses or the politicians said 'Don't you guys do anything to injure those protesters,' you could bet that they wouldn't have.

What's worse for police officers is that they didn't rub what little power they have in the faces of people, most people would just walk all over them. This is sad in a few ways since most people simply don't deserve poor treatment by law enforcement. Yet, a lot of people --especially younger people-- just want to shout 'fuck you pig, I'll do what I want' despite whatever the consequences might be.

FUCK TEH POLICE

what is interesting is that i read somewhere that the 'peaceful' protesters had phoned in threats ahead of the march about causing trouble at the convention center. if this is indeed true, then the police seemed fairly restrained in their actions. also, is it common practice to go and participate in a peaceful march carrying gas/face masks?

the only video i've ever seen of police being over zealous is the one where they put the sleeper hold down on a bunch of student protesters doing a sit-in outside somewhere. (king deserved his beat-down lal)

Gyst: What's worse for police officers is that they didn't rub what little power they have in the faces of people, most people would just walk all over them.

What do you base this factoid on?

Remember the people that we could be sympathizing with here chose this position of absolute civic power over the citizenry. I'm not inclined to either give them the benefit of the doubt, or commiserate.

I agree with that position to a point. That point being that while the individuals did indeed chose their profession, society has agreed that we should live by a collection of laws and we pay taxes so that towns and states can hire police officers to enforce those laws. With that position comes some level of authority, responsibility, and respect (again, I say to some level).

The cop may be a complete douche and completely not deserving of your respect as a human being. However, as a society, we have placed these people in positions of authority and thereby need to respect that position. Like in the military, you salute the rank, not the man.

This is not to say that cops should be allowed to run amok, and if they act inappropriately they should be held accountable (I know that this idea is a pipe dream with the whole Blue Shield bullshit, but I digress).

There is a level of common sense that needs to be applied when dealing with cops as well. You should ask yourself, 'is it really worth it to scream 'PIG!!!' in this guy's face when he's armed and I myself am not?' Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the resulting action, you need to decide if that is really the hill you want to die on. There are times when it is better to choose to eat the sandwich of shit and live to fight another day. Or at least be able to walk away under your own power.

My Dad was a cop, and worked protests and Hell's Angels events on crowd control between '66-'72.

An angry crowd is like gasoline. The right voice or phrase can set it off. One idiot acting stupid is easy. When it becomes dozens to hundreds, you have a real problem. The tried and true method is to de-motivate them, with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons if needed.

As soon as it hurts, the cause is no longer important.

Civil protests require civilized people.

Civil protests require civilized people.

Ain't that the truth. What the hell do these people have to protest about anyways? Did American Apparel run out of v-neck tshirts? These are the same people who wipe their ass with the American flag and joke about paralyzed vets getting what they deserve. Take your granola, patchouli asses back to Berkeley and stick Ralph Nader's dick back in your mouths. The grown ups have a nation to run.

vasudeva:What do you base this factoid on?

I was attempting to explain some observations I've made about power dynamics and human behavior; I didn't intend it to be representative of empirical research. However, I noticed that I did this rather poorly and in retrospect I should have said 'some people would just walk all over them' rather than 'most people.' It may be beyond me a bit to actually claim a good understanding of this, but in my best attempt a good simplified model may be illustrated by the way young children behave with school teachers.

Of course, most citizens and police officers are developmental peers (though this may be a stretch for many police officers), but the dynamic of power between a teacher and child, and police officer and citizen share some similarities.

If a teacher wants a class of children to quiet down, she might first ask politely. What likely will happen is that some children will quiet down, and some children will continue on talking; ignoring the teacher. On the next try, if she then asks very sternly, perhaps yells, the room becomes silent.

The reason I think that it takes the teacher to yell to get the entire room to obey her is that it is a natural tendency in humans to resist authority over them. When someone tells you what to do, the natural response is 'why would I do that?' not 'Yessir.' And in this instance the children are seeing where their power lies as well. Does the teacher have the ability or care to make them do things that they, to some extent, don't care about?

Much like the teacher has incentive to save her time and energy by simply always asking the class to quiet down sternly, police officers are incented to act 'authoritatively.' That is, they benefit by time, energy, and sometimes safety from making it known that they have authority and can use it at any time. People are less likely to try their power against an authority figure who shows he isn't about to be tested. I think this often describes the 'Pig' phenomenon, which I think is an misguided way to look at it. Now that I think about it, some of our perceptions of cops may be skewed because we tend to only deal with them when we have done something wrong ourselves (ie: breaking the law). Perhaps we have no other place to put our anger at both the system and ourselves.

However, I am not trying to condone bad and righteous behavior in cops. I honestly wish they would be more polite and take the authority of their position more thoughtfully (then again, most people could benefit from being more thoughtful and considerate). What I am trying to say, at least in this moment, is that the position itself can reinforce said bad behavior even in good people. That because of this we should at least be more hesitant to indignantly shout 'fuck you pigs.' Let's keep skeptical about authority, but being punk assholes about it won't give us much moral high ground.

If you really want something more substantial, the closest thing I can cite to this effect is the Stanford Prison Experiment, but it's only somewhat related.

wrecker:So I am supposed to feel bad that a bunch of hippies who were breaking the law imposed by the City of Denver and were challenging police in riot gear got pepper sprayed and tuned up a little?

Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

wrecker:I'm sorry, but every single one of those 'peaceful protester' received exactly what they set out to receive.

Fuck you.

wrecker:What would they have done had the police just stood aside and let them run roughshod all over the city?

I suppose they just might have petitioned the Government for a redress of grievances. No-one will know now, since the Governement went all Brown-Shirt on them.

wrecker:They would have started breaking things in order to antagonize the cops OR they would have shot video of the cops standing by doing nothing and then complain about that.

THEN they would have been breaking the law, and if the cops just stood around, they would certainly deserve every fucking complaint that they got. That, apparently was not what happened.

wrecker:What I saw there was a bunch of cops doing the job that was tasked to them by the city of 'keep the protesters away from the convention'. I didn't see any Rodney King beat downs and pepper spray, while painful and extremely unpleasant, goes away with no lasting ill effects. Get over it pussies, you got the footage you set out to get.

It's assault, you fuck. No pig should have a privilege to fucking assault another person that the whole rest of us don't have. If I can't pepper-spray you for your big-fat-(protest on sense)-head (even under the orders of some elected official) then the police shouldn't have it either.

wrecker:Not an unfair statement.

But it is also fair to say that this group went out with the express intent to getting this reaction. For the express reason of putting it on a website and propagating it around the interwebs.

That's what all these fucker conspired to do? Is this a reaction to the government thermiting the Pentagon, and the WTC? Did they all have a meet-up at Area 51?

wrecker:The cops here were in a Catch 22, if they do their jobs, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs'.

Well, despite whatever job description you assert they have, they're all pigs at the end of the day--so nothing had to be done to get them to behave like pigs. Which, incidentally is the point of the vid.

wrecker:If they stand aside, they get plastered all over video 'being pigs not doing their jobs' and then lose that job when the city fires them for not doing their job.

This is not really a Catch 22 at all, is it?

wrecker:It didn't matter what the cops did here, they were going to lose. They just chose to lose by thumping a few hippies.

They might have been winners, except for being pigs. Perhaps the answer to this is to not make pigs cops, and put the pigs in jail when they behave like pigs. Take from them all 'line of duty' excuses, which are farcical bullshit on the face, and treat them like the violent criminal sociopaths they all are.

wrecker:And who doesn't like to see hippies get beat up? I mean, they're hippies for Christ sake.

A solitary beam of redemption here. If those filthy fuckers can inflict their BO infused patchoulli miasma on me, then I should certainly be allowed to pepper-spray them in return. If they can assualt my ears with 45-minute-long, droning, bong-smoke inspired, jam-band instumentals, then I should be able to shoot them in the fucking face.

I guess there is no justice.

wrecker:I agree with that position to a point. That point being that while the individuals did indeed chose their profession, society has agreed that we should live by a collection of laws and we pay taxes so that towns and states can hire police officers to enforce those laws. With that position comes some level of authority, responsibility, and respect (again, I say to some level).

Well, we also charge them to uphold the Constitution, and (to the best of my knowledge) do not hire them to commit assault on our behalf.

wrecker:The cop may be a complete douche and completely not deserving of your respect as a human being. However, as a society, we have placed these people in positions of authority and thereby need to respect that position. Like in the military, you salute the rank, not the man.

Fuck that. In the military, you shoot that fucker in the back--pigs should be shot in the face.

wrecker:This is not to say that cops should be allowed to run amok, and if they act inappropriately they should be held accountable (I know that this idea is a pipe dream with the whole Blue Shield bullshit, but I digress).

Second point of redemption...I suppose.

wrecker:There is a level of common sense that needs to be applied when dealing with cops as well.

Agreed. The fact that they are irrational, violent sociopaths is no argument that you should be any more irrational about putting that fucker down like you'd put down the watch-dog that bit you, instead the violent sociopath excercising some fatuous entitlement to pepper-spray your face because you have a complaint you'd like to publicly address against the government.

wrecker:You should ask yourself, 'is it really worth it to scream 'PIG!!!' in this guy's face when he's armed and I myself am not?'

I agree. These protesters should have arrived armed, knowing that the pigs were not going to be peaceful--but then again, people who are peacably assembling, are likely to forget to show up packing.

The bullying pigs count on this.

wrecker:Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the resulting action, you need to decide if that is really the hill you want to die on. There are times when it is better to choose to eat the sandwich of shit and live to fight another day. Or at least be able to walk away under your own power.

Or, you could decide that this is the hill you want that pig to die on. You could stuff that shit sandwich in his face, and pack it in with the heel of your foot, and live to fight another day while preventing a pig from fighting...period.

beachgoat:My Dad was a cop, and worked protests and Hell's Angels events on crowd control between '66-'72.

Civil protests require civilized people.Cops are more than likely the instigators of crowd violence--this includes your dad.

jesus christ loki.

STOP MAKING SENSE.

That whole Gyst cop/teacher comparison can go fuck itself as well, the whole concept of having to obey a cop order while existing within the boundries of the law is retarded.

'Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. Import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. In Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii has traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again.

'...the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.'

Robbins, T. (1980) Still Life with Woodpecker