Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
As a former police officer...I know that the police are not there to fight "fair". The police will meet every escalation with even greater escalation. They are there to stay on top, and they will. Like it or not, or believe it or not, not all of your little protester buddies are as Ghandiesque as you'd like like to believe. Some are there, just to cause trouble. It doesn't take much to stir up mob mentality. A couple of guys throwing rocks, quickly turns into a few dozen. (how is rock throwing peaceful anyway?) Officer goes down and has his sidearm forced from him. Shots are fired. Police respond in kind. People get hurt and killed. Just sit in a damned circle, sing Kumbaya, leave and go have a tofu dinner. That's a peaceful protest.
|
The problem is excessive force. Military personnel are trained to deal with militant extremists, things like ambushes with automatic weapons and IEDs. That's a completely different ball game than dealing with protesters. Sure, some are there to start trouble, but I don't think you're going to see improvised explosives or automatic weapons. If that was a concern, I would understand the military being necessary for public safety (and to defend themselves, of course). That's simply not the case. What's the appropriate measured response to throwing rocks? I would imagine it would be maybe some mase and a tasing. A few "don't tase me bro!"s later and everything would probably calm down. The worst protest I was ever involved in was back at the WTO protest in Seattle. It was a massive mess, but the worst I saw from the protesters was a few instances of physical violence with fists and such against a cop. The cop was fine. And that was after the police opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets on largely peaceful protesters in response to streets being blocked and a few acts of vandalism. I'm sure you can understand why I'm hesitant to allow even more escalation when I saw how excessive a response can be.
I don't eat tofu, but I'm usually the one that kicks out the idiots trying to stir up trouble.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
Look...I know that there are some on my side of the fence that are not clean. There are a few that'll be looking for a reason to bust some hippie skulls. So, what you probably ought to do is throw some rocks at them. That should really work out well for your side.
|
I never said that I condoned the stone throwing. As a matter of fact, I've gone so far as to tackle people like that and literally throw them out of the protest and tell them never to come back. Protest is about making people aware of ideas, not instigating violence. People like that give the rest of us a bad reputation and can lead to law enforcement and other protesters being hurt.