[HN Gopher] ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the ...
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ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press
Author : soraminazuki
Score : 448 points
Date : 2020-06-03 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aclu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aclu.org)
| megous wrote:
| It's like Lysander Spooner was onto something with his pamphlet
| "No Treason". State representatives mentioned in the brief are
| barely distinguishable from highway robbers. The swearing
| language, the lack of care for any legal basis for their actions,
| baseless physical attacks, like shooting harmless people with
| rubber bullets, the attitude, etc.
| c3534l wrote:
| Just earlier this month, protestors a stat over adorned rifles
| and threatened the governor. This time, the police are ready to
| teargas and beat anyone for any reason. The response doesn't seem
| the same. They've turned protests into riots.
| mberning wrote:
| I don't remember them starting any fires or looting any stores
| either.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| I don't remember police launching tear gas into peaceful
| crowds back then, nor do I remember police breaking windows,
| assaulting press, or vandalizing storefronts then either. I
| wonder why police would want to discredit protests that occur
| in response to their murders.
| cutemonster wrote:
| (is there a typo? What does: _" protestors a stat over adorned
| rifles"_ mean)
| Fezzik wrote:
| a stat(e) over, an adjacent State.
| madengr wrote:
| Maybe the difference is the protesters being armed?
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| One thing I've never understood is how ACLU has legal standing to
| file many of its suits.
|
| I'm assuming that ACLU isn't claiming to be the injured party in
| suits like this current one. Are they acting as attorneys for one
| of the alleged victims?
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Yes. Read the filing here: https://www.aclu.org/legal-
| document/goyette-v-city-minneapol...
| csnover wrote:
| For anyone who doesn't want to read the legal complaint, the
| named class action plaintiff (Jared Goyette) was shot in the
| face by the police with a "less lethal" round[0] and nearly
| permanently lost his eyesight[1] after he had just finished
| reporting on a man who had been shot in the head by the
| police with a "less lethal" round.[2]
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/JaredGoyette/status/1265786797650558976
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/JaredGoyette/status/1266115234420400129
|
| [2]
| https://twitter.com/JaredGoyette/status/1265779746153078793
| [deleted]
| oftenwrong wrote:
| In this case it is a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU on
| behalf of the journalists. The lead plaintiff is a journalist
| who was shot by the police while covering a protest.
| inetknght wrote:
| Class-action lawsuits in the USA often end up being settled
| with little or no real action. I hope for better here but I'm
| not going to hold my breath on it.
| JackC wrote:
| When ACLU brings a lawsuit on behalf of an individual, it's
| common for the government to moot the lawsuit by changing
| the treatment of that one person, or offering a settlement
| to that one person, or even deporting that person, without
| changing its behavior in general. A class action means the
| government can't avoid the lawsuit that way.
|
| What you're saying is a real issue in general, but not
| relevant to class actions as used as a civil rights tactic
| by ACLU.
| sukilot wrote:
| The suit is only asking for some money and for the Court to
| order the state to stop breaking the law even though the
| state presumably believes it is not breaking the law
|
| It's almost entirely symbolic.
| kyboren wrote:
| This is because class actions are often little more than
| schemes to enrich attorneys.
|
| This is not such a case and ACLU are not such attorneys.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Man, this seems like such an uphill battle. I feel like unless
| they can show police were trying to deliberately target the press
| rather than just treating them like any other members of the
| public, they'll have that much more difficult of a time getting
| past qualified immunity and winning a lawsuit.
| toast0 wrote:
| > getting past qualified immunity and winning a lawsuit.
|
| There's a lot of hubub about qualified immunity these days, but
| it only shields individuals from individual civil
| responsibility, it does not shield organizations from
| organizational responsibility for the actions of individuals
| under their employ.
|
| Chances are, parties would sue the organization anyway, as the
| individuals are unlikely to be able to pay significant damages.
| newacct583 wrote:
| It's the ACLU. The goal here isn't go win a case for these
| individual journalists, it's to get a ruling clarifying the
| rights of journalists in the face of police action. The holy
| grail, in fact, would be to get a ruling rolling back the
| current scope of qualified immunity.
| petrocrat wrote:
| The organization is funded by taxpayers and any awarded
| damages would be covered by taxpayers... so it's not a
| disincentive for the Police.
| toast0 wrote:
| Even if the individual office was fiscally responsible,
| their money came from taxpayers too. The community ends up
| paying for the damage its agents do to the community.
|
| The police forces are managed by elected officials, who are
| elected by taxpayers. These politicians should be held to
| account by voters for either their lack of leadership on
| police abuse of force (my preference) or their lack of
| fiscal responsibility in allowing police abuse of force to
| continue, accruing large legal bills and settlements (and
| increased liability insurance costs, presumably).
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| I agree with you this probably won't be easy. But the video of
| the CNN arrest is quite damning in my non-lawyer opinion. They
| had press credentials. They clearly and calmly identify
| themselves as press. They clearly and calmly state that they
| will move back to wherever the police want them. They are
| arrested 1 by 1 over the course of several minutes.
| cabaalis wrote:
| IANAL. I've always thought of freedom of press as the right
| to publish. Is it now expanded to the right to be and go
| where others cannot lawfully go?
| petrocrat wrote:
| The 1st amendment covers freedom of assembly as well.
|
| > 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.
|
| Press implies covering events and publishing about them. If
| that's not convincing enough, they spell it out in right to
| assemble, anyways. A press corps can assemble to cover
| events.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > Press implies covering events and publishing about
| them.
|
| I don't think it implies that covering events has some
| kind of immunity. It's still subject to any general
| restriction on the assembly. The government can impose
| restrictions on the time, place, and manner of peaceful
| assembly, provided that constitutional safeguards are
| met. See https://www.loc.gov/law/help/peaceful-
| assembly/us.php
| smileysteve wrote:
| Beyond the first amendment is the 4th estate doctrine,
| origin ating from British concepts.
|
| While less legally defensible it is much of the reason why
| the BBC, FCC exist, why we have camera crews embed with
| troops.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
| mehrdadn wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding the clip you're talking about (the
| link next to CNN redirects to AP News and says "PAGE NOT
| FOUND" for me?), but in any case: the thing is, I don't think
| (though IANAL, please do correct me if this is wrong!) it
| legally matters one bit that they had press credentials and
| clearly identified themselves as such. Being a journalist, as
| far as I know, doesn't give you some kind of immunity to
| anything. My understanding is that if they get treated
| better, it's only because the executive does it out of
| respect for the press or to steer clear of the line and build
| a more clear-cut case. But legally, I expect they'll just be
| treated like any random people. I imagine police will make a
| case that it's not realistic to negotiate with each person on
| an individual basis when dealing with crowds and that they
| have to do things in bulk as much as possible. And if you
| want to win, you can't realistically argue that they
| shouldn't have the power to do things en masse, so the only
| viable remaining argument I can see is that, even with that
| consideration, their actions were still somehow
| unconstitutional. It's possible one could make such a case
| for some of these incidents, but if the CNN case was merely
| one of being "arrested" as you describe (and not e.g. getting
| badly injured etc.), it doesn't sound like a winning case.
| The legal system seems to pretty much treat a mere arrest as
| a no-op in many situations... treating it otherwise requires
| clearing a really high bar as far as I've been able to tell.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Here is the video of the CNN reporter arrest. I have
| included the description of the video below to help people
| find it:
|
| A CNN reporter and crew have been arrested live on air
| while covering the Minneapolis protests over the killing of
| George Floyd.
|
| Black correspondent Omar Jimenez had just shown a protester
| being arrested when about half a dozen white police
| officers surrounded him.
|
| Mr Jimenez told the Minnesota State Patrol officers: "We
| can move back to where you like", before explaining that he
| and his crew were members of the press, adding: "We're
| getting out of your way."
|
| The journalist was handcuffed and led away alongside a
| producer and camera operator for CNN.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClA57jWmQ&t=138s
|
| accompanying story from same publication's site:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cnn-
| report...
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah, so that seems potentially distasteful (and
| maybe with bad optics for the executive) but I just don't
| see what's illegal about it.
| gpm wrote:
| Arresting someone (restricting their movements) without
| probably cause that they are guilty of a crime is
| generally known as "false imprisonment", sticking them in
| a van and driving them away is generally known as
| "kidnapping", both are crimes.
|
| If we believe the journalists that they were legally in
| the area, and the police either knew this or at least
| didn't have probable cause to support that they weren't
| legally in the area, I don't see how both of the above
| crimes were not committed.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| But _do_ you actually believe police didn 't suspect
| there was a crime? The video doesn't suggest that to me
| at all. Like this other person wrote [1], it doesn't seem
| unlikely that they were ordered to disperse or something
| under some public safety law and refused. (Or, I guess,
| you could say the reporter just didn't hear it and missed
| the memo. Doesn't really change it from the officer's
| perspective though.)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409320
| gpm wrote:
| I personally find it hard to believe that the police
| believed they had probably cause after the journalists
| told them that they had been instructed to stand there by
| another cop.
|
| Specifically I certainly don't believe that the
| journalists actually committed a crime if they had
| instructions from another cop that they could stand
| there. Those instructions would tend to negate any
| general order, and even if it didn't legally negate the
| order it would constitute entrapment and functionally
| negate it anyways. As a result I don't believe the police
| would think they had probable cause after they heard the
| camera crew claim they had received that instruction (and
| amusingly this is regardless of whether or not the camera
| crew had actually received the instruction they claimed
| to have received - to make it false arrest/kidnapping it
| suffices to be a probable enough claim that the police no
| longer believe they have probable cause).
|
| A secondary weaker argument is that the governors order
| excluded the press from the curfew so even if the police
| had issued an order which included the press that order
| was illegal as applied to the press, and as a result they
| had no probable cause to arrest the press. It's weaker
| because to show they committed a crime under this theory
| I suspect (without checking Minnesota's statutes) you'd
| have to show they were aware of the contents of the
| governors order.
|
| IANAL/I am not aware of the details of Minnesota's
| statutes - obviously details of the statues might change
| the above analysis in either direction.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > I personally find it hard to believe that the police
| believed they had probably cause after the journalists
| told them that they had been instructed to stand there by
| another cop.
|
| At what timestamp did the journalists tell the police
| officers that they had been instructed to stand there by
| another cop? I must've missed that part when I watched
| the video.
| thephyber wrote:
| I know exactly how the police will be defended:
|
| "20 minutes before the video you saw, police announced that
| the protest was closed and declared an unlawful assembly for
| the purposes of public safety. All people remaining after
| that warning were in violation of the law and the officers
| followed their instructions to clear the area."
| anewdirection wrote:
| The CNN arrest was not violent, not were they held long. The
| reporter later said everyone was nice, and they had orders to
| arrest anyone in the path of the crowd who did not
| immediately disperse. If there is an example of the police
| acting badly, or treating press differently, this is not it.
| thephyber wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think this comment should be voted
| down. I suspect it's exactly the orders police are given
| when the order to disperse a crowd/protest is given.
| jbeam wrote:
| An arrest doesn't need to be violent for it to be a bad
| act. At that point they were surrounded and would have had
| to push through the police to "disperse." They repeatedly
| asked police officers where they should go and were met
| with silence, so it's not clear where they were supposed to
| disperse to. They were arrested without the police saying a
| word as to why they were arresting them.
|
| That screams of "I'm trying to figure out a way to arrest
| you, but I can't think of a reason. I'm going to do it
| anyway." Police should not be arresting journalists (or
| citizens!) for no reason. Being released quickly doesn't
| suddenly make the original act okay. It just makes it so it
| doesn't get worse.
| dharmab wrote:
| They were released quickly because the president of CNN was
| on the phone with the Governor of Minnesota within minutes.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/politics/tim-walz-
| minnesota-c...
| eric_b wrote:
| I'm interested to see what comes out of all this. I am very glad
| I do not live in Minneapolis. I did not see a specific damages
| amount in the complaint, but I am assuming it will be high,
| especially if granted class action status. Bankrupting state and
| city police forces probably "feels" good to a lot of people here.
| But what are the second and third order effects of underfunded
| police departments?
|
| In MN the Minneapolis city council wants to disband the police
| department entirely. This may be all talk, and I'm not sure if
| it's technically possible, but what happens if there is no police
| department? What are the second and third order effects of that?
| Is having no law enforcement a better outcome for the residents?
| My initial reaction is "no".
|
| When confronted with videos of people rioting, looting and
| vandalising most respond that "it's only a few bad apples, the
| vast majority are peaceful". Is it not true that most cops are OK
| too? I'm honestly asking. Yes there are some problem cops -
| Chauvin obviously having a long history of issues. But are we
| really saying that the majority of cops are bad actors? It feels
| like with emotions so hot right now, people are willing to throw
| the baby out with the bathwater. I am skeptical that is the right
| course of action.
| r00fus wrote:
| > I am very glad I do not live in Minneapolis.
|
| You know the protests are in all 50 states. Some of the flare-
| ups are due to responses to pent-up frustration from covid, but
| a lot are due to police riots/escalation. The rest of the
| protests are peaceful.
|
| > But what are the second and third order effects of
| underfunded police departments?
|
| Police departments, for many reasons, are the most over-funded
| [1]. NYPD went on strike and crime actually went down [2] for
| the month they didn't police.
|
| The goal is not to "disband" but essentially rewrite the entire
| purpose of the department. Essentially put the policing
| function in receivership to be revived with new leadership.
|
| [1] https://theappeal.org/spending-billions-on-policing-then-
| mil...
|
| [2] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-
| proacti...
| loopz wrote:
| Police behaviour and processes are systemic. They're supposed
| to use right strategies and target the "bad apples". They're
| also dependent on leadership.
| eric_b wrote:
| I agree. The bad apples have to go. My concern is that we
| want to "hurt" the police rather than fix the systemic
| issues.
|
| It seems that the Minneapolis police department has had
| excessive force issues for years. That feels like a
| leadership failure to me. In that case you'd look at the
| Chief, the union rep, the Mayor and any other folks who can
| change the culture but don't.
| loopz wrote:
| Was thinking about looters. The police is a system that
| should find better solutions. It also need to police itself
| as you mention. It's a culture thing, so very easy to
| improve!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Reformists have had decades to work in and the outcome is
| that we just see more impunity, more hardware, and more
| money spent on policing to the detriment of all other
| social services. The approach has failed dismally and it's
| time to take a more drastic approach.
| briansteffens wrote:
| > That feels like a leadership failure to me. In that case
| you'd look at the Chief, the union rep, the Mayor and any
| other folks who can change the culture but don't.
|
| Yeah, I agree 100%, and this is why the "few bad apples"
| angle falls apart. This is a widespread problem with the
| culture of many police departments. It's not enough to fire
| the murderers themselves, we also need to ask:
|
| - Who hired them?
|
| - Who trained them?
|
| - Who supervised them?
|
| - Who looked into the previous excessive force complaints
| and decided they weren't a problem?
| bberenberg wrote:
| I don't think disbanding a police force means what you think it
| means. Take a look at https://www.governing.com/topics/public-
| justice-safety/gov-c...
|
| The goal is to wipe the slate clean and rebuild from the
| foundation.
| eric_b wrote:
| From your article:
|
| "The Camden County Police Department rehired most of the
| laid-off cops, along with nearly 100 other officers, but at
| much lower salaries and with fewer benefits than they had
| received from the city."
|
| So the solution was to keep most of the cops (which I agree
| with) and then pay them less (which I, umm... I mean... that
| doesn't seem like a recipe for success but eh).
|
| From that article it sounds like it's too early to tell if it
| worked. Is the new police force doing better than the old
| one?
| r00fus wrote:
| Police are some of the highly-paid government employees out
| there. And that's not counting overtime.
| anewdirection wrote:
| Also one of the most corrupt. I wonder if better pay
| disincentivises fraud and corruption?
| leetcrew wrote:
| if they managed to rehire most of the officers and some new
| ones on lower salaries, that sounds like their salaries
| were mispriced to begin with. a clear win for the taxpayers
| in my book.
| bberenberg wrote:
| You can look into a history of similar activities across
| the world. The process of firing and rebuilding from
| scratch is the only one I know that has consistently
| worked. The ones that come to mind other than Camden is
| Northern Ireland [1] and Georgia (country)[2]. I believe
| there were a few other cases of this in the US, but I can't
| remember them off the top of my head.
|
| The Norther Ireland article specifically covers a few of
| the reasons _why_ this works.
|
| Edit: I realized that I didn't respond to your question of
| whether this demonstrates an improvement in Camden. Citylab
| seems to think so, but offers a nuanced explanation of why
| this may not be the case and what other factors are at play
| [3]
|
| [1] https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-
| backgrounder/2019/p...
| [2]https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-
| study/siezing-mom... [3]
| https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-
| crim...
| vertex-four wrote:
| The problem is that the "good" police are incentivised to
| protect the "bad" police, and do so. You're not going to find
| the "good" police investigating and charging their colleagues -
| when it does happen, they're inevitably harassed and removed
| from the force - and nobody else is in a position to do so, so
| what you get is the "bad" police operating with impunity.
|
| And there's effects on the wider system - courts will believe a
| police officer's account of what happened pretty much no matter
| the opposing evidence. There's no accountability when a police
| officer goes against the reasons they were hired, and destroys
| people's lives.
|
| There's the possibility of alternative systems of protection
| and justice, which don't create organisations which are
| incentivised to protect murderers, abusers, and rapists.
| eric_b wrote:
| What do some of those systems look like? Have any been tried
| on a large scale? Are they effective? (Honestly asking, I am
| trying to imagine something other than a police force - or
| that looks like a police force - that can effectively deal
| with crime)
| testbot123 wrote:
| I don't think they're advocating for disbanding the
| department completely (from the article):
|
| > I don't know yet, though several of us on the council are
| working on finding out, what it would take to disband the
| MPD and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent
| public safety and outreach capacity.
|
| It takes a lot of investment in the community, but it
| works: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-
| happened-to-crim...
| vertex-four wrote:
| On a large scale, not really. It's very, very hard to
| change a society away from being under the control of the
| police. On a smaller scale - yeah. There's a lot of books
| on the subject of transformative justice, and various
| methods are practiced in many many leftist spaces. I've
| been involved in some of it, and it's worked from my
| perspective.
|
| And simply _meeting people 's needs_ deters a lot of crime
| - nobody's going to wind up in a position where they're
| robbing a gas station if they know, from an early age, that
| they're going to be sheltered, well fed, and have a good
| life, and this isn't dependent on massive amounts of luck,
| and if they fuck up there's another chance.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gen220 wrote:
| As far as I understand it[1], the state and the federal
| government have the ability to prosecute police misconduct,
| and their incentives are aligned to crack down on the bad
| police officers.
|
| The problem is that they are dramatically limited in the
| types of charges they can press against officers of the law
| (charges that carry big penalties, and have a very high
| burden of proof). This is anachronistically because we as a
| society have decided that officers deserve benefit of the
| doubt in the lack of compelling evidence. These days, many
| instances of misconduct are recorded, and the rules should
| change.
|
| In Eric Garner's case, for example, the govt attorneys
| declined to press charges, because they lacked sufficient
| evidence that the officer was _knowingly_ violating the
| rights of Eric Garner. The burden of proof for any kind of
| misconduct charge is currently so high, that even an
| egregious misconduct case like this passes by untouched.
|
| If the attorneys general had a wider range of misconduct
| charges in their arsenal, they could raise the _average_ cost
| of police misconduct, and it might improve the situation.
|
| [1] recently informed by
| https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/pushkin-industries/deep-
| bac...
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| The NYPD kidnapped and involuntarily committed a
| whistleblowing officer who they learned had evidence of
| their stop-and-frisk quotas.
| wanderr wrote:
| If "good" police are standing by and allowing "bad" police to
| get away with these things, I'd argue that they are complicit
| in the bad behavior and not so "good" after all.
| vertex-four wrote:
| Indeed, there's a reason I put them in quotes.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If it's only a few bad apples why are we seeing lines of cops
| firing tear gas at peaceful protests, running their motor
| vehicles in to people and hiding their badge numbers and names?
| trhway wrote:
| > Is it not true that most cops are OK too? I'm honestly
| asking. Yes there are some problem cops - Chauvin obviously
| having a long history of issues. But are we really saying that
| the majority of cops are bad actors?
|
| judge for yourself - the 3 randomly selected cops from
| Minneapolis PD were clearly aware of what was happening and
| were just watching as business as usual when a sadistic
| psychopath (just watch the video and listen to the Chauvin's
| tone of voice for example) was slowly and torturously executing
| a human being. What those 3 tell you about the cops en masse?
|
| >a long history of issues
|
| It is pretty typical - while many cops would usually not commit
| severe abuse/crimes/etc. at their own will, they would do
| nothing to stop, prevent, help to prosecute the "bad apples"
| cops. Basically it is a police union's, the Fraternal Order of
| Police's, version of omerta. And that makes them at least
| accessories to all those crimes.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > But are we really saying that the majority of cops are bad
| actors?
|
| As with the Floyd case, for every murder by police there are
| three officers standing by watching and doing nothing, at best.
|
| The examples to watch are Camden NJ and the RUC -> PSNI
| transition.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the problem of police abusing their power is
| never going away, so long as we have policing in its current form
| rather than some sort of unarmed or lightly armed community
| helpers. The reason they are always equipped with lethal weapons
| and so quick to use them is that their role is mostly to protect
| the people who have property from the people who don't. And in
| America that's always going to have a racial element. Black
| people in America are mostly still used as cheap labor- human
| capital stock. Unless they are willing to start redistributing
| wealth away from the super wealthy towards the least wealthy the
| ruling strata will always have to use violence to maintain order.
| And that means journalists too.
|
| That is why if you want to highlight who is holding the real
| power and address the issues of inequality, the best place to
| start is to attack the police directly. Because it's something
| that they are structurally unable to fix without fixing a whole
| bunch of other stuff first, and it places the focus right in the
| center of where the violence is coming from. It forces a
| confrontation by making a demand that they cannot ignore but also
| cannot actually address.
| anewdirection wrote:
| Being armed does not matter, unchecked power matters. I could
| care less if they carried ak47s as long as they used them more
| sparingly. Disarming the police might have more effect on how
| interactions happen, but is not the problem, nor a very
| workable solution where citizens have the right to be armed.
|
| The police are bound by laws. Attacking them is not helpful. If
| the police are bad, the laws are bad, and/or not being
| enforced. The history of mandatory sentancing laws (funny
| enough brought forward by none other than Joe Biden) might as
| well be the soundtrack for police racism over the last 20
| years.
| MBCook wrote:
| As so many of these incidents have happened over the last few
| days it seems like there should be a law that heightens the
| penalties when cops attack the press compared to the current
| penalties.
| thephyber wrote:
| No thanks.
|
| We already have tons of statutes for all sorts of
| assault/battery with modifiers if they are done using lethal
| weapons.
|
| Police have already been demanding that "hate crime" laws
| (which are historically limited to who you are, not your
| profession or your choices) be amended for extra harsh
| punishment for attacks on police officers (despite many other
| existing statutes with similar purposes).
|
| In the end, prosecutions of police with harsher statutes don't
| matter unless the conviction rate goes up. Right now,
| convictions of officers for actions done while in uniform are
| astronomically low. We need to work the other parts of the
| problem (gathering evidence, getting police to stand witness
| against other police, getting DAs to actually charge and push
| for convictions, firing of officers for conduct unbecoming an
| officer, etc).
| zucker42 wrote:
| Well a big problem not included in your post is that police
| officers can't face liability for violating people's rights
| in many cases because of qualified immunity.
| cxr wrote:
| This is the kind of comment that makes reading through
| incredibly frustrating.
|
| _What do you _mean__ that 's not included in the parent
| post? What else do you think the parent is saying if not
| _exactly that_?
| sharkmerry wrote:
| ?
|
| Parent post did not mention qualified immunity it doesnt
| seem.
|
| > Right now, convictions of officers for actions done
| while in uniform are astronomically low. We need to work
| the other parts of the problem (gathering evidence,
| getting police to stand witness against other police,
| getting DAs to actually charge and push for convictions,
| firing of officers for conduct unbecoming an officer,
| etc).
|
| it didnt say the low rate was due to qualified immunity
| thephyber wrote:
| To be fair, QI is a civil liability problem and I was
| mostly talking about the criminal trial problem.
|
| If more police were tried in criminal cases, that would
| make it far easier to build evidence for a civil case
| which could overcome the QI standard. OJ Simpson was
| acquitted in the murder trial, but lost his entire wealth
| in the subsequent civil trial to his in-laws.
| zucker42 wrote:
| He didn't include ending qualified immunity under the
| list of things he thought have to change, even though
| it's one of the most important. Plus, all the things he
| included are social changes or executive policy changes
| rather than a specific legal change like ending qualified
| immunity. There are specific efforts to end qualified
| immunity [1], while his suggestions amount to "we need to
| change culture", which is completely true but not as
| actionable. It could be that he meant to include ending
| qualified immunity, but being specific doesn't hurt.
|
| [1]
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/06/03/new-
| bill... (direct source at https://twitter.com/justinamash
| /status/1267267244029083648)
| thephyber wrote:
| > He didn't include ending qualified immunity under the
| list of things he thought have to change, even though
| it's one of the most important.
|
| I didn't name check it, but if you check my post history
| there's a reason I didn't call for an outright repeal of
| QI -- I don't yet know what the effect of that would be
| or what measures might replace it.
|
| I'm all for removing QI (and outlawing indemnification of
| LEOs in employment contracts) and replacing QI with
| something like professional insurance, but from my
| understanding the problem isn't that "QI prevents cases
| from being brought to court", but that DAs don't actually
| bring cases to court which could beat the QI standard.
|
| Also, in my understanding, QI is simply protection
| against _civil_ actions, not criminal prosecution. To
| repeat - I think the _core_ problem is more that DAs don
| 't bring the cases, not that the law is insurmountably
| high.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Yeah like I said, I largely agree with you, I was just
| tacking on QI.
| shkkmo wrote:
| "law that heightens the penalties when cops attack the
| press" seems to be talking about increased criminal
| penalties not civil liability.
|
| Ending qualified immunity doesn't do anything to help the
| application of criminal penalties against police who
| violate the law, it only restores the civil liability for
| those actions.
| thephyber wrote:
| I concede that QI is a problem and should be addressed. So
| should contractual indemnification of officers by the
| department (which is a contractual way to bypass the
| doctrine of QI).
|
| My list was not comprehensive.
| lhorie wrote:
| I don't really understand comments that ask for heightened
| penalties for [topic-du-jour]. In my mind, the justice system
| should not strive to be _more punitive_, but rather to be
| _fair_.
|
| If we follow the logic of making punishments harsher (say,
| adding years of prison to a violent cop), what then do we as a
| society expect is supposed to happen when said cop finally
| attempts to reintegrate into society after doing their prison
| sentence? We can't keep "wishing away bad guys" as if real life
| was a movie that conveniently ends at a happy ending.
|
| If anything, a revamp of the current system needs to _do away_
| with special protections and other dis-equalizer factors.
|
| For the matter of police violence specifically, I feel that the
| courts are not even the best medium for change. For example,
| why is the topic of police training largely absent in these
| discussions?
| sukilot wrote:
| Which should be penalized more? Shooting a journalist for
| journaling, or shooting a Black person for being black?
|
| Ranking victims by status is a dangerous game.
| rumanator wrote:
| > Which should be penalized more? Shooting a journalist for
| journaling, or shooting a Black person for being black?
|
| Both?
|
| I don't believe anyone was asked do pick. It's a false
| dichotomy.
| siphor wrote:
| I'd like a law that makes policing without a body camera
| illegal and a low felony/misdemeanor
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| This is a tough one. In Seattle police are directed to not
| use their body cams unless they are doing crime investigation
| stuff. The policy is designed to protect the privacy of
| people not under investigation or otherwise not involved in
| crime.
|
| In pre-body cam days Seattle PD got caught video taping
| protests or demonstrations. The current policy prevents that.
|
| Thus, Seattle cops generally have their cams turned off while
| dealing with demonstrations or protests.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Lol, as if there are no public cameras, cars don't have
| dash cams, ATMs and stores don't have cameras, or that
| citizens have no expectation of privacy from one another
| siphor wrote:
| Very good point. I'm sure some hardware that uploads
| encrypted footage that's only accessible with a warrant is
| technically possible - which would alleviate this concern.
| But that's in a perfect world.
| trhway wrote:
| >The policy is designed to protect the privacy of people
| not under investigation or otherwise not involved in crime.
|
| Obviously lame excuse by the PD as the delete button can do
| the same.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| It was directive by the city, not the police.
| trhway wrote:
| so the city didn't trust the police to press the delete
| button. Not surprising really.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The policy is designed to protect the privacy of people
| not under investigation or otherwise not involved in
| crime._
|
| And conveniently, you don't know if you'll be under
| investigation or accused of a crime until it's too late to
| turn the camera on.
|
| Sorry, that excuse doesn't fly. This concern should be
| addressed by controlling the custody of the footage, not by
| preventing it from being captured in the first place. In
| reality, body cameras _protect_ good cops.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Policies like this have been adopted with support from
| the ACLU. Your flippantly dismissive attitude towards
| this view makes me think you aren't all that aware of why
| cities might have this policy:
|
| https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-
| technology/surveillance-te...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| (Shrug) When weighing theoretical abstract harms against
| everyday atrocities, I find it fairly straightforward to
| pick a side.
|
| The ACLU says, "There is a long history of law
| enforcement compiling dossiers on peaceful activists
| exercising their First Amendment rights in public marches
| and protests, and using cameras to send an intimidating
| message to such protesters: "we are WATCHING YOU and will
| REMEMBER your presence at this event.""
|
| I don't remember anything like that happening, at least
| not recently. Do you? The FBI behaved that way towards
| MLK, certainly, but it didn't have anything to do with
| body cameras.
|
| In any case, I haven't argued, and won't argue, that
| police officers, or even the department itself, should
| have access to the footage except when necessary to
| defend themselves. Ideally it would be encrypted with a
| key held by an oversight board with substantial civilian
| representation.
| MBCook wrote:
| While I understand the sentiment, my understanding was that
| there is no evidence that body and actually improve outcomes
| even when they are actually used.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Better to enforce the current laws. That should be sufficient.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't think the press should have special protections over
| ordinary citizens. the penalty for _any_ unwarranted use of
| force should be increased to whatever you would want for
| journalists.
| dpeck wrote:
| Yes!
|
| Press is a thing people do, not a credential people have. All
| people should have freedom to observe and report on (to the
| extent they wish or do not wish to) actions of the state.
| Restricting that should have severe punishment.
| ghouse wrote:
| Agreed, though be careful what you ask for. If you're not a
| publisher (press), you can't libel. Slander, sure. But
| libel, no.
| leetcrew wrote:
| IANAL, but it's my understanding that anything written
| and viewed by a third party is considered "published" wrt
| libel. so it's already trivially easy for an ordinary
| person to commit libel.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Press is a thing people do, not a credential people have.
| All people should have freedom to observe and report on (to
| the extent they wish or do not wish to) actions of the
| state. Restricting that should have severe punishment._
|
| Social media platforms, take note!
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Social media platforms should also have that right. And
| in fact they do:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408093
| jedberg wrote:
| Edit: I'm wrong. See below.
|
| The reason they have special protection is because the
| constitution grants them special protection. The question of
| who is "the press" in this day and age where anyone can
| publish anything is certainly up for debate though.
| gpm wrote:
| > The reason they have special protection is because the
| constitution grants them special protection.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but it doesn't
|
| > There is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to
| distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be
| exempt as media corporations and those which are not. We
| have consistently rejected the proposition that the
| institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond
| that of other speakers.
|
| Supreme court in citizen's united, internal quotation marks
| omitted.
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
|
| > protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether
| the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated
| with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-
| interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others'
| writings, or tried to get both sides of a story.
|
| 9th circuit in Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox http://cd
| n.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/01/17/12...
| jedberg wrote:
| Fair enough, thanks for the info. Looks like I was wrong.
| zucker42 wrote:
| I mean I suppose the argument could be that they are
| afforded special protections because they are _acting_ as
| press (i.e. at the protests primarily to document and
| report events). But the constitution protects peaceable
| assembly as well as the freedom of the press, so it 's
| hard to see how this case would turn on that.
| rolph wrote:
| using weapons or injurious force to facilitate:
|
| interfering with the evidence of, or the report of a crime? for
| the purpose of evasion of prosecution? tampering with a
| witness?
| jedberg wrote:
| In case you agree and want to help with money:
|
| https://action.aclu.org/give/now
| davidw wrote:
| Done, thanks! I hadn't given to them in a while.
| epmatsw wrote:
| For those of us here who receive stock compensation, you can
| donate that directly too! If the stock has long term capital
| gains, the tax savings can let you donate even more.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/gifts-stock
| myself248 wrote:
| Is there a way to give anonymously, such that I won't get spam
| from other charities who found out I gave to this one?
|
| I don't know if the ACLU does that, but literally every other
| charity I've ever given to has, and I value my data more than
| that.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I do wish there was an I'm not interested in donating option
| for mailers or a list I could get on to say I'm not
| interested. One good thing about calls is at least you can
| get off the list, no option for that I've seen with mailer
| spam.
| williesleg wrote:
| Who can we use for all the wonton destruction? Hello? Anybody?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Wouldn't this just be a regular lawsuit? Why do you need the
| ACLU?
| dagnabbit wrote:
| Why does the ACLU's participation bother you?
| travmatt wrote:
| Because the ACLU has a professed interest in defending freedom
| of the press?
| coffeefirst wrote:
| And a full-time staff that specializes in this sort of thing.
| dangus wrote:
| This...is a regular lawsuit?
|
| This is why people donate to the ACLU. So that they can do the
| extensive work, pay lawyers, etc.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I feel like we should save ACLU resources for winning new
| freedoms or taking back lost freedoms. (Not that This isnt a
| noble cause. )
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > taking back lost freedoms.
|
| Better not to lose them in the first place, though, right?
| archon wrote:
| This is part of the larger issue of the police - in
| Minneapolis and a lot of other places - actively resisting
| efforts by the public to document police actions and
| provide any level of accountability through those
| recordings. That is a freedom that needs to be defended.
| function_seven wrote:
| That's exactly what's going on here. The press has a
| constitutional right to report. This lawsuit alleges that
| the police violated that right. And not just once, but
| systemically.
|
| Now they're suing to take back that lost freedom. If they
| don't, then what's to stop this continuing to be the norm?
|
| I can't think of a clearer example of what the ACLU exists
| to do.
| gruez wrote:
| Maybe because those people can't otherwise afford a lawyer to
| sue the city/state?
| mrfusion wrote:
| It's the press though. Aren't they owned by largest
| corporations in the world?
| zucker42 wrote:
| I read through the whole complaint and it's a pretty shocking
| catalog of abuse of power, discretion, and force. And it only
| covers actions against journalists, and only in the city of
| Minneapolis.
| iramiller wrote:
| Power and anonymity will yield extensive abuses. Even video
| recording isn't very helpful for a sea of soldiers hiding
| behind face masks and shields. To control the abuse each
| soldier or officer in riot gear should have a badge number in
| block type the same size as the word POLICE on their uniform.
| Combine this with pervasive recording and the public can
| peacefully hold bad actors to account via video.
| pasabagi wrote:
| It's also bizarre because it's so stupid. Normally, police
| don't beat journalists because they're conscious that if you
| force the media to side with the protesters, it's pretty much
| all downhill from thereon in. Once the media has a narrative,
| politicians will start picking up on it for political capital,
| and then it's only a matter of time before low and mid-level
| police start getting thrown under the bus.
|
| I'd be interested to know to what extent it is that the police
| have simply internalized Trump's media antipathy. Perhaps the
| insane self-destructiveness of his time in office is leaking...
| thephyber wrote:
| I think it's the other way around: the police had that
| narrative before Trump and Trump picked up on it (and
| probably studied/learned of Nixon's strategy).
|
| The police and police wives in my family were already very
| cynical of journalists way back before Trump got roasted at
| the White House Correspondent's Dinner.
|
| Every journo article that criticizes the work of an officer,
| a criminal case of the department, or any slight of the
| honor/reverence that Blue Liners have for the profession /
| individual LEOs is taken very seriously. The irony is that
| the journos can't publish accurate information without
| sources and police and their families don't/won't/can't be
| sources which would make their stories more accurate.
|
| In the end, you get a media outlet either echoing the
| statement of the PR department of the Police or you get an
| investigative reporter doing the actual "checks and balances"
| role of the media. I just think police culture (and the
| legal/employment restrictions placed on officers) can't be
| comfortable with freedom of the press.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > police and their families don't/won't/can't be sources
| which would make their stories more accurate.
|
| That's not true at all. Media coverage of law enforcement
| matters is filled with quotes, anonymous and named, from
| the police community. That's not less true right now.
|
| There's nothing stopping these people from talking to the
| press. Like anyone with an opinion, they're happy to do it
| for the most part.
| thephyber wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| It's true that police officers and their families do have
| 1st Amendment protections, but they are also governed by
| employment law and can be castigated by brass, fellow
| officers if they cause ripples which screw up a case or
| department morale.
|
| > There's nothing stopping these people from talking to
| the press.
|
| If you work for a company, were told that only the
| communications office was allowed to talk to the press
| about company business, the press asked you for a quote
| about something your company did, and you undermined the
| company's product/feature/initiative in a named quote, do
| you think your employer has the legal right to fire you
| for insubordination?
|
| If it's police wives, they probably aren't allowed to
| have the information by department policy, so the officer
| who passed on that information could (and should) receive
| a reprimand.
|
| With legal cases, police officers can't just go talking
| to press about a case because it could be used by the
| defense attorney to muddy the facts of the investigation
| or get some evidence thrown out.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Thanks for the insights - I didn't realize (not an
| american) that the US police were so identitarian. But
| then, I guess that absolutely fits with american culture in
| general.
|
| >can't be comfortable with freedom of the press.
|
| I can see that - but equally, while each institution has an
| extreme pole it pulls towards, there are usually a few
| cooler heads who keep everybody grounded. Beating up
| journalists is an inherently self-destructive thing to do,
| no matter what you feel about them - ultimately, they have
| power, and if you beat them up, they're going to hold a
| grudge.
|
| Perhaps the thing that Trump is really doing is
| demonstrating that, for whatever reason, normal rules no
| longer apply. You can build a wall in the desert. You can
| threaten people with real nuclear weapons on twitter. You
| can hit that jerk journalist who thinks he's smarter than
| you.
|
| Anyhow, it's very strange. If I was in the US, I'd
| definitely be trying to diversify out of the country. Norms
| are what make a civilization. When they start getting
| broken from the top down, anything can happen.
| tw000001 wrote:
| >bizarre because it's so stupid. Normally, police don't beat
| journalists because they're conscious that if you force the
| media to side with the protesters, it's pretty much all
| downhill from thereon in. Once the media has a narrative,
| politicians will start picking up on it for political
| capital, and then it's only a matter of time before low and
| mid-level police start getting thrown under the bus
|
| This was all going on from day one of the reportedly
| "peaceful" protests. I've watched multiple anchors on CNN and
| MSNBC discuss "peaceful" protests against backdrops of live
| rioting/burning/looting.
|
| The police need some degree of reformation but journalists
| chose a side at least as early as 2016. This is what happens
| when activist journalism is completely normalized. Police are
| humans too. You can only expect them to take so much targeted
| abuse before they target those who are amplifying threatening
| voices.
|
| What are the common refrain on _every single stream_ after
| the sun goes down? "FUCK 12". People openly threatening to
| murder police. All night long. These are the people
| journalists are defending. These are the agitators that the
| police have to deal with. Where are news reports of
| protesters throwing rocks at riot police? Multiple incidents
| of people throwing artillery shells (fireworks) into police
| crowds?
|
| You shouldn't trust the media any more than you trust the
| current administration.
| craftinator wrote:
| That's one reason I prefer live reporting and live streams
| to the highly curated content the news shared. The funny
| thing is, every single live stream I've seen (30+) features
| the police starting violence first. I discount the looters
| in this, cause thieves gonna thieve given the chance, but I
| haven't seen a rock thrown that wasn't in response to
| getting tear-gassed. Maybe cops are just used to absolute,
| unquestioned authority, or maybe they just have a high
| percentage of bullies and assholes, but after tens of hours
| of footage I've watched live, the cops use violence first.
| Which is a breach of our Constitutional right to protest. I
| personally swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the
| United States against all threats foreign or domestic, and
| breaching constitutional rights domestically makes these
| cops a perfect description of that threat.
| [deleted]
| colllectorof wrote:
| It shouldn't be shocking for anyone who was paying attention.
| There is a good book about related issues by Radley Balco
| called Rise of the Warrior Cop. Published in 2013. Unlike many
| comments here and on other websites it's not hysterical, or
| hyperbolic or contaminated with self-referential post-modernist
| bullshit. It is a sober and factual analysis of how American
| police became what it is right now. It's not an easy read, but
| it's a must-read for anyone who wants to have a reasonable
| picture of the problem.
|
| The public notion of good policing and the actual practices
| police departments follow have been diverging for several
| decades (if they ever converged). What we're seeing right now
| is not some inexplicable increase in bad behavior or cops
| deliberately targeting journalists. For modern American police
| this is just business as usual, except the volume of deployment
| is significantly higher than in the past few decades and the
| visibility is much higher as well.
|
| Edit:
|
| There is a flip side to this coin. When you have a systemic
| problem of this scale, you should be cautious about making
| simplistic (especially moral) judgements about individuals in
| the system. When someone's training, incentives, position in
| the community and even equipment nudge them towards bad
| actions, even decent people will routinely do bad things.
| thephyber wrote:
| > When someone's training, incentives, position in the
| community and even equipment nudge them towards bad actions,
| even decent people will routinely do bad things.
|
| "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." --
| Stainslaw Jerzy Lec
|
| If we assume there is such thing as human free will (your
| quote shrinks the possibility of what we can affect with our
| free will), Police officers are agents who have the ability
| to see these environmental factors and {choose to stay
| officers, ignore employer-provided therapy, vote for the
| union leadership which negotiates their employment contract,
| etc.}.
|
| We don't have as much control over our lives as we would
| want, but police (as individuals and as a voting bloc) have
| significantly more control over the lives of others than us
| non-police do.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > contaminated with self-referential post-modernist bullshit.
|
| What do you mean by this?
| elipsey wrote:
| >> hysterical, or hyperbolic or contaminated with self-
| referential post-modernist bullshit
|
| Edit: Please see HN comment guidelines.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I understand police violence is a
| continuing problem, but that doesn't make this instance of it
| less shocking.
|
| As a meta note, I've noticed that people often respond to
| comments saying "I'm shocked with a recent occurrence of X"
| with "X has always been bad and been happening for a long
| time" and in my opinion that response only serves to
| desensitize people to the bad thing.
| jfengel wrote:
| The problem is that people are already desensitized.
| They've watched X come and go and they act shocked every
| time. Then they continue to push it down their list of
| priorities when they vote.
|
| By next week this will be pushed out of the news. By
| November it will be completely forgotten, except among the
| minority who it directly affects and were already aware.
| All of the outrage you hear now will not translate into
| change.
|
| So when people say "X has been bad for a long time", people
| need to hear that as "and this time you should remember it
| and do something".
| roenxi wrote:
| There are a lot of different people out there who get
| shocked over different things.
|
| And writing for the 10-30% of people who think that
| incentives matter more than innate character - we don't
| need people to be sensitised and spring loaded to be
| shocked. These growth of these problems has been a visible
| trend for my entire lifetime and longer if you buy
| arguments like those presented in, say, The Rise of the
| Warrior Cop.
|
| Anyone who gets shocked by trends that have been around for
| that long is either very new to this, or part of the
| problem. The solution is less shock, more reform to promote
| basic principles of equality, freedom and prosperity.
| nsajko wrote:
| Off topic, but
|
| > self-referential post-modernist bullshit
|
| Umm, what? What contaminations exactly are you thinking
| about? I just can't place self-referentiality into this
| topic. Are you suggesting there is a comparable analysis that
| _does_ include self-referential motifs? Also, why is self-
| referentiality or postmodernism bullshit?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Yes, there is a lot of self-referential nonsense out there.
|
| A huge number of overwrought social media posts by [mostly
| white, mostly upper-class] people not directly affected by
| police violence are basically an exercise in centering
| themselves and their own feelings. They are not sincere
| efforts to grapple with a complex systemic problem.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Postmodernism is bullshit because it abandons any sense of
| rationalism and science and is used as an arm waving way of
| selling an agenda, often political, frequently done in a
| cynical attempt to seize power illegitimately. Jurgen
| Habermas has a thoughtful critique.
| op00to wrote:
| I know not to beat the shit out of press. So, no not good
| people.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > Unlike many comments here and on other websites it's not
| hysterical, or hyperbolic or contaminated with self-
| referential post-modernist bullshit.
|
| Lobster brain claims another. I have to say that one of the
| most overlooked forms of anti-intellectualism in modern life
| is the immediate discount of anything that uses even remotely
| complex terminology or looks in the general direction of
| critical theory.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| Some might argue that it is post-modernism itself that is
| one of the most overlooked forms of anti-intellectualism,
| as opposed to its criticism.
| tristor wrote:
| It's not anti-intellectual to reject a philosophy that is
| based in the rejection of the very concept of truth and
| reality. Post-modernism itself is anti-intellectual, as
| it's a philosophy that individualizes experience while dis-
| individualizing responsibility. It rejects both empiricism
| and rationalism to choose the unhappy middle between the
| both, elevating anecdote above experiment, emotions above
| rationality.
|
| "Critical theory" isn't even a thing and barely even
| intersects with post-modernism, although I suppose it
| shares some philosophical leanings. It's just a repackaging
| of Marxist ideals applied to other demographic groupings
| besides class, and it's just as easily disproven.
|
| Edit: Thanks to whoever downvoted me, because they had
| nothing worthwhile to say in response. Rejection of
| objective truth is a core principle of post-modernism, you
| can ask the post-modernists yourself if you like, they'll
| agree. Meanwhile speaking the truth earns you hate since
| the rise of post-modernism.
| falcrist wrote:
| One of the most poignant comments on police militarization
| I've heard seems to have come from a television show.
|
| "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One
| fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and
| protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the
| enemies of the state tend to become the people." - Commander
| Adams (Battlestar Galactica)
|
| Obviously, this doesn't directly address the militarization
| of the police, but it should be easy to see how it can go
| both ways. Outfit the police as a military unit, and they'll
| start acting like one. How much surplus military equipment
| was sold to police since the Iraq war?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Your edit is just a long way of saying "Nuremburg Defense"
| which at least in the West, we've decided is wrong. Hell,
| soldiers are trained to kill, but even they have ROE to
| follow and are held accountable for bad shoots. I'm not sure
| why police officers always seem to get a pass.
| philipov wrote:
| Shocking does not mean surprising. You can be paying
| attention and still find things shocking. If something is no
| longer shocking, it means you've allowed yourself to become
| desensitized and accept it as an acceptable compromise of
| society. No one should find this kind of behavior acceptable.
| yibg wrote:
| To me that's the more shocking part. In this day and age of
| everyone having a cell phone and therefore camera, these will
| be captured. Yet the people involved (individually and as an
| organization) still went ahead, and in fact often applied
| violent tactics against the press broadcasting live. They
| either don't think they're doing anything wrong or don't care
| as they believe (probably rightly) that there won't be any
| consequences. Both are disturbing.
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