Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Berkut]

Is that a general principle, or specific to protests?

Always. This shouldn't be difficult for non-sadists

It is cheap to say what the police should NOT do (and of course it is always whatever it is they DID do that they shouldn't), but what they should do to deal with the guy sitting on the ground?

Ignore him. If they can figure out who he is, give him a huge ticket and repo his stuff if he doesn't pay.

Right, so your complaint isn't about tactics, but that they police are doing anything at all.

Can I come protest in your living room, as long as I am "just sitting there"?

How about your front porch?

The street outside your house, blocking your driveway so you cannot leave?

If that is not ok with you, what should the police do to stop me from "...just sitting there" protesting?

I am sure if the police took his posessions, all these same people would not be talking about what fascists they are for doing that though, when they could have just removed him if he refused to leave.

[Berkut]

I bet the police did use the "usual protocol" as defined in their standards manual. I am not sure why some people assume they did otherwise. Cite?

There is a picture of a police officer pepper spraying a group of people sitting on a road way.  Is that the usual police protocol where you live?

I have no idea what the usual police protocal is for the use of force to handle people illegaly blocking access or whatever they call it. What is the protocal where I live relevant, this didn't happen here.

*You* are arguing that they should not have used pepper spray, presumably because that is not usual protocol. What is your cite to support this claim that this was not the usual protocol for those officers? I have never heard such a claim, and if true makes the issue much simpler.

[Ed Anger]

I'm enjoying the pepper spray meme on the interwho though.



Especially that one.

[Ideologue]

That one's great.

[Habbaku]

[CountDeMoney]

  Tasers and guns are definitely used to "catch the bad guy" in situations that aren't solely self-defense.  So is pepper spray.  Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Cops don't like to put their hands on people.  Leads to lawsuits.  And, they're usually out of shape and have forgotten their come-along tactics they learned in the academy and forget the 8 hours of in-service training they usually skip every year.
Going straight to the baton or the taser or the OC spray isn't the usual doctrine, it's just really laziness.

Don't "come along" tactics imply some kind of pain hold anyway?

Where does zapping someone with pepper spray fit into the continuum of force?

Pepper spray is designed to be debilitating.  There's no reason that non-violent protesters need to be debilitated.  Picking them up by their pressure points, or turning their arm or wrists, is only as painful as they let it.

I would think that putting your hands on someone to force them to move has vastly greater potential for actual harm than pepper spray, which is painful but cannot do permanent damage, so far as I know.

I think the outrage is more over the casualness with which it was employed - the police officer just seems kind of "ho-hum, I guess I will blast all these people indiscriminately with this here pepper spray now..."

You put your hands on someone, pick them up and move them, you've got a small chance of bruises, etc.  Pepper spray can lead to respiratory distress, and the fact that it's not synthetic can lead to anaphylactic shock.  Bruises or respiratory failure, I'll take my chances on the bruises.  It's just not nice stuff.

Besides, you spray it on someone, it gets all over you too.  Shit stays in your hair, your clothes, etc.  Kinda tough handling people you've sprayed when you wind up getting it all over you as well.

[Ideologue]

I assume that all of Berkut's information about pepper spray came from that one episode of The Critic.

[CountDeMoney]

We ended up talking about his non-lethal weapons.  Using physical force was by far his preferred method of subduing someone if he thought he could.  More nuance in the level of force, more psychological pressure, more humane.  The tazer was the next best choice, and then finally the spray.  I asked something like, "Why not use the spray more?"  At the time, I thought I'd much rather be sprayed than tazed (having been neither).  The main reason was that the spray tends to blow back into the officer's face.

I always bought and carried foam over the spray.  Less blow-back potential.  Foam, you see where it lands.  I've been zapped by accident, I've zapped others by accident, you're all blind if you're using it in a stiff wind.  Toss the contacts, they're useless after that.

To get certified to use these non-lethal weapons, you had to get blasted once with each.  Getting tazed, he said, was horrible but ended immediately.  Getting doused in the face with spray, on the other hand, he described as the worst experience of his life.  Hours of burning agony, feeling like you are going to suffocate to death, the total helplessness of not being able to get it off no matter what you do (I think water makes it worse), etc.

I only offer this anecdote to emphasize how nasty the spray is. 

It is nasty shit.  And you'll have it on you until you get to go home and shower.  Dries in your hair, every time you rub your face you feel it.  Never been tazed, since that came after my time, but I definitely could see why it'd be preferable.  It least it's over when it's over.

[CountDeMoney]

My basic argument, however, is that the majority of the people "outraged" are really just on the side of the protesters, and are going to be outraged if the police do anything other than "take off their badges and sit down alongside them."

I'm outraged, and it has nothing to do with the protesters.  It has everything to do with lazy ass cops, their refusal to fucking put their hands on people when that's all that's necessary, and the unnecessary use of 15% OC, which is bear repellent, as opposed to the usual 5% issued to most LEOs.

[Ideologue]

I always bought and carried foam over the spray.  Less blow-back potential.  Foam, you see where it lands.  I've been zapped by accident, I've zapped others by accident, you're all blind if you're using it in a stiff wind.  Toss the contacts, they're useless after that.

Indeed.  Korea and I got exposed to pepper spray from twenty yards away and ten feet down once, when the bouncer at the (now-defunct) dazzling urbanite club across the street used it on a crowd of unrulies.  Explains the windscreens they wear in the video.

[Razgovory]

I assume that all of Berkut's information about pepper spray came from that one episode of The Critic.

I know mine did.  "Mmmm, jalapeno!"

[Berkut]

My basic argument, however, is that the majority of the people "outraged" are really just on the side of the protesters, and are going to be outraged if the police do anything other than "take off their badges and sit down alongside them."

I'm outraged, and it has nothing to do with the protesters.  It has everything to do with lazy ass cops, their refusal to fucking put their hands on people when that's all that's necessary, and the unnecessary use of 15% OC, which is bear repellent, as opposed to the usual 5% issued to most LEOs.

I still want to know what the cops SOP is though.

Is it to going in blasting pepper spray, or do they have other options for that situation?

It seems clear from what you are saying (and it is nice to see someone who actually knows something rather than just imagining how terrible the bad policemans are) that there ought to be options, especially given the numbers involved. Are the cops lazy, or are they just doing what the book says they should do in this case?

[Sheilbh]

This.

I am not sure why some people here think the usual protocol of arrest and moving the protestors away should not not be used in this situation.   The long recognized purpose of civil disobedience is to invoke this kind of response from authorities.  The protestors for their part are willing to be arrested to make their point and there is no reason for the police to escalate the level of violence needed to deal with the protestors unless the protestors themselves escalate the situation.

Indeed.  My view as I've said is that the polie escalated here which was wrong - in my view the police shouldn't escalate a situation at all - and I've said I don't think they should be using force like pepper spray, tasers, riot gear or batons unless absolutely essential to preserve public order or their own safety.  There are lots of examples of sit-ins being cleared peacefully by the police disentangling the protestors, sat with linked arms, and carrying them away.  That's one of the ways to deal with it that seems far preferable.

Having said all of that you're spot on that from the protestors' point of view police escalation is exactly what they want. It increases the sympathy for them and chips at the legitimacy of the police/power establishment confronting them.  It's always been so.  I don't like civil rights movement comparisons but I think purely in terms of tactics of non-violent resistance that's something that you have there, in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and with the 'Quit India' campaign.  Police over-reaction is very often what protest movements want in a way.

[Sheilbh]

It seems clear from what you are saying (and it is nice to see someone who actually knows something rather than just imagining how terrible the bad policemans are) that there ought to be options, especially given the numbers involved. Are the cops lazy, or are they just doing what the book says they should do in this case?

But even if they're just doing what the book says doesn't that just mean the book needs changing?

[chipwich]

Can I come protest in your living room, as long as I am "just sitting there"?

How about your front porch?

The street outside your house, blocking your driveway so you cannot leave?

loitering in someone's home is alarming and invasive in a way that sitting in a outdoor plaza is not. I believe you are smarter than this.