Not sure where to put this, but I have a question about the protests against the pipeline going on in North Dakota. I saw a news article dogs were used against the protesters. But as far as I can tell, the dogs were owned by the pipeline company and NOT police dogs.
My question is, why would the protesters not injure or kill the dogs that were attacking them? They are not police dogs, so there are no legal issues (as far as I can tell).
Pregnant women and children (and other people described as peaceful protesters) tend not to come to rallies equipped with any means for injuring or killing dogs while being pepper sprayed.
How would you injure or kill this dog?
Keep in mind that if you draw a weapon you’ll probably end up with a face full of pepper spray. That’s if the dog doesn’t get to you first or someone doesn’t shoot you.
Yes, but aren’t the people with pepper spray civilian employees? They are not police. If I’m protesting, I just have to take a pepper spray from non-police security guards without defending myself?
I’m guessing they didn’t go there with the expectation of being attacked (or if they knew the dogs would be there maybe they didn’t think their bluff would be called).
Either way, if you go to a rally/sit it and you’re (illegally?) carrying weapons, threatening private guards or worse proactively harming their dogs, they’ll have you arrested or be able to shoot back. You’ll lose.
If they were just sitting there and the pipeline people started attacking (I really don’t know all the details) for no real reason, the protesters will have a case. If that’s how it happened, the dogs will probably be gone soon.
I grew up in the area and have family members and friends who are members of the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes. Everyone in the area (up to 100 miles away) gets their water from the Missouri River. Personally I think a pipeline done right will be safer than the current method of using train cars.
I fully support the right of everyone to lawfully protest the pipeline but something that doesn’t get reported much is that the pipeline is on private land not the current reservation. The protestors shouldn’t be trespassing and trying to physically block the work especially bringing kids along. There’s too much chance of things going wrong and its illegal. Protesting legally, filing lawsuits, attracting media attention etc. is the way to handle this. That said the security people using dogs is equally wrong. They should have backed off and called in the police.
Too late to edit. The video I saw had the protestors walking up to actively working heavy equipment and trying to block it. Thats a recipe for disaster especially with kids. IMO both sides were wrong in that incident. The protestors shouldn’t have been there and the contractors should have backed off and had the police clear the site. Using dogs was wrong and horrible PR to boot.
Feel free to scrunch your eyes shut and hold your breath.
The trouble is, “defending yourself” when you are trespassing is “leave”. Using retaliatory force back and forth, the issue of who actually started it becomes blurred. As the civil rights protestors and Gandhi determined, the optics look far more interesting when perfectly peaceful protestors are set upon by vicious and overwhelming force. Just google image “civil rights protest police”. The same picture of a man just standing there being attacked by a police dog - only one of a number of photos - comes up over and over again.
This is the point of protests. Do you think a bunch of people going out to protest are going to stop construction any more than Jim Crow laws? No. But what they will do is make the other side look so much worse that in the longer term, the tide will turn and people will take their side.
A very large and heavy stick??? Not saying it’s easy but certainly possible.
Notice you used the term “police dog”. It is my understanding that the dogs attacking the protesters were NOT police dogs and thus no charges could be levied for “attacking an officer” or whatever they use when someone harms a police dog.
manson1972 the answer is in the *first *half of that paragraph. If you claim to be performing civil disobedience or picketing a private activity, coming prepared to fight forcefully, and/or actually doing so by grabbing the guard’s tools and turning them on him, is deleterious to the perception you wish to create.
Plus, unbelievable as it may seem to you, many people just would rather NOT kill or injure the dog, or injure the human opponent. You seem expect they would, and would appear to claim the only reason to not do so would be if it were police K9s due to the law about assaulting police.
Notice that you’re really hung up on the “police dog” thing.
I don’t think you’re going to convince anyone to say 'well, since they’re not police dogs, it’s probably okay if we kill them". No one has argued with you about whether or not the security is a private firm or police. No one is arguing about whether or not killing the dogs would constitute an attack on an officer.
In your OP you stated that you thought the dogs were part of a private security team.
You’re question, very specifically was ‘why didn’t the protesters attack or kill the dogs’.
I said that it’s hard for pregnant women and children to fight off large dogs. I also said that the crowed was being pepper sprayed which also makes it hard to fight off dogs. I also said that proactivly attack the security team weakens your stance.
You replied by saying ‘yeah, but they’re not police’.
Moldmonkey said the contractors should have backed off and called the police because the protesters were dangerously (and possibly illegally) close to the machines.
md2000 suggested that staying and getting attacked will get you farther than going in hot and suggest you look at some old civil rights pictures from when people were protesting the police.
You replied ‘yeah but they’re not the police’
So, what are you asking? They’re not the police. We all get that? If you want to know why the protesters didn’t attack (first? in defense)? We’re trying to answer but you keep going off on the ‘they’re not the police’ tangent.
Maybe you need to reformulate your question since everytime someone responds you reply seem to disagree with them just because their answer has the word ‘police’ in it.
Is your question ‘could they legally have attacked the dogs in self defense?’ (Ignoring the politics in play during a protest, that would be an entirely different question than ‘why didn’t they’)
I thought the question was pretty clear in the OP:
So, any answers that compare them to OTHER protestors not fight Police dogs is irrelevant. I GET why protestors would not fight off POLICE dogs. I don’t get why protestors would not fight off dogs that were attacking them, when the dogs are not POLICE dogs.
I tried to find anything that mentioned that the protestors were trespassing, but I couldn’t find anything definitive.
If I’m protesting something, and a PRIVATE security force starts pepper spraying me, or attacking me with dogs, I’m not just going to sit there and take getting pepper sprayed or bitten by dogs.
The standard for self-defense is “appropriate” response force. The trouble with any response is it is likely to deteriorate into a full-out fight, at which point the people defending their employer’s property are more in the right. After several dozen blows have been landed by both sides, who started it is irrelevant. The people trespassing are more in the wrong. If the people trespassing are peaceful, any “unpeaceful” response by the owners’ side is wrong.
On the PR front, if the result is dead or badly injured dogs, what do you think will be splashed across the evening news? Pictures of a poor dog just lying there dead, or all bloodied. (North Americans’ view of pets is seriously warped.) How does that help the cause?
Have you ever been pepper sprayed? Ever been attacked by a trained canine?
IME the response is to attempt retreat.
I took a forearm bite, wearing a heavy jute & leather sleeve, with a skilled trainer controlling the dog. I was scared shitless and ended up with a nasty bruise through the sleeve.
You’re going to "fight back? How do you imagine that ending up?
One segment of that video showed a training exercise apparently intended to teach the dog to deal with “pressure” from the attacker. But frankly, the pressure was pretty weak. How do these dogs respond if you are honest-to-god punching them in the nose, rapping their eyes with your knuckles, or kicking them in the ribs/balls/toes with your steel-toed boots?
ISTR an episode of “Cops” in which a fleeing suspect was indeed able to violently convince the police dog to stand down.
IME if a dog has a forearm and the person punches the dog, the dog grabs the hand. People lose fingers with that maneuver. You’re better off letting the dog chew your arm than giving it a hand.
As an aside, some police departments are training dogs to bite “high thigh” (groin) which seems to lead to rapid submission.
I thought the first several answers were pretty clear.
And it’s back to police dogs.
Again, you seem to be seeking the answer to a question that isn’t what you’re posting.
Several people have given you several answer to why protesters might not attack a dog. Everything from it makes ‘who’s attacking and who’s defending’ hard to figure out when you need the public on your side all the way to ‘you’ll probably lose in a fight against a dog’. Not a single person, except you, has brought up the legality of harming a police dog, but you keep running back to it.
If you just want someone to tell you it’s okay or legal to attack them because they’re not police dogs, you need to ask that question and we can look into it from that angle. Is that your question?
How about the kicking and stomping? Do these dogs keep on keepin’ on if they’ve got cracked ribs or a crushed paw?
