Huh. Hadn’t heard an Al-Qaeda/Taliban tie in up till now.
While I have great respect for 'luci, I feel I should at least be considered for this honorific.
There were two orders here, the order to disperse and the order to stop videotaping. The latter order was illegal. We’d need more facts to assess whether the first order was legal. Assuming the order to disperse was legal, it would be improper to fail to heed the first order just because of the illegal second one. But I don’t understand him to have done that. It’s hard to tell exactly from the video, but from his account I understood him to be getting up and getting his things together while videotaping. Was he maybe a little slower because he was asking questions? Sure. But I don’t think that de minimis delay constituted failure to comply with the order to disperse.
But you’re right that context matters. What counts as complying with the order when clearing out a McDonald’s is different from arresting a hundred people in the middle of a riot. But I don’t agree at all with the argument that since this McDonald’s was near the previously nights’ riot area that it makes any difference at all for this arrest. Was there a riot happening outside? Nope.
I do think this guy was being a little obnoxious. And the police officer escorting him was pretty professional except for asking him to stop recording. But being obnoxious is not a basis for arrest in this country, and as long as he was moving reasonably quickly to disperse then they could not arrest him on that basis either.
Do we know whether the McDonald’s closed later? It’s likely the cops wanted to clear the patrons out first and then give the employees time to secure the restaurant before they evacuated.
People destroying public and private property and attacking the police are terrorists. The pro-terror lobby are those who support then over the police who are attempting to restore law and order for the law-abiding people of Ferguson.
We must elect Ronald Reagan!
Reagan did more harm to the country than any president in recent memory by slashing budgets and encouraging people to fear and distrust the government.
And yet…
So if you think the kind of people elected on the rhetoric you’re using did a bad job, you might want to reconsider that rhetoric.
I believe I’m in record as saying that Nixon was the last good Republican. Reagan was never anything other than a corporate shill who, by the time he was president, was more interested in telling people government was their enemy than in maintaining the public good.
It’s possible, but the only people talking can’t tell us because they’d been sent to jail.
Holy fuck dude, it’s right there in your own cite: “charging cellphones and writing.” Writing is part of the work that reporters do. Did you not know that?
No, it isn’t. You have a legal right to question any authority. The cop has the authority to tell him to pack up and leave (according to Bricker). He does not have the authority to force him to stop taping. That’s something that made it to the Supreme Court.
I do see your problem now, though. You seem to think “not doing exactly as you are told by a police officer” means “being a dick to a police officer.” No reporter worth his salt is going to put down his camera unless he absolutely has to. That doesn’t make him a dick.
The McDonald’s employees were sent to jail?
Being ordered by a cop to evacuate would fall into “unless he absolutely has to” for most people.
Enjoy being in jail for contempt of court until you stop, should you choose to exercise this “right” there.
Wow. This is a great four way whoosh of misunderstanding all around.
Sinaptics posted that
I figured this was just poorly phrased and so I made a joke about why a reporter would be flipping burgers:
I should have included a smiley.
But it turns out that Sinaptics actually thought that the reporter was a McDonald’s employee.
Now we’ve got you jumping all over me for daring to question whether a journalist can work as a journalist at McDonald’s.
Sheesh.
And multiple people argued that your definitions are incorrect, and you did not refute them. You may use those words that way, but that’s not how the rest of us are using the terms.
Something being justified means it is morally correct. I do not agree that the actions here are morally correct. Even if I am capable of doing the same actions, I still would not think they were morally correct.
But I do find them understandable, even if I wouldn’t do the same things. I understand how they feel. I understand how angry mobs can get people to do things that are bad. I understand their position. That’s what it means to be understandable.
I just don’t get your mental block here. Why in the world do you think that I cannot understand someone but disagree with them without first judging them as morally inferior? I understand the majority of people and actions I disagree with. It’s harder to disagree with things you don’t find understandable.
Getting bogged down in discussing whether or not a particular McDonald’s was open for business, or how fast a particular reporter picked up his bag and vacated said McDonald’s, seems to obscure the issues that are outraging so many (but by no means all, alas) of us.
From this link:
Meeting civilian protests — even protests that have escalated into criminality — with such excessive force is guaranteed to make the situation worse. I’ve seen remarks from combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have conducted themselves with more restraint than the police in Ferguson — and packed a lot less armament to boot. This is atrocious, incompetent police work, and if I were among the law-abiding citizens of Ferguson in whose name these actions were supposedly being taken, I’d be fucking outraged. In fact, I probably WOULD have taken to the streets by now. Not throwing Molotov cocktails: just showing my disapproval of a militarized police force run amok.
The what? What in the hell are you talking about?
One more thought on this: You should seriously rethink this attitude. Did you really think, even for a second, that I don’t understand that a journalist could work doing writing or whatever else from a McDonald’s?
That’s some serious bending over backwards to assume the worst about someone’s posts. It’s almost a perfect example of the sort of silliness you’d see in the SDMB posting “moves” thread.