Nice selective reading. The first paragraph of the article says the news crews were set up OUTSIDE a perimeter set up by the police. One journalist moves up to an intersection where demonstrators are fleeing to cover the police detaining someone and he gets shot at with a rubber bullet. He retreats back to where the press is set up OUTSIDE the police perimeter and then the Al Jazeera crew gets gassed. No orders to disperse, not loitering, not in the midst of any rioting or protesting.
Your whole premise is wrong, though.
It wasn’t a protest. It was a riot. One that had gone on for four days.
There was another event over at the police station that was an actual protest and that didn’t have looters and rioting. It was allowed to proceed and the police in attendance were restrained and didn’t do anything.
Are you just ignoring these facts? Or did you not read the thread?
I know you guys have real strong feelings on this one, but the board is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, not wallowing in it.
So they werent just failing to disperse, they were actively interfering with an arrest?
Well, that’s MUCH better.
The people who are defending the rioters and demonizing the police. The pro-terror lobby.
Did you have a lot of lead paint where you grew up?
What “unlawful, unconstitutional” order was given?
Just for shits and giggles, could you give your definition of “terrorism”?
If you see yourself possibly doing it, you’re justifying it.
Acts of lawlessness by private actors with the intent of terrorizing the public and/or the government.
My hope is that the events here will lead to a national dialogue about the ridiculous militarization of the police. The federal government has to stop giving tanks and heavy machine guns to police departments. This is another byproduct of our disastrous War on Drugs that needs to be shut down fast.
Why?
This is getting ridiculous. Watch the freaking video. Did he “force him to stop taping”? In fact, did he even attempt to “force him to stop taping”? He told him to stop what he was doing (which was videotaping) and go. That was it. The reporter then started in with the “Help, help, I’m being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!” shpiel.
I was relying upon this:
So far as I can tell, there is no exception in the unlawful assembly law for a member of the press. As a matter of practicality, of course, police are certainly wise to adopt the position that the press is in an area of unlawful assembly not to participate but to observe, but they don’t have to. The statute any person who refuses to disperse. There might be a First Amendment defense the reporters can offer, but that has nothing to do with the existence of probable cause.
Whether or not the McDonald’s was “at the scene” of an unlawful assembly is obviously a question of fact. If Debaser is correct, then for purposes of probable cause the police seem safe. The farther away the unlawful assembly was, the less likely the police can credibly claim probable cause existed.
Why what? Why do I hope for a dialogue about the militarization of the police? Or why do I think the militarization is a byproduct of the War on Drugs?
Because the “it’s not possible that I would do the same” is a moral judgment. Unless you’re just saying you’d be too lazy to do it. And I love that in your imagination there is some kind of “angry mob” that is somehow separate from “people” that makes the “people” do “things that are bad”. That’s some bizarre world view there.
Why is such a “dialogue” necessary?
My premise is not wrong. Even if you characterize the events in Ferguson as a riot, the police response is a) grievously (if not criminally) excessive, b) guaranteed to inflame the situation, and therefore c) actually doing a gross disservice to the people in whose name they are acting.
The police in Ferguson are not approaching this situation with the aim of defusing it. They’re attempting to meet force head-on with more force, only to shake their heads with bafflement when the people of Ferguson don’t simply march back into their homes.
Do you get it? Whether it’s a riot or a protest or a donnybrook or whatever you care to call it, the police are not responding appropriately.
Since you seem to feel I’m being hopelessly emotional (god forbid, right?), maybe some testimony from Veterans on Ferguson will prove useful:
I trust these appraisals of the situation more than yours. If you want to continue to write the police a rhetorical blank check for conduct like this, have at it. I find it revolting and disgraceful. And unless cooler heads intervene soon, we may well end up remembering Ferguson the way we remember Kent State and the '68 Chicago Convention: as gross abuses of state power.
But the investigation into the things you mention can just as well be done by the investigators. But even granting your position on the pro side, how do you think it stacks up to the don’t-release-his-name side of the debate?
This is not excessive. Excessive would be gunning down the rioters in the streets by the dozen. These scumbags are lucky the cops have been as gentle with then as they have.
To keep up with him, I think you’d need to get a lobotomy. Either that or just have the part that controls humor removed and then try to go through life as a funny man.