[QUOTE=Namkcalb]
American policemen have body armour and bulletproof car doors.
[/QUOTE]
Whoa…what cops are you familiar with? You think that most cops go around all the time wearing body armor (leaving aside the fact that body armor doesn’t cover anything more than your torso) and have bullet proof cars??? 
This encounter took place in a public park. You assume that “cover” was available or that, if it was, that it would be reachable in the half-second or so it could take the subject to draw their weapon and begin firing. The real world is not an Xbox game where you can take three or four bullets to the chest and then heal up in five seconds as long as you duck behind a conveniently-placed concrete block.
You assume that all police wear body armor all the time and always stand immediately next to their car while conducting business.
It was faithfully carried out when the police responded appropriately to a person brandishing a firearm in public.
Anecdote time ! Sit on unca’ Kobal’s knees and let him tell you a story.
When I was 16 or 17, I saved a bit of cash and bought myself an AirSoft Beretta replica. It was awesome. I’d been wanting one for a very long time, and finally that baby was mine, all mine. So I got out of the store, sped to the nearest public bench, tore at the packaging, tossed that crap away in the nearest bin and started playing with my new Precious, right there in the street. Not shooting at things (I wasn’t a retard), just fiddling with all the moving parts and eyefucking it.
Which just goes to show : nope, even 17 years old is demonstrably not old enough to know better than doing utterly stupid things like that.
Now, since you don’t know me, a little more description is needed : I’ve always been kind of a “weird vibes kid”. Too tall, too skinny, gaunt face, unkempt hair down to here, eyes staring into nothing a lot of the time (because I’ve always got my mind on something)… I don’t recall whether I’d already adopted the slightly less colourful than Johnny Cash’s wardrobe I sport these days, but still, you get the picture. I looked, quite frankly, like Harris and Klebold - and this was around the time of Columbine, too !
Then a cop entered my happy-happy zoned-out little world where me and my new gun were having so much fun. Sternly so. He didn’t draw his own piece or even his baton, he just walked up to me, there in front of the gun store (in France, realistic toy guns and real guns are sold from the same stores) and asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing, pulling out a gun out in the bloody street. Startled, I stammered that it wasn’t a real one. He had a look at it, said OK, then told me to put in back in my pocket anyway and play with it at home because it scared people. I said OK. I hurried away. I went home.
He never shot me. Not even the once !
Imagine that.
[QUOTE=Morgenstern]
The idiots protesters blocked a major freeway into San Diego this morning making hundreds if not thousands of people late for work, appointments, plane boarding, etc. Stuff like this makes me turn a deaf ear to any legitimate issue they are protesting. Somehow they believe that screwing innocent people is fair payback for their cause? Hardly.
[/QUOTE]
The point is that when protesters don’t do that, nobody pays any attention to what is being protested and nobody gives a fuck. Inconveniencing people makes them give a fuck, even if said fuck is “somebody resolve this situation somehow or something !”.
I wonder if that had something to do with the fact that you responded to his approach by talking to him instead of by silently reaching for your “weapon” as the child in the matter at hand did.
The video of the actual shooting of the 12 year old has been released.
It’s sucky all around. Sucky for the kid. Sucky for the family. Sucky for the cops.
The gun looks real.
It happened very fast.
It looks like the kid was drawing his weapon on the police.
They were already informed that a child was messing round with what could have been a real firearm.
Why wouldn’t they be wearing armour in situations like this? They should have drove up to the suspect, and armoured doors are the rule rather than the exception.
Shesh, it would have been more appropriate to call a SWAT team… I’m assuming other children were in the park and beat cops aren’t known for their accuracy.
[QUOTE=Namkcalb]
They were already informed that a child was messing round with what could have been a real firearm.
[/QUOTE]
Um, because they were probably just patrol officers responding to a call, not a SWAT team poised to go into combat?
Do you have a cite that armored doors are the rule in US police forces rather than the exception? I can tell you that the doors of our police here aren’t generally armored.
Because “There’s an armed suspect brandishing his weapon at random civilians, we’d better drive back to the precinct and change clothes” isn’t a rational or sane response in any way, shape, or form?
Remember a few weeks ago, when violence erupted in a major US city, with fires being set all over, with windows broken on five police vehicles, four more sprayed with graffiti? A man was stabbed multiple times, and police arrested 40 people? I’m sure such a situation required a lot of media coverage and multiple threads here condemning and discussing it, right?
To answer the question posed by the OP, there is only one situation where we seem to currently consider such behavior appropriate: the local team must have won some sort of sporting event recently. Then it’s all okay; no one posts threads like this claiming that such civil disorder is condemnable and the media barely mentions it.
… To say nothing of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.
Ohio is an open carry state. It is perfectly legal for someone to walk around with a gun.
Watch the video of the shooting. The cops shoot pretty much instantly upon arrival after several boring minutes of nobody being threatened by the kid - he’s alone for most of the clip leading up to the arrival of the police car.
Now contrast it with what the Cleveland Police clarified about the state’s open carry laws and how officers should handle people openly carrying weapons earlier this year:
So I assume that you would feel the shooting was justified if it was a bigger adult with a real gun despite the fact that it flies in the face of how cops were told to treat people with guns? And despite what many open carry advocates say is their constitutional right?
Presumably Louis Head, Michael Brown’s stepfather, is a resident of Ferguson, and the local police are aware of his identity.
He hasn’t been arrested for incitement to riot, even though his actions were caught on video.
So there’s at least some Ferguson residents who aren’t being arrested for crime(s) committed. IMO, there’s probably more.
Rioting and less direct forms of civil disobedience has a rich history in this country of successfully prodding change, especially for those with little to no institutional power.
I think one of the main issues at hand is whether one thinks that they were somehow less violent or more focused in the “olden days.” And perhaps whether one believes that agents provocateurs are a conspiracy theory or not.
So there’s not a hard and fast rule that Civil Disobedience has to be nonviolent. Hope that limits the semantic battle that you and John Mace seem to want to start.
And before you start to quantify Ferguson specifically, please note that I used that city as an example of a bigger question, not the only example.
Oh, please. You screwed up your OP by claiming that senseless rioting was a form of Civil Disobedience. If you don’t want to continue a debate about the mistakes you make, then admit you made a mistake and move on.
You’re wrong, but hey, repeat it, maybe that’ll help.
Hopefully this will make it a bit more comprehensible for you…
Does anyone seriously believe that without the national spotlight created by the protests that any of these initiatives would have happened? That it would not have been simply just another police shooting of the 400 to as many as 1000 that occur every year in America?
So the ends justify the means? What does “actively recruiting minority candidates” mean? What does it entail? Is it just lip service?
The previous poster seemed to think it was incomprehensible that the protestors thought they could change the makeup of the police service. I pointed out that they succeeded in getting just such a policy statement made by the mayor of Ferguson. I have no idea if the mayor is sincere or what the outcome will be, but awareness and an open admission that a mostly white police force in a largely black community is not a good idea sounds like a constructive first step.
As for the end justifying the means, protests are a constitutional right that don’t require justification. The violent part of it was probably perpetrated by a small minority because that’s usually the way it happens, and that part was counterproductive because it makes people more fearful and potentially supportive of even greater police militancy.
… And yet when football players follow some of the sage advice in this thread and stage a non violent, indeed silent, protest, they’re vilified for it.
Hmmm.
By “don’t represent you” you mean “are actively trying to harm, kill and/or imprison you, even if no reason exists for doing so”, right?