The Mayor said it. Then the Mayor denied saying it.
It (her statement) wasn’t taken out of context. There is video that proves as much. It is the speaker’s fault for A) making the statement, and B) for ignoring the contrary video evidence that proves she did make such a statement when she chose to deny that she made the statement.
The Mayor could admit that she misspoke instead of denying it and blaming the media for reporting what she actually said.
I am not Terr and I can’t and won’t speak for him. I do have a fair amount of training over my years in the National Guard to deal with situations like this. Fortunately, I have no experience doing it for real. I’m particularly glad because the one case where my unit was part of the plan … let’s just say an expectation of far worse than Ferguson after the grand jury announcement was not unrealistic. Taking our tracked armored personnel carriers was included in the plan.
I took this question out of order because it’s key. If it’s an unlawful assembly in accordance with common law, precedent and the statute of the Commonwealth of Maryland (or whatever state you are in) it does make anyone whoever remains a law breaker. How does an individual protestor who’s not doing anything wrong (and maybe isn’t aware of what’s happening on the other side of the crowd) know that line is crossed. It gets announced, loudly and generally several times. When Mister Bullhorn says “This is an unlawful assembly. You are ordered to disperse.” there’s two choices. One is disperse. The other is getting a lawyer and dealing with the possible arrest through the legal system. It’s only possible arrest because it’s hard to arrest really big crowds.
It’s good technique to announce a couple times and give people time to actually take action. Like most things the situation dictates. As long as some are making the move away it reduces the numbers that need to be dealt with while simultaneously reducing the crowd pressure on those who can go either way.
A safe zone seems like a bad technique in most cases, since moving a group that that has already crossed the line to unlawful assembly to a new area doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the crowd unless the move itself changes something. I have been on the receiving end of being moved in college, though. That assembly was a spontaneous celebration of a big football win. IN that case they moved us from the street (open alcohol in public and obstructing traffic as the widespread legal issues) to the lawns that were private property on both sides. The moving didn’t change the crowd but it did end the lawbreaking.
Snatch squads if you are dealing with limited and specific lawbreakers before actual riot. While things are still generally lawful it’s an option to deal with those who are inciting riot or breaking the law in serious ways in a crowd that is generally peaceful. It can be risky depending on the temperament of the crowd. By the time you get to real chaos that has reached the level of unlawful assembly you don’t separate. At that point, they all either disperse or get dispersed/arrested. At the point of dispersing the crowd you generally aren’t focused on arresting as many as you can simply for logistics reasons.
You don’t. It doesn’t matter what their intentions were beforehand anyway. You decide based on actions on the ground. Some who go to be completely peaceful can get carried away and riot themselves. Crowd dynamics are powerful. The experienced inciters know how to use them to achieve their ends.
So probable cause is failure to disperse when no time is given to comply.
Police state. Got it.
And when does lawful assembly become unlawful? Who decides and how do they inform the assembly of the change? How much time do they have to comply with an order to disperse?
If you’re in the middle of a couple of hundred people, you can’t disperse very fast.
Or is this just a plan to eliminate lawful assembly?
It goes well with the House trying to avoid scrutiny by the SCOTUS.
It’s hardly mysterious.
It depends on what the police want. If the police want people to stop throwing rocks and burning cars and looting, then I can understand why they would not want to stop but they still have to do it. If the police want protests to be peaceful, I don’t know why anyone would want them to be violent unless violence was what they were after in the first place.
If the police don’t want peaceful protests, then clearly peaceful protesters would not want to go along but I have seen no indication that the police wanted to stifle or prevent peaceful protests.
Regards,
Shodan
It becomes unlawful as is determined by whatever process exists in that given area. My guess is that it is different from place to place.
Loud and repeated orders over a bull horn or loudspeaker with on the ground authorities reinforcing the message as they disperse the crowd.
Again with the amount of time to disperese, you keep asking that and it’s been answered.
Nobody said fast, there is no stopwatch. You just have to show your intent and action as much as reasonably possible to leave and stay away for whatever time.
Hellman’s with Olive Oil helps.
(post shortened)
Same as before. Lawful assembly becomes unlawful when the protestors, looters, arsonists, and terrorists begin throwing rocks and bottles, burning buildings, and stealing.
Why should a CVS store be looted and burned? What did CVS employees do to you, or to the protestors, looters, arsonists, and terrorists, to make you think it’s OK to punish CVS for the death of Freddie Gray?
FCOL. “Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being repressed!”
If a policeman truly gives no time to comply, the court will throw the arrest out. Do that too many times and the policeman will be in trouble with his superiors and the judge.
Never said a word about it. So just because you’re in a protest and someone starts trouble, you’re in trouble for it?
Because that worked so well.
I have yet to see a time limit specified.
According to your own cite, the judge sided with the protesters.
Wow.
You also have yet to see “reasonable officer”, “noisy” and “reasonably” from the judge’s statement precisely defined:
"Judge Jed S. Rakoff sided with protesters saying, “a reasonable officer in the noisy environment defendants occupied would have known that a single bull horn could not reasonably communicate a message to 700 demonstrators”.
does that bother you?
I didn’t see in your cite where the specific cases you quote were violent.
How many of the looters in Baltimore were arrested for failure to disperse, vs. those arrested for looting and burning and throwing rocks?
Regards,
Shodan
You have several personal choices to make. You could leave the area. You could stop the trouble-maker. You could ask the trouble-maker to stop causing trouble. So many choices.
If trouble does start, you could/maybe/might assume that police will clear the area. You can wait until you receive a personal invitation to leave. You could wait until there is a general announcement to clear the area. You could wait until you see people being arrested. Or you could leave when the looting, burning, and stealing begins. Your choice.
It’s more likely in my opinion, and in the opinion of anyone who doesn’t immediately want to paint her as the villain- you know, unlike the plethora of right-wing sites, news outlets, and blogs who immediately took her quote out of context and fed it to their viewers like so much raw meat.
Because the other option is that she set aside an area for the rioters to destroy… and then *bragged *about doing so in front of the national stage. Does that make any sense at all?
If someone misinterprets something you say, or takes something you’ve said and deliberately chops it up into saying something you didn’t intend, is it what you’d intended to say all along? And when that happens, are you going to try to clarify your statement, or just shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, I guess that’s what I really meant all along”?
You know, I’m getting really tired of the “gotcha” shtick the right wing is on now. It makes you guys look really stupid and gullible. And then when you plant your feet and double down- like I imagine you’re going to do in response to this post- it just makes you look pathetic.
She is not a villain. Just an inept administrator who thought that (as fusion.net put it) “it might have been worth the calculation from city officials to sacrifice a little public property for the sake of allowing protesters to vent their anger, hopefully quelling unrest in the long run.”. Which then blew up in her face.
Saying something that reveals that one is not competently handling one’s job is different from bragging.
Perhaps you don’t know this - but when the lefties kvetch about “right-wing” sites like CNN and fusion quoting some Democrat dolt saying something stupid, it isn’t the right wing that looks stupid and gullible and pathetic.
Regards,
Shodan
Correct, your other option doesn’t make any sense at all.
The mayor’s quote wasn’t taken out of context. There’s video of what she said. Many people questioned what the Mayor actually said. She could have clarified her statement earlier than she did and she shouldn’t have denied saying what she said, especially when she knew there had to be video of her saying it.
I understand what you mean up to a point . I understand that people had reach their breaking point but I do not understand why the polices were not ready for this .
There should had been more polices on the streets when Gray’s funeral was over.
Of course it was. Here’s a few headlines:
“We Gave Those Who Wish to Destroy Things Space to Do That”
“Baltimore Mayor on Protestors: Just Give Them Some Space”
If she *had *set aside areas for the rioters to destroy, *why *would she then announce that she’d done so in a press release? It would have been far smarter to just keep quiet about- you know, if that had been what she’d done. Which she didn’t.
You’re arguing over her wording. Why don’t you find that an embarrassing hill upon which to die? You could be raking her over the coals for her actions (because yes, I imagine the whole thing could’ve been handled better)- but instead, it’s her wording that you think it important.
We’ve seen exactly this sort of behavior before- hell, O’Keefe is famous for taking liberals out of context.
Just wondering, *when *would have been early enough to clarify her statement for you to accept that she misspoke? The original press release was on Saturday night; she clarified her statement on Monday morning. How long after the right-wing blogosphere started running her name through the mud should she have tried to correct them?
To be honest, if she had simply come out with clarification first instead of vehement denials and accusations of media villainy, I’d probably be more down for the “out of context” explanation. As it is, I think it was maybe an undercurrent of ‘Let’s set aside some areas on the downlow and if they get torn up… eh, butcher’s bill; if not, all the better.’, but her mouth got away from her.