anyway, i played devil's advocate. it reads as follows.
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a blog post was posted that went something like this
Award-Winning Journalist Arrested @ RNC for Doing Her Job
First there were "protest zones" where First Amendment rights could be exercised out of the view of anyone who would potentially be influenced by them. Now journalists are arrested for covering protests at the RNC.
Am I alone in seeing a pattern of shutting down peaceful dissent?
Thanks, Frankodelic....
there was youtube video, as well as the text of a blog entry from elsewhere, which i don't reproduce here. "award-winning journalist" is amy goodman, host of democracy now!, a radio and television show. her producers were also arrested while covering war protests at the RNC in st. paul last week.
i wanted to comment, so i did. it said that the owner needs to approve the comment. i don't know if she will. i spent a fair amount of time responding/commenting, though, so i decided to post it here. and all that.
1. from what i've read, the dissent was mostly peaceful, yes. however, consider that some protesters were breaking windows, slashing tires, and harassing delegates. that doesn't fall into my definition of "peaceful dissent".
2. police in riot gear aren't present to serve peaceful dissenters creme brule and biscotti. they're there to ensure public safety.
i'd define "public" in this instance as RNC attendees, press on hand to cover the event, peaceful dissenters, people living in the area, business owners and their employees in the area, people breaking windows and slashing tires and harassing delegates (however misguided they may have been in their actions), and yes, even the police on hand. they're people, too, and they've got a much more difficult job than you or i or most people have.
3. police in riot gear ensuring public safety don't have time to sit down for a friendly one-on-one with ten thousand peaceful dissenters to find out whether the intent of the dissenters is simply to shout while waving a sign or to break windows and slash tires and harass delegates. the futility of even trying should be obvious, considering that many people have an amazing facility for lying.
now consider that police - in riot gear or not - are witness to the very worst of human behavior day in and day out. it's not difficult to imagine that such a person would become conditioned to expect the worst from the people they meet. it might not be human nature, but it certainly seems reasonable if you remember that police are people too.
4. back to st. paul several days ago, and the police - the ones in riot gear - are doing their job of ensuring public safety in the midst of a protest at the RNC site. suddenly a mild havoc breaks out. windows are being broken. tires are being slashed. delegates are being harassed. the safety of the public is endangered.
now, from what i can gather, it was a mild havoc - by all reports, about 2% of the peaceful dissenters abandoned peaceful dissent in favor of breaking windows, slashing tires, and harassing delegates. riot-geared police - apparently having forgotten their exact-amount-and-precise-location-of-havoc meters - act quickly to restore order, thereby doing their job of ensuring public safety. remembering that the riot-geared police (who are also people, please recall) are exposed to humankind's worst, they were probably expecting the worst from this situation and wanted to act quickly to contain it.
5. when a havoc of unknown scale and extent breaks out during a protest at the site of the RNC, riot-geared police doing their job of ensuring public safety are going to act according to their training to restore order. i'm not the police. i don't know any police. however, i strongly suspect that their crowd-control and havoc-containment training does not include politely asking peaceful-dissenters-turned-vandals-and-harassers if they wouldn't mind terribly going to the time-out corner to have a nice glass of lemonade.
6. police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety are in riot gear not because it looks cool or because it's super-comfy. police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety are in riot gear because of a consensus among public safety officials that there exists a better-than-normal possibility that a havoc could break out which, if uncontained, could lead to a full-scale riot. chaos would ensue.
chaos is not conducive to public safety.
7. preparing for the possibility of being unable to contain a havoc before it leads to a full-scale riot and having chaos ensue has got to be fairly nerve-wracking. the police in riot gear who are doing - or attempting to do - their job of ensuring public safety are probably tense and nervous, in spite of and due to their training and experience. people (and police are people, remember) in stressful situations become tense and nervous.
8. knowing that they'll be labeled jack-booted thugs and worse by every knee-jerk reactionary with a blog - as well as any number of 'legitimate' news sources - for each and every action they take, while preparing for the possibility of chaos ensuing during the course of attempting to do their job of ensuring public safety can't do much for their peace of mind.
9. police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety in this frame of mind act to contain the havoc before it can spread and chaos can ensue. peaceful dissenters who have abandoned peaceful dissent in favor of breaking windows and slashing tires and harassing delegates are unlikely to agree to sit down and listen to reason, see the error of their ways, and stop behaving criminally. police realize this, and so will do what they need to do in order to stop the criminal behavior - not simply for its own sake, but also as an example for others who might be tempted to stop peacefully dissenting and start committing crimes.
10. peaceful dissenters who have abandoned peaceful dissent in favor of criminal behavior may or may not resist being arrested. police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety have no way of knowing whether a peaceful dissenter who has abandoned peaceful dissent in favor of criminal behavior is going to resist arrest, which is why they're allowed to decide for themselves when and whether to use force in apprehending someone they suspect of committing a crime, and how much force to use when they decide it's necessary.
remembering that police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety are people might assist understanding of instances of use of force. who hasn't cracked under pressure and said something they didn't mean to say, or done something they didn't mean to do? people make mistakes.
i do not mean to excuse any excessive use of force, but if they felt it was necessary or if they flew off the handle, it's understandable. it's easy to sit back and watch the video and scream about repression. it's probably not so easy to make the right judgment call under pressure. over and over and over again.
11. peaceful dissenters and peaceful-dissenters-turned-vandals don't wear different uniforms at protests. police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety have no way of telling the difference between a peaceful dissenter and a peaceful-dissenter-turned-vandal-or-worse. the police - being people and not having eyes in the backs of their heads - will arrest anyone they suspect of having committed a crime.
12. if a peaceful dissenter is suspected of committing a crime but hasn't, and a police officer attempts to arrest the peaceful dissenter, the peaceful dissenter has committed a crime if he resists being arrested. it's called resisting arrest. if a peaceful dissenter's friend is being arrested on suspicion of committing a crime and the peaceful dissenter attempts to intervene, she has committed a crime. it's called obstructing the legal process. or interfering with a peace/police officer.
13. the legal process covers police - in or out of riot gear, monitoring the goings-on at a protest or not - arresting any person they suspect of committing a crime. the legal process can probably be interpreted to mean any action a police officer takes in the course of doing the job of ensuring public safety.
which brings me around to amy goodman and her producers.
i wasn't there. i didn't see how the producers were arrested, whether they did anything to attract the attention of police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety, or how they reacted to being arrested ... other than waving their credentials, shouting "press! press!".
being manhandled and bloodied by police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety is excessive, yes. i definitely won't disagree with that. being slammed into a wall and dragged along the pavement isn't necessary. clearly stress and frustration don't help a person keep a level head.
police in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety and attempting to contain havoc before it spreads probably don't consider a part of their mandate to be "explaining to peaceful dissenters why their colleagues were arrested", particularly if havoc remains to be contained. i expect ms. goodman was attempting to use her fame and press pass to exempt her from rules that are for everyone.
so, "award-winning journalist arrested for doing her job" is accurate, if you consider "demanding an explanation of police officers in riot gear doing their job of ensuring public safety when they have other, more pressing matters at hand" to be amy goodman's job. otherwise, not so much.
she and many others were handled violently, yes. by people outnumbered and under enormous pressure to do a difficult job they're reviled for doing, day in and day out.
myself, i'd rather have people manhandled than to deal with the aftermath of a riot, and it makes me sad that any outlet with any kind of readership will use this as an excuse to demonize the police.
your contribution, and your propagation of other sources spreading half the story does little but to deepen the rift and lessen already minimal understanding, compassion, or empathy. try to put yourself in someone else's shoes once in a while.
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which didn't garner much support from anyone who read it, unsurprisingly. not long after i wrote the original, i had to defend it.
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my mother-in-law Jay, whom i love dearly, commented to me like this:
I'm not sure what you were trying to say, Mikey. But it sure sounded like and argument for removing more of the American people's civil liberties, and forming a police state with unlimited power to do whatever they want with their riot gear without first ascertaining whether it is appropriate or not.
and i retort like this:
i'm kind of disappointed that i took so much time to write what i wrote, then what you took out of it is me arguing that i want civil liberties yoinked from people and the police given free reign to ride rough-shod over anyone at any time they see fit.
we're not as close as we could be, sure, but i thought you knew me better than that.
i'm all for civil liberties and all against their being removed, but i'm not sure how anyone in this case is in danger of losing any.
a multitude of protesters was allowed to assemble in st. paul around the excel energy center during the RNC. there wasn't a problem until a tiny number among the multitude of protesters began breaking windows and slashing tires and harassing delegates.
assembling is legal. vandalism and harassment are not.
two hundred protesters out of ten thousand took to the non-legal kind of behavior during the protest. i don't know how many police were on the streets at the time, but i do know that they were outnumbered by the crowd, and quite possibly outnumbered as well by the lawbreakers. they'd have needed to act quickly and decisively to stop the vandalism and harassment, because... what if they hadn't?
what if the remaining 9.800 reasonably-behaved protesters had seen the 200 not-so-well-behaved protesters breaking windows and slashing tires and generally running amok - and getting away with it? isn't it conceivable that others would join in the amok-running? what if another 1500 had joined in? another 2000?
again: i don't and i won't condone the use of excessive force by the police - their running amok is no more acceptable than it is when protesters do it. check that: it's worse when the police do it, because they're sanctioned.
BUT
i don't and i won't support the notion that the police should be gelded. not in a situation like this, anyway. there are enough rabble-rousers in a crowd, and enough rabble willing to be roused in that same crowd for me to agree - people in general simply are not well-behaved enough for that.
was it *all* the protesters? certainly not.
there's people who are capable of being civilized. and there are the others, who give everyone a bad name.
at the same time, though, it wasn't *all* the police, either.
there's those who can do the job without the sanction and authority going to their heads. and then there are the others, who give them all a bad name.
i'd guess that many people who gravitate toward police work - especially the ones who are likely to be on the street in riot gear in a crowd-control situation - are the kind i went to school with who were jocks and macho "don't-take-no-shit" types. some of these were the kind who'd stuff a guy like me into his locker and leave him there.
among them all, i'm sure a significant number never developed much in the way of impulse control, or they went on a power trip. maybe both.
in a pressure situation, any of these sound bad to me. people can lose their heads and do things they shouldn't. does any of this excuse abuse of power or use of excessive force?
hell no.
it can maybe explain it a little bit, though.
the system sucks, yes. police need to be held to a higher standard than they seem to be most of the time, and there are many things that need fixin'.
i'm not ready to strip them of all their gear and send them out with nothing but a whiffle bat and a stern glower, though.
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i didn't hear anything about this after that, so i reckon my take on the matter is pretty far off from most folk i know. this remains my take on the matter, and is pretty unlikely to change.
