So, let's watch the first minute or so of this clip.
Now, plainly these kids are a pain in the ass. The cops have more important things to do, and being called out of an afternoon to cater to the desire of over-privileged university students to be arrested is an annoyance they don't need. Furthermore, the kids are engaged in some form of something like trespass, which the police have a legitimate authority to stop.
Still and all, the cop in question is clearly out of line, is he not? What justifies the use of pepper spray here? Pepper spray isn't so bad, of course -- it used to be a standard part of military basic training to be exposed to similar gases -- but what was the point of it? Have we gone so far that any American who produces a momentary annoyance for a police officer is subject to pepper spray as well as arrest?
I don't dispute the existence of a general police power; but increasingly I wonder at whether anyone in government understands the proper use of that power. To prevent the outbreak of disease, yes, this is a genuine and crucial need of compact cities; but this is an abuse, similar to how it has become common to use SWAT teams -- once intended for "special" situations requiring "special" weapons or tactics -- for the ordinary business of serving warrants.
Is there truly no one left in government who understands how to strike a balance between preventing the outbreak of plagues, and letting a few college students punch their "I got arrested for Peace and Justice" card?
64 comments:
Cross-posted from TigerHawk, who has a similar post up.
I've been tear-gassed, although not pepper-sprayed. The ones using the gas wore gas protection equipment; they didn't apply the gas with their own faces completely unprotected, like the cop in this video was doing with the "pepper spray."
Second, look again at the "victims," and see how they react to being pepper-sprayed in the face. Tear gas or pepper spray, the response is pretty prompt. These "victims" didn't respond to the spray until their compatriots behind them began yelling. And then the response was astonishingly mild for having been sprayed with a strong eye irritant.
I have to wonder what else was going on that's in the film editing bit bucket from before the start of what's shown. Perhaps the investigation that's already underway will answer some of this, including maybe, yes, this particular cop was out of line. Or not.
Eric Hines
I doubt it's 'this particular cop,' in any case. His manner suggests that he is playing a role in something agreed-upon; it is the unit that is responsible, or which shall -- which must -- be vindicated.
The cops are taking the organizers' bait pulling such a pointless stunt. Not surprising it was campus police. In my experience they generally rank somewhere south of Sheriff Dupnik's crew when it comes to professionalism.
I agree with Eric that the spray isn't having the expected effect. Having been at the receiving end in similar situations it wasn't as bad as I expected but it was way worse than it's effecting these little brats. We're using Kinder and Gentler spray apparently.
I agree with Hines that it's always good to ask what the larger context of the video was.
That said, I disagree about the effect. Pepper spray doesn't require protective gear for the user; one of its intended functions is self-defense for civilians, so such a necessity would be counterproductive. Also, it is intended to temporarily blind someone when the spray makes direct contact with the eyes. Look at the protesters: hooded, face down, some wearing glasses. The cop waved the canister before spraying, so they may have had their eyes closed. The cop is spraying down on them, not into their faces in most cases. It also wouldn't be surprising if a target who had his eyes closed when sprayed was then affected later when he opened his eyes and some residue got into them.
Anyway, on to the topic at hand, even taking Hines's admonishment about context into account, this does seem excessive to me. Why spray them before dragging them away? The police are not acting as if there is any urgency to the situation whatsoever. The officer who sprays obviously doesn't feel as if he's in any danger, either from the sitting protesters or from the crowd behind him.
I wonder if this might be SOP now, and if so, why that would be.
I wonder about the effect of a police culture that believes such force is ordinarily appropriate -- both on the police, and on the citizenry that comes to accept and expect that it will be treated this way by the police.
Other reports tell us that the protesters were ordered to leave--several times--and these particular ones did not do so.
Baltimore PD Lieutenant (retired) states that this is SOP, because picking them up and moving them could result in injuries to the protesters--IOW, pepperspray is the least harmful alternative.
Of course, they could have left them there, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.
I'm a bit confused here.
You admit that these kids were trespassing, and also that the police have a legitimate mandate (and authority) to stop.
So how do they "stop it"?
1. They can pick up these kids one by one. Have you ever tried to lift another human being who isn't helping? It's not easy.
2. They can try to make refusing to get off the sidewalk and illegally blocking the way so unpleasant that the kids will get up and move on their own (which they did).
What bothers you so much about this, Grim?
They're lucky it isn't truncheons.
They're lucky it isn't truncheons.
I'm not convinced luck had much to do with it.
Eric Hines
Cass:
What's going on here is that you have a protest for the sake of getting arrested. These kids aren't dangerous to anyone, they're just acting out because they've been misled into believing that protests of this sort are noble and uplifting (thanks, of course, to their Baby Boomer parents and teachers endlessly celebrating the glories of resistance to Vietnam).
By coming out dressed in riot gear and using pepper spray, the police are playing the game in a way that will reinforce the students' misconceptions about the society we live in. You could hardly have calculated a PSYOP that would have done more to convince the students that they were right to think of cops as fascist thugs. The tactic also valorizes the students' 'resistance,' so that the story they are telling themselves is reinforced by making them think of themselves as heroic resisters of tyranny, just like Dr. King.
Furthermore, it underlies a concern I have that the relationship between the police and society is wearing down. The deputies I grew up around thought of themselves as peace officers, not different in kind from everyone else -- indeed, they knew pretty much everyone in the community on a first-name basis, and that engagement and friendship underlay the effectiveness of their operations.
That's the kind of approach that is needed here. I realize this is a pain, and the cops surely have more important things to do. That said, what the police are doing here is simply out of order with the nature of the challenge, and the needs of our society. What we really need is for these kids to learn that their underlying framing story is wrong; but this only reinforces every wrong thing they believe.
That, of course, ought to make us ask whether they are wrong at all -- after all, the facts seem to be supporting their picture and not ours. They expect the police to be fascist thugs, and the police seem ready to play along. That should be disturbing, even of itself.
Your definition of "fascist thug" obviously differs from mine.
Fascism and thuggery appear to have been defined down considerably.
The police have been removing protesters by physically moving them, only to be accused of "brutality" (which, like "fascist thug", appears to have radically changed its meaning in the years since anyone in the United States has come into contact with an actual fascist thug). By your rule, the police really have no right to enforce the law because the rightness of what they do lies in the perception of a bunch of very screwed up kids.
There are objective standards - or there used to be - for words like police brutality or fascist thuggery. Your rule appears to do away with any pretense to objectivity.
Your rule appears to do away with any pretense to objectivity.
At the risk of putting words into Grim's mouth inaccurately, I don't think he's positing a rule so much as he's describing a perception contest.
The fallacy, in my mind, is that the police aren't there to win a perception contest; they're there to do a difficult job, that has clear and objective standards, in an objective way. The perception contest is won or lost by whether the police get their job done quickly and cleanly or not.
Eric Hines
I'm not making a claim to objectivity. I said that I had a perspective, which is that the police ought to behave a certain way -- and this is not it.
This behavior is in line with the story the left tells about police, according to which police are fascist thugs: a story with which I disagree, part of an underlying framing story that I have said is wrong. Yet it is nevertheless that story that the police are playing out, and it isn't helpful that they do so.
These are the campus police, after all, whose key job is not actually "to enforce the law" but to protect the members of the university -- from disease, from assault or rape, from outsiders, and from the kind of disorder that would prevent the functioning of the institution. The law is only a tool toward that greater end, which we might call the peace and good order of the community.
Is the university's peace improved here, or its community strengthened? Now what if, instead, the police had gone to the administrators and reached out to teachers that the students respected, and arranged a settlement by which the protesters could be arrested (since that is what they wanted), but through an orderly process that didn't require the use of force. The students could make their point, have a nice sit-in in jail overnight, and the next day be back in classes.
Peace officers who had made relationship building a priority could do that. As it is, they have managed to "enforce the law," but at the cost of the greater good they were supposed to be using the law to create. The community is now more divided, angrier; and rather than being in a stronger position the police are now in a much weaker one because they are being investigated and disciplined.
This was simply poor judgment, and a result of poor training and a mentality that is out of line with what policing is supposed to be about. Policing is by nature honorable work -- but remember just why. Honor is sacrifice, and the policeman who takes risks to protect the weak is doing something that is inherently honorable.
The police department that instead places the risk on the weak -- and these protesters, though they may be in the wrong, are certainly "the weak" -- has lost the core of what makes the institution honorable. This is of a piece with the over-use of SWAT teams for warrant service, except here there is not even the pretense that the officers are in danger; this is a resort to violence merely for convenience.
Again, I'm not opposed to violence; but violence, like law enforcement, is a means to an end. They have failed to achieve the end, or even to properly judge whether their chosen means could lead to that end at all.
what if, instead, the police had gone to the administrators and reached out to teachers that the students respected, and arranged a settlement by which the protesters could be arrested (since that is what they wanted), but through an orderly process that didn't require the use of force.
What makes you think they would have agreed?
That would certainly teach a lesson: that anytime they feel like it, they can block public thoroughfares and make it difficult or impossible for other people who don't agree with them to go about their business (which includes getting the education they paid for). They can exercise their "freedom" by curtailing the freedom of others. And they won't be treated like other citizens because they're special.
I can't think of a worse lesson to teach a child.
...what if, instead, the police had gone to the administrators and reached out to teachers that the students respected, and arranged a settlement....
I think this is...optimistic. Had the administrators and teachers agreed that that was the right course of action, they would have acted on their own initiative, using the authority inherent in their own positions, instead of waiting for their hirelings, the campus police, to come to them to say, "Pretty please, may we do the jobs you hired us to do? Will you please help us do our jobs?"
No, the administrators and teachers actually were supportive of the pupils and their unlawful behavior--this is what they teach, often actively, and at the least in the present case by their silence and through their silence, condoning the present students' behavior.
...campus police...whose key job is...to protect the members of the university...from the kind of disorder that would prevent the functioning of the institution....
Perhaps including the disruptive behavior that was this "protest."
Eric Hines
If the administrators were supportive, Mr. Hines, they would not have asked the police to remove the students -- the only thing that made it trespassing was that the students had been asked to move. Normally they would have a perfect right to be on campus, would they not?
Of course, if this were an isolated incident we might shrug it off. On the other hand, down at UC Berkeley, we have this report from Robert Haas, former poet laurate of the United States:
My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down....
"My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines."
Now, clearly he's a Leftist too: and a participant in that storyline we were talking about earlier (he describes the police equipment as "Darth Vader riot gear"). So he's helping them understand the story in the old Vietnam terms, and it works because the police are playing the fantasy out with them.
I'm not sure I can take him at his word, for that reason -- but if it were true that a line of armed police officers was beating unarmed young women with truncheons, I would say that we have a serious problem. That is a dangerous claim, and one that I hope does not prove to be true. If it is true, I hope that we retain the balance to punish those officers with the same severity of law we would use for anyone else who took a stick and attacked an unarmed young woman. Their uniform should be no excuse for such behavior, not when they are in the company of a whole unit of their companions, and well armed.
Perhaps, though, the poet is simply making poetry.
The police department that instead places the risk on the weak -- and these protesters, though they may be in the wrong, are certainly "the weak" -- has lost the core of what makes the institution honorable.
So now police are dishonorable?
Wow. The world has changed even more than I thought.
The police department did not "place the risk" on "weak" students. The students voluntarily assumed a well defined and fully disclosed risk by refusing to obey a lawful order.
The people of California passed laws saying that it's illegal to camp out in public spaces. It's also illegal for one group of citizens to lock arms and block access to facilities paid for by other taxpayers. Pepper spray was used as a less invasive alternative to breaking the protesters apart with batons - a process that is almost certain to result in injuries.
The protesters were warned - repeatedly - that if they did not voluntarily disperse, they would be sprayed with pepper spray. This was not a surprise attack. The protesters made a decision with entirely predictable consequences.
If you are told to leave or you will be sprayed with pepper spray, and you then decide not to leave, you have made a deliberate choice.
Oh wait - I forgot. People who are willing to make a big enough stink are not responsible for their choices any more.
It doesn't take much to bring a society to its knees. When a group of people decide they will not obey the law and government decides not to make them, more people decide not to obey the law.
Asking these students to leave was in no way an unreasonable or unlawful request. They have no right to occupy any public space, nor have they any right to impose costs on local business or upon other taxpayers.
I don't really care about their feelings. I do care about my ability to drive on public streets and walk in public spaces without large, angry crowds blocking access and pounding on cars driven by people trying to get to work. I care about ambulances and police and firemen being able to get to people who have called for help, as they manifestly could not in DC when the streets were being blocked by OWS morons.
This incident was 100% preventable. It was always in the protesters' power to leave - they had already had ample time to protest. They chose not to, and you call the police who were asked to move them dishonorable.
It's an if/then statement, Cass: one derived directly from the principles laid out here.
Honor isn't a given. It doesn't come with the uniform. It has to be lived. If they betray the principles of honor, then yes, they are dishonorable. To my way of thinking, the work is honorable by nature -- if it is done right, it is inherently honorable work. Some don't do it right.
The same is true of soldiers, for that matter. Soldiering is inherently honorable work. We can nevertheless think of examples of soldiers who have behaved dishonorably: the Abu Ghraib scandal being a clear example of this.
I wonder if a look from a different angle might help....
It's a beautiful Saturday and everyone in the house has a given set of chores that need to be done. However, young son has decided that he doesn't feel like doing his work. Instead he finds a quiet corner and proceeds to play with a couple of toys he's brought out from his room. When you first notice him, the natural reaction is to ask him if he's gotten his chores done already. He says, "No, I don't want to do them." So, you sit down with him and remind him that everyone in the house has work to do and by doing so together you all are able to get the day's work done in a relatively short amount of time leaving the rest of the day to play. But young son isn't having any of it. He doesn't want to work. He only wants to play. Trying once again to negotiate his return to work, you explain how everyone has a job to do within the family. You even tell him that you would love to be able to just stay at home and play everyday instead of going to work. But, you remind him, if you did that there wouldn't be any money coming into the house to buy food, clothes, electricity to light the house or even the very toys he's currently playing with. He's still not buying it. He doesn't want to do his chores, and his mind is made up.
Now at this point, there are very few options left. You can go straight to physical force to try to get him to do as you've said, or you could try the threat of (non-violent) punishment should he not do as you've told him. So, you tell him that he will either complete the chores he's been given or some form of punishment will be handed down -- be that taking away those toys, not being able to go and do something fun that's been planned, etc. But the boy is a stubborn young cuss and having already defused your arguments to this point, he sees no reason to back down now.
What do you do?
The boy is completely defying your authority as parent, and he thinks he's winning. This is key because as long as he thinks he can win he will continue to challenge you. Also, at this point there is another factor to keep in mind: in the kitchen watching this exchange through the window is the boy's older sister. She doesn't want to do her chores either, and she's eager to see if his challenge is successful because it may mean she can get out of doing her work, too.
So, what do you do? You've tried reasoning with him. You've tried the threat of nonviolent punishment. Do you walk away and leave him to do his thing in hopes that he will eventually do as you've asked? Doing so would essentially abdicate any parental authority you had within the house -- for both the boy and his sister. At what point do you say, "I've tried to reason with you, Son, but now you will do as you've been told", pick the boy up by the scruff of the shirt and force him? And now, once having reached that point, what mental and physical steps will you go through to make sure that his resistance doesn't land an unintended, yet still incapacitating, blow to Slim Jim and the Twins (or any other sensitive body part) as well as keeping him from being truly hurt by your use of force?
Sorry, but I'm with Cass on this one. They WANTED to be sprayed. I don't think they just wanted to be arrested, they weren't looking to "punch their social justice card." These are spoiled brats complaining about tuition increases (which the University can't actually do anything about, as far as I know) caused by California's budget crunch. And they thought that by protesting, someone would give in to their demands. When told they would be pepper sprayed if they did not disperse, one of two things occurred to them. Either the police would not go through with it as they were "peacefully protesting" (and honestly, it doesn't actually matter how "peaceful" you are, an illegal assembly is still illegal), or that since they knew their friends were filming, being pepper sprayed would buy sympathy for their cause.
I have no evidence, but I suspect it was the latter given the hooded sweatshirts on all of them (with hoods pulled up), but I have no empirical proof of that.
Regardless, this is hardly a "human rights abuse". I've been tear gassed, by the US Army even! Never mind that I volunteered for it; in a way, so did these kids when they refused to disperse. It is painful. It is disorienting. It is blinding. I will say, it is probably the worst pain you will ever go through that is completely gone in a couple of hours and has no after-effects (which is to say, childbirth is worse, getting shot, stabbed, beaten, or otherwise physically injured would all be worse). Dragging them off physically would be much more likely to injure them. All pepper spray does is make you incapable of resistance.
You assume that the school administration would have been able to treat with them rationally. But I think you're mistaken. I see no evidence that the students were after anything other than complete capitulation, or to cause an incident. They got the later. At that point, even a peace officer would be left with no options other than to allow the law to be broken, or to enforce it, as per their oaths. Surely you're not suggesting a peace officer would be an oath breaker?
Sly,
I passed that by when Cass brought it up before ("a worse lesson to teach a child"), but these are not children dealing with their parents. The police are not empowered to act as if they were the parents of citizens, and I don't think we'd want them to be so empowered. A government that has that power is called paternalistic, and it's the sort of government we usually oppose. Eat your vegetables, buy your mandatory health insurance, and take your spanking for talking back.
You and I would rightly object to a government that treated us that way, or that even undertook to think of us that way.
Mike:
I'm not chiefly concerned about these particular students (except in the case of the female ones who were allegedly brutally beaten in the Haas example). I am concerned about the relationship between the police and the citizenry in a democracy.
It should be pretty clear what my limits are on police use of force, but if not let me spell them out. The police should use force if and only if:
1) They are acting to prevent immediate death or grievous bodily harm, i.e., in the same situation that justifies any citizen to use force.
2) The force is likely to be effective in achieving their overall end, which in this case is the peace and good order of the community.
3) The force used is appropriate to the threat being faced by the police. Obviously a policeman alone against a mob has greater leeway than a unit of riot police, in full arms and armor, who are facing an unarmed group of students. It's appropriate to use a SWAT team to take down a group of terrorists who have taken hostages; it is less appropriate to use one to serve a warrant on an optometrist who is charged with gambling on sporting events on the weekend (like Sal Culosi, my old eye doctor, who was killed through the negiligence of a member of that team).
If you want to take the line that Cass is taking, then explain to me what the limits are on the use of force by the police. Maybe you can make a good case. What I've heard so far is that the police are justified in using any force, so long as they are under the impression that a law is being broken and that the force makes it momentarily a little easier for them.
I say momentarily, which is a point that I think some of you may be eliding past. It will make it much harder in the long term, in this case: now what do they do next time, when their leadership was suspended and an investigation opened into this incident? Having spent their credibility on this momentary moment of ease, and been spanked for it by the administration, how are they going to enforce the law next time?
This is what I mean by judgement. Theirs was lacking.
By the way, the limits I propose above are mostly not mine: they are essentially the limits on force that St. Thomas Aquinas proposed. A resort to force should be discreet, proportionate, and should have a chance of achieving its end. I don't think this met any of those tests, but the tests haven't changed; for my money, they haven't changed in a thousand years.
Oh, I should also make clear that test 1 is separate; in that case, force is justified for the police or any other citizen. Cases 2 and 3 are meant to delimit the other cases, in which they are not acting to prevent death or immediate and grievous bodily harm.
If the administrators were supportive, Mr. Hines, they would not have asked the police to remove the students....
Or they were shirking your version of their duties to speak directly. This is closer to your concern about the evolving role of police in our society and our acceptance of that evolution than it is to any alleged abuse of that authority in the present case. Nonetheless, they were most assuredly supportive of the students, Grim, by their actions: they chose to remain silent on the students' misbehavior, and they thereby chose to condone--to support--the students in that misbehavior. That they chose to hide behind the action of calling out the police changes this not one whit. Perhaps their use fo the police is more nefarious (I'm speculating freely, here): their sending in the police was simply a deliberate contribution to the setting up of the desired confrontation in order to get the desired response.
Normally they would have a perfect right to be on campus, would they not?
Of course. But as you well know, this situation has nothing to do with "normally." The students were deliberately blocking the way, deliberately blocking others from going about their business on the same campus. "But the students are going about their own business, here exercising their business of free speech." Their business of free speech terminates when it interferes with the free speech rights of others to use the same public terrain for their own business.
Which brings me to: the students were behaving, deliberately, in a manner carefully designed to bring about the police reaction that occurred. It is hugely dishonest, then, to whine and complain that they got the very response which they so desired.
Your logic seems to imply that, were I repeatedly and urgently provoked, urgently and repeatedly assaulted, albeit in a non-physical way, I would be remiss for striking the first physical blow in response. Certainly, the police are official persons and not private ones in their situation; however, the provocations were deliberately in the public arena and so required an official response from the public's representatives.
I'll leave aside the rank sexism apparent in the view that women miscreants shouldn't get the same treatment as their male neighbors in the same miscreancy (took a stick and attacked an unarmed young woman). If the sticks were wrong, they were wrong because they were used, not because they were used on a particular group.
Eric Hines
...young son has decided that he doesn't feel like doing his work. Instead he finds a quiet corner and proceeds to play....
DL Sly, your analogy is apt accept for one critical difference. Suppose young son had decided to do his playing in a location carefully designed to cause the greatest possible disruption to all the family member's attempts to do their own duties, as was the case on the campus? Surely, that would have greatly shortened the timeline between remonstration and action (albeit not eliminating the remonstrations altogether).
Eric Hines
Having spent their credibility on this momentary moment of ease, and been spanked for it by the administration, how are they going to enforce the law next time?
At least they will have been able to enforce the law the one time, rather than not at all, which is the outcome flowing from the administration's and teachers' active condolence of the students' behavior.
As to the brutality of using pepper spray (since the police were wholly justified in physically removing the miscreants so others could exercise their "perfect right to be on campus"), I offer this from an ex-Baltimore cop, Lt Charles Kelly (http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/national/outcry-after-calif.-police-pepper-spray-students , among others): pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters. "When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."
Eric Hines
If you want to take the line that Cass is taking, then explain to me what the limits are on the use of force by the police.
Happy to give my opinion. The limits are, "sufficient force to cause the illegal assembly to disperse, or failing that to arrest them". Pepper spray was an excellent first response after verbal orders to disperse. As I said, it hurts, but causes no physical damage. And if pepper spray dispersed the unlawful assembly, no arrests are needed. If that is insufficient, then move to arrest them (which is what then happened). The pepper spray also has the benefit of "softening them up" as it were. Resistance is much more difficult when you are blinded and in pain.
If physical violence is offered in response to the attempt to arrest, then physical violence may be returned. First with tasers (an escalation over pepper spray which can cause physical harm), then batons (I will not advocate striking someone with a hand, as it is potentially damaging to the officer as well), then with firearms, as the needs dictate.
I find nothing objectionable with the limits I've listed above, regardless of the gender of the target. A woman offering physical violence can be met with proportional violence. It is regrettable, but whereas you and I have the option to avoid offering violence in return by retreating, law enforcement does not have that option. They cannot ignore lawlessness without violating their oaths. This is not to say that if they are able to physically overpower the woman (or man for that matter) without resorting to harming or lethal force, that it would be better. But again, I do not ask a public servant to risk their life to spare harm to an individual who has decided to flout society's laws.
Mr. Hines:
As re: "rank sexism," see here, from 2008.
Mike:
I don't know the precise wording of the oath of the campus police, but if it follows the form of this oath, it says nothing about "enforcing the law" or "lawlessness." That's appropriate: the purpose of the police is not to ensure that the law is obeyed in every particular, all the time. It's to maintain and support peace and good order in the community.
Now, as to the other point, what I asked you to consider was how to limit the use of police force. What you've given me instead is a list of tactics for effectively dispersing an assembly. Where are the limits? What isn't justified, and why not?
As for pepper spray causing no harm, I suppose you've seen this?
This is a good reason for what Mr. Hines is calling "rank sexism" in exempting women, and especially young women, from the violence you would feel freer to use against young men. They may be pregnant. Natural law is at work here: this principle, which I call not sexism but chivalry, is rightly ordered with nature. We set aside natural law at grave peril, and shame ourselves as well.
If you think that's too strong, by the way, I mean it conditionally: if we set aside natural law on this point, then it is shameful. I don't suggest you will do so, once you have had time to think it through.
We would usually object to a proposition framed this way: "A young woman who needs to be taught a lesson should be beaten." Surely we can agree that such a principle is out of order with our values.
Grim:
The bottom line here is that (fruity abstractions and Thomas Acquinas, who last time I checked was not a police officer) aside, the police had 3 practical options here:
1. Evict the protesters and tents by physical force. Since the protesters had linked arms, this would almost certainly have resulted in injuries.
2. Run away, effectively saying to other students, "We will not enforce the law and these students can continue to block your way as long as they want to".
3. Use pepper spray or tasers.
4. Engage in protracted "negotiations", which amounts to saying that not infringing on the rights of others is now optional.
Insisting that these students need to be persuaded to respect the rights of others and obey the law is exactly the problem here. It reinforces the notion that they have a right to do whatever they want, and they don't have that right. They shouldn't have that right.
I don't give a rat's behind whether it's a young woman or a young man. Makes no difference. Young women may be pregnant (and may get abortions legally). Young men may have a hidden heart condition or asthma. Either way, Mike's prior answer works just fine: the minimum amount of force needed to accomplish the objective (in this case, getting intrasigent protesters to stop blocking the sidewalks and camping out).
And Sly nailed it with her example, though I agree with MikeD that if the little boy in her example were preventing other family members from moving freely about the house, the reaction would be a lot swifter.
The right to protest does not mean anyone has a right to protest indefinitely, block others from entering a school, office building, or business, camp out on public property and attract criminals who prey on people who have just as much right to be there as the protesters, etc.
This was 100% preventable. They knew the consequences and decided to break the law. And you think OWS should be coddled and given special privileges denied to other protesters?
On what basis?
Cass:
If you haven't understood the argument by now, repeating it again won't help. I know your son is a police officer, and the matter surely has some personal weight for you. In addition, I understand that the right in general has come to view the OWS crowd as undesirables, and the us/them distinction makes it hard to treat them as if they were like we are.
Nevertheless, I've certainly not argued for special privileges for them. I've argued from universal principles, stated years ago, which apply to this situation as to any other. Aquinas wasn't a soldier either, but his principles underlay the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions, and all Western military law: they're solid principles that I believe are correct.
The crowd is strongly against me on the point, so I will give way: but note my dissent from your views. I believe these officers acted with poor judgment and without honor, and in a manner unfit for those entrusted with the duties of police officers in a Constitutional republic. I have said why; I will leave the matter now.
That's appropriate: the purpose of the police is not to ensure that the law is obeyed in every particular, all the time. It's to maintain and support peace and good order in the community.
I'll agree, but Good order and peace in the community is not possible when you have a group which insists they have a right to impede the free travel of others in the community. Good laws (not that all laws are good) protect the rights of individuals in the community with the least impact on the free practice of the rights of citizens. I do not feel a law against blocking free access to public spaces is an undue restriction of free speech. It is, in my mind, a good law.
For me, this has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the UC Davis student's cause. It has to do with the illegality of their assembly. They were ordered to disperse, they refused. They were warned that failure to disperse would result in chemical irritation. They refused to disperse. They were sprayed. And STILL they refused to disperse. At this point they were arrested. I honestly have no problem with the actions of the campus police.
As for pepper spray causing no harm, I suppose you've seen this?
Actually, I'd be highly surprised if it was the capsaicin caused her miscarriage. I'd be more likely to blame it on the blows she took to the belly. Pepper spray is nothing more than concentrated capsaicin. It causes a burning sensation in the mucus membranes of mammals (all other animals are completely unaffected by it). Barring some bizarre circumstance, I cannot fathom how it could cause a spontaneous abortion.
The crowd is strongly against me on the point, so I will give way: but note my dissent from your views. I believe these officers acted with poor judgment and without honor, and in a manner unfit for those entrusted with the duties of police officers in a Constitutional republic. I have said why; I will leave the matter now.
This outcome is neither desired nor welcome (the leaving, not the disagreeing). But I would be a poor guest to demand you continue the discussion if you don't wish to.
And Sly nailed it with her example, though I agree with MikeD that if the little boy in her example were preventing other family members from moving freely about the house, the reaction would be a lot swifter.
Not that I disagree, but I cannot claim that I was the one who said it. That was Mr. Hines. ;)
Grim:
I have only 3 things to say to you:
1. I am perfectly capable of understanding your argument. Disagreement is not failure to grasp the point. To suggest otherwise is insulting.
2. My son's choice of profession (traffic cop) has nothing to do with whether it is honorable to use force to end widespread and illegal occupations of public space. I did not lose my moral or intellectual compass when my son became a police officer. Nor did I lose the ability to control my emotions. And I have never defended anyone doing something I believed was wrong because they were in some tenuous (extremely tenuous in this case) way connected to me or mine.
To suggest otherwise is insulting. It is also, frankly, something I did not expect from you but clearly you are entitled to your opinion.
3. To suggest (on no evidence) that my take on this situation is motivated by some sort of "us/them" dehumanization effect is likewise deeply insulting.
If the Tea Party or any group of conservatives decided to occupy a public space and refused to obey a lawful order to disperse, my argument would be no different.
To suggest otherwise is not only deeply insulting, but unsupported by anything I have said or written over the years.
There was no need to go there.
I second MikeD's hope that you will stay with the discussion for a bit longer. In the event that you do, I offer this:
if we set aside natural law on this point, then it is shameful.
But natural law applies, also, to the those whom the miscreants are violating with their unlawful behavior, as I intimated (wrt free speech) above. This is a conflict that exists with all men, and it is into this breach that cops--peace officers--must step. And sometimes, they must move beyond the peace keeping and enforce the law. We're humans, not angels; we live under man-made law, which is an attempt to bring into our corporal world the fundaments of natural law.
In the present case, that corporal law is quite clear, and the campus cops were forced by the miscreants' behavior to work through the steps of peace keeping--the peace of the victims of the miscreancy as well as the miscreants--to law enforcement, to physical removal of the miscreants.
You want limits to each of those steps. You can't have limits. Every case is unique; hard one-size-fits-all limits are unworkable. This is where the judgment of the cops that you and I have discussed must be employed. All we can do is give the cops the principles under which they must exercise their judgment. And based on the events as reported, some of us believe the cops employed a workable set of principles; others of us do not.
What limits would you have employed? How would you have protected the rights of the miscreants while also restoring the rights of the other campus-users?
Eric Hines
Cass:
I apologize if I have said anything out of line. You have yourself taught me to think about questions of confirmation bias, of which these two are very common examples that are hard to detect. As you have often pointed out, even scientists with rigorous controls often fall subject to unconscious modes.
I intend no insult; I admitted above that I am not making a claim to perfect objectivity myself. I do not mean to impute anything improper in suggesting these things, because as you have often said, they are normal and natural and we should expect them in ourselves as in others. This lesson always struck me as a wise one, and it is why I took no offense when you suggested that I was not being objective above. It's quite possible that I am not.
Nevertheless, the principles I believe serve as my basis for the claim are spelled out at length. Perhaps it would help to put them in a condensed list.
1) Specific principles on the use of force, including not only Aquinas but also the nature of force-using agencies as means to an end which must therefore be ordered according to whether they do or possibly can achieve that end;
2) A principle that the government should not be permitted to treat its citizens according to a paternalistic model, as if they were children to be taught a lesson;
3) The principle of honor as sacrifice, defined in the post cited above;
4) A principle against the claim that 'Beating can be an appropriate way to teach a young woman a lesson,' which you surely also oppose in other circumstances;
5) A principle from natural law that supports the norm against violence towards women from pregnancy. Your counterexample of a heart condition is not solid, by the way; a parallel to a young man with a heart condition is a young woman with a heart condition. The possibility of an innocent child is the telling matter;
6) An objection to the counterargument that we should not be concerned about that issue because the woman has a right to abort the child. Insofar as I am nominally pro-choice, it is only because I trust the judgment of women more than government bureaucrats; but I am strictly pro-life, in believing that the child has a dignity of its own that ought to be respected. This ends up being another principle on the side of opposing the police action.
I cannot walk away from any of those principles, let alone the nexus of all of them. These principles are the chains I have forged against my own nature -- the ones that control and direct it to better things, and not the evils of which I am capable. They are not dispensable to me, not for any cause. They are what defend a man who takes up arms, and help him survive the dangers to his soul that arise from taking up that terrible power. They are what allow the use of force to strengthen civilization rather than tearing it apart. The policeman, the soldier, they are men like me. They need these chains as much as I do.
Mr. Hines:
My main reason for withdrawing was a fear that I might be coming to the point that I would hurt someone's feelings; since it appears I already have done, I must apologize, but I may also be free to resume the discussion.
I think I can have limits. If we can have rules of engagement in warfare, we can certainly have them inside of a civilization that is not -- not yet -- at war.
I'll restate the principles offered above, with the addition of the words in all caps to show how the principles are to be employed.
Force is justified if:
1) The police are acting to prevent immediate death or grievous bodily harm, i.e., in the same situation that justifies any citizen to use force, OR,
2) The force is likely to be effective in achieving their overall end, which in this case is the peace and good order of the community, AND ALSO,
3) The force used is appropriate to the threat being faced by the police. Obviously a policeman alone against a mob has greater leeway than a unit of riot police, in full arms and armor, who are facing an unarmed group of students. It's appropriate to use a SWAT team to take down a group of terrorists who have taken hostages; it is less appropriate to use one to serve a warrant on an optometrist who is charged with gambling on sporting events on the weekend (like Sal Culosi, my old eye doctor, who was killed through the negiligence of a member of that team).
I think this fails on all three principles; but for the sake of argument, let's say that principle three is satisfied (i.e., that pepper spray was an appropriate level of force). Principle two is key, for the same reason we talked about the "principle end" of matrimony being the production and raising of offspring when we were talking about matrimony.
The principle end of policing is a peaceful community. Has this increased either the peace or the sense of community at UC Davis? Rather objectively, not: and neither has it made the police more capable of effectively pursuing that principle end in the future. You can be guided by that concept rather well, I think. If the principle end is harmed, as it rather clearly was here, then the action was out of order.
That's after-the-fact, of course, but we're less interested in what happened yesterday than what happens tomorrow. The police need to rethink their approach to all this.
Grim,
Force is justified if:
I think this proves my point that you can't have limits (or we disagree on the meaning of "limit," which is entirely possible). The three points you've laid out are certainly justifiable (I'll have to think about them before I accept them wholesale without my usual quibbling around the margins), but they are principles, not limits. I say they are not limits because there's room for judgment--a limit to me is a hard boundary, a rule: do this and only this; there is no wiggle room.
We disagree, for instance, and so there must be a measure of judgment applied, on whether the pepper spray was appropriate to the threat (your stipulation arguendo notwithstanding).
We also disagree on the outcome of principle 2 in the present case (and after-the-fact analyses are the only ways we have of potentiating right responses and reducing wrong responses for the next real-time situation). I think the successful restoration of peace and good order was snatched away from a legitimate police response by their school bosses, who failed to follow through on their employees' actions, actions which I suggest were the result of those school administrators' sending their police out to restore the peace and good order.
Further, preservation and restoral are not one-time events. They're ongoing processes, and often many battles (of all sorts) must be fought. I foresee the following sequence, for instance: the administrators act properly (IMNSHO) and follow through on their police's actions by expelling the miscreant students. Momentary peace, perhaps, but the student miscreants, and outside agitators, respond by repeating the disturbance or escalating it. At this point we're at the same point of loss of peace and order as we would be had the police not done their jobs: the miscreants would still be in place, now emboldened by their early success. The restoral of peace and order in the face of those who have no interest in either peace or order can only be achieved by continued exchanges of arrest and repeated demonstration until th edemonstrating miscreants give up. The police, or their authority bosses, giving up destroys irretrievably the peace of the community--the community itself will have been destroyed.
Eric Hines
And that's the entire point: my persistent problem with Grim's argument is that he represents his opinion about "what would have happened if only"... (which none of us can know) as having far more certainty than it does.
We can speculate about what *might* happen, or we can look at what *has* happened over the past 2 months.
In point of fact, city after city has allowed the OWS protesters far more latitude than they allowed the Tea Party (or any other protesters I can think of). Were they content with this? Did they - in point of fact - change their opinion of government and authority?
No they did not.
Did they - in point of fact - become more cooperative and reasonable as a result of being allowed to squat illegally, after not being charged the same fees or held to the same laws other protest movements were subjected to, after in many cases causing local business owners to lose money and/or business and/or endure destruction of their private property?
No, they did not. Not even close.
Who pays for all this? In my hometown, Occupy DC were not content to roam the streets pounding on cars. No, they decided to march on another group who were trying to exercise their 1st Amendment rights and "occupy" their protest, too: to push and shove and shout them down. Nice.
Giving OWS special treatment not afforded to other groups did NOT cause them to cooperate more. It emboldened them - made them more belligerent and more demanding.
"The peace of the community" is not enhanced when people are allowed to block city streets, to march across town and bully and shove their way into private events, to lock arms and block sidewalks. It is not enhanced when cities have to divert police from already overburdened shifts to patrol areas never designed for large numbers of people to camp in. What about the people who live in these cities - who pay city taxes for the services being rendered to non-resident protesters? Do they have any say in this at all, or should they just shut up and pay, lest they be accused of fascism too?
In this case, the "force" applied did achieve the end of removing protesters who were blocking other people from accessing a public space. And that's a legitimate end.
I suppose you can argue, as I've seen done somewhat ridiculously, that we should wait them out, no matter how much money that costs the city, no matter how much money it costs private businesses, no matter how much they inconvenience, threaten and harass their fellow citizens.
I don't agree that's more important that protecting people from the consequences of their own decisions. They were warned, they had plenty of time to move along, and they refused.
Sorry: living in a world where other people get to have rights too is hard. When you're stupid, it's a lot harder.
In point of fact, of course, the ones where the police have established a good relationship with them haven't made the news. We've got this one down in Athens that I mentioned before. It's not caused any problems so far, and I don't expect it will.
Of course, it's an unusual example (perhaps) because there's a US Marine in charge of it. I stopped by and talked to him last week as he was standing there in an MCU t-shirt and waving a Devil Dog flag. Afghan vet.
One point I was trying to make was that this doesn't have to play out along the Vietnam-protest lines. All these kids -- and the police are filled with young men too -- know what their roles are from watching movies made by baby boomers who want to valorize Woodstock and Kent State. But that's not how it has to be at all. With engagement, we can write our own script, one that doesn't have to lead to pepper spray and violence.
It worked in Iraq, against people who had a lot more reason to be hostile and a language barrier too. It doesn't have to be this way. It requires patience and discipline, but when you pick up the gun, you're accepting a life of responsibility, of patience, and discipline.
Mr. Hines:
A statement that 'force is just if X, Y, Z' can also be read as 'force is not just unless X, Y, Z.'
There is room for judgment, of course. There has to be -- that's a point I've always made even about the law, for that matter, and whether or not to obey it or enforce it. Nevertheless, principles do provide us with limits: surely (I hope) no one would argue that it would have been acceptable to machine-gun the protesters if they had been warned, and still refused to move.
Of course it doesn't have to be this way, Grim.
Those protesters didn't have to occupy anything to exercise their right to free speech or free assembly (and these rights are and have always been subject to time and place restrictions). Millions upon millions of Americans have done that. And they don't have to erect tents, block sidewalks or city streets. None of these things are speech.
You may not understand or agree with this, but I feel absolutely NO duty to "engage" people who refuse to respect others.
If they are in the road, they need to move so the roads can be used for the purpose they were intended for: vehicular traffic. If they are blocking the sidewalk, they need to move so that other people can walk there.
I don't have to ask their permission or negotiate with them.
The argument OWS have been making is that it is OK for break laws others have to obey because they are somehow special.
If the Tea Party wanted to camp out on their campus or in a city park, these folks would be screaming to high heaven.
And so would I because the Tea Party has no right to do that either.
And so would I because the Tea Party has no right to do that either.
Not that they've tried.
All these kids...know what their roles are from watching movies made by baby boomers who want to valorize Woodstock and Kent State.
This is the same argument that says violent cartoons (like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner (and "worse"), et al.) are bad for children because they'll grow up to be just as violent and insensitive. Yet children know these are cartoon, make-believe, not real.
So it is with all of those idiotic movies. The greater danger here is the steady drumbeat of censorship and biased reporting in the NLMSM. If the database from which society must operate is tainted, society has real trouble.
The need for judgment lies in the definitions of X, Y, and Z, also. Of course principles provide us with effective guides to limits, but those limits remain susceptible to judgment. Another necessary condition is that the police and the police's employers must operate from the same set of principles. Without that, it won't matter a bit how tightly we can specify principle or limit.
Eric Hines
I'm going to propose to end the discussion for now, this time not out of fear of giving offense but because I think we've all said what we have to say on the subject. I will note, as a closing observation, this quote from the Washington Post today:
[The chancellor of UC Davis] She told an auditorium filled with a little more than 1,000 students that she asked police to remove tents from the university’s quad but did not direct them to forcibly remove the demonstrators.... she has already asked the Yolo County district attorney’s office to investigate... Attorney General Kamala Harris was deeply disturbed by the videos of the incident[.]
...
On Tuesday, about 50 tents formed an encampment on the site where the pepper-spraying happened as students went about going to class.
Quite a discussion I've been missing. That last bit, Grim, only tells me the Chancellor is not only unwise, but uninformed and hardly thorough in making sure she understands the ramifications of her issuance of orders when she gives them. How to remove the tents until the protestors are removed from the area for security sake?
I think you may have made some errors whilst being driven by noble passions, sir. First, that story of the supposed miscarriage- the woman would not produce documentation from the hospital when asked (multiple times) and then the poster gained access to a police report from late September (when OWS was only in NYC) where the same woman was removed from a trespass situation, where she claimed to be two months pregnant. That was about two months prior to claiming she was either two or three months pregnant and miscarried. A mathematical impossibility. I don't think you're going to find anything that will indicate that pepper spray is anything but the least force the police can apply.
Now, let's examine your points of argument- You kindly distilled the essentials to this:
1) The police are acting to prevent immediate death or grievous bodily harm, i.e., in the same situation that justifies any citizen to use force,
This does not apply, though you've pointed out twice that you thought all three points failed (for emphasis?) So...
OR,
2) The force is likely to be effective in achieving their overall end, which in this case is the peace and good order of the community,
I would say it is clear that almost any action that avoided serious injury to anyone, and cleared the area would qualify on this sole point. More later, but let us proceed...
AND ALSO,
3) The force used is appropriate to the threat being faced by the police.
If pepper spray is the least force possible for the police to apply (beyond the mere threat of force), than it seems difficult to argue this is inordinate force being applied. I think the larger error you make here though, is that point 3 is really a parameter for the determination of the legitimacy of the escalation of force, as appropriateness of application has been determined in 2 (for the moment ignoring your 'and also'). I say that since I could be arrested (which I know you would rightly define as use of force) while posing no threat at all to the arresting officers by being totally compliant, and that could be totally justified, if say I'd been a scofflaw on numerous parking tickets.
(pt 1 of 2)
I want to add that a couple of weeks ago, I had an appointment with a plan checker at the building department to go over plan check corrections, and ran into traffic in downtown Los Angeles because some of these OWS crybabies decided to throw a tantrum in the middle of the busiest street in downtown. I fortunately knew how to get around the mess, and made my appointment, albeit a few minutes late. I was livid with these people, putting their need to feed their hero complex above all others, while creating real difficulties for people like me, my client, and all the other poor working stiffs just trying to get through downtown that day. This sort of thing is not some little game about punching their 'authentic protestor ticket' being played by college students and campus police. It has real affects on real people. Had I been a few minutes later, the plan checker would not have seen me, and my client would have been delayed and had to pay for additional hours of my time, and I'm sure there were other people with more serious issues being affected by that stunt. Certainly there were real costs (and continue to be), and a real breakdown of authority.
I agree that I don't want the state to be paternalistic, but I do want it to be the recognized common authority acting on our communal behalf, and when others create disruption of the peace, the police are obligated by their honor to restore that peace. Yes, using the least force possible, but I believe they did that in this case.
As for the concern that the police end up feeding into what the protestors claim about fascistic police tactics- they are pre-programmed to do that anyway. The police could pick them up with kid gloves and put the flex-cuffs on loose, and these punks would still scream and cry abuse. It's part of their 'game'. That leaves little room to have concern for that issue. I'd draw a parallel to terrorists ignoring the laws of warfare being responsible for the resultant collateral damage. Any women harmed here or supposedly in Berkeley, are the moral responsibility of those who draw them to these events and put them in front to make the police look even more 'fascistic' and 'brutal' when they are left with no choice but to act. These 'activists' have been well coached, and the Alinsky playbook is tried and proven effective.
We cannot, as a society, continue to allow these manipulations of the societal structure to continue without pushback and a call to make clear the truth. That they have pulled sympathy from even you has me truly concerned.
Douglas,
Your last point seems to encapsulate the general feeling: that the OWS approach is an affront to the order of our whole society (not just UC Davis' campus), and that it is important that they receive what you describe as "pushback." Thus, forceful actions are a good thing.
However (and this is why the matter is unjustified on point two, above), let's say for the sake of argument that this is true. For the moment, I'll accept that pepper spray is an entirely appropriate corrective measure.
The problem is that you still need to order your means to your principle end -- which in the case of the campus police is the peace and good order of the community, but you seem to be thinking that we should be acting with an eye toward the good of American society writ large(r). How well did this means achieve that end?
As of today, the UC Davis administration is apologizing profusely to everyone; the police are suspended and under investigation by the DA; the student body appears to have had its faith in the legitimacy of the police as authority figures undermined rather than reinforced; and the tents are right back up where they were a few days ago.
From the perspective of America more broadly, the incident has provided a powerful weapon to those elements within the OWS movement who are genuinely baleful (like this guy). The image of the policeman spraying the students is now being turned into t-shirts across the country. The victory of the protesters at Davis, where the tents are back up, is likewise going to reinforce rather than 'push back' the general trend you are concerned about.
Even accepting all your terms for arguments' sake, I would still have to say that this tactic was a failure. It has damaged the principle end to which it was supposed to be aimed. You're much worse off now than you were a few days ago, whether you're a UC Davis administrator or just a citizen concerned about the nature of the OWS movement.
There's one last point I would like to make, that is not actually relevant to the discussion of force, except perhaps tangentially. There was ONE further action available to the school administration that they chose not to exercise. They could have cleared the blockading students by telling them that if they did not disperse within the hour, they would be expelled. That option is only available in the case of university students, of course, and it is a threat which MUST be carried out if made, but I think it would be an effective one.
Coming in late with my own two cents: the way the police deal with one or two lawbreakers has to be different from the way they deal with a crowd. That's especially true if the crowd is deliberately taking advantage of its size and solidarity to undermine the police's usual methods of enforcing the law. Somehow the police have got to be able to use a tool that undermines the chosen tactic of the crowd. We haven't got safe knock-out gases, as far as I know, so it seems that the police used pepper spray in the knowledge that it renders people more or less incapable of organized resistance, without seriously or permanently injuring them, and therefore made it easier and safer for the policy to move in and physically carry off individual protesters.
All this assumes that the police shouldn't simply have let the protestors stay there until they got tired and ready to leave on their own. A month or so into this drama, I guess my sympathies are with the police on that one.
On the other hand, I can't escape the impression from the videos that the pepper spray actually looks very much more like spite than like a reasoned strategy. I'm sure that's an unfair impression, but it's not good PR, either.
T99:
It's OK to be late; I didn't mean to stop anyone who had something to say that they hadn't said yet. I only wanted to propose that those of us who had clarified their opinions adequately could agree to disagree.
If we're talking about the question of where my sympathies lie, that's obviously a different question entirely. As the original post said, I realize that these protesters are behaving like asses, and the police must have better things to do. The police officers are men of the same kind that I am myself. The officer in the video is a former Sergeant of Marines, a kind of man I normally like and enjoy knowing. Sympathy isn't the question, but for what it's worth....
I might more accurately have said my judgment lay with the police on the issue of waiting the protestors out. Perhaps "sympathies" was my way of saying my judgment was wavering a bit.
Just a couple points, and then I will have said my piece, and further remarks from me would only be bandwidth-wasting variations on a theme.
As of today, the UC Davis administration is apologizing profusely to everyone; the police are suspended and under investigation by the DA; the student body appears to have had its faith in the legitimacy of the police as authority figures undermined rather than reinforced; and the tents are right back up where they were a few days ago.
But this goes to my point earlier: this is a failure of the police's bosses, and not of the police's tactics. More, it's a failure of the police's bosses and the police to be working from the same set of imperatives.
...ran into traffic in downtown Los Angeles because some of these OWS crybabies decided to throw a tantrum in the middle of the busiest street in downtown.
But that's the point and a requirement of protesting. A protest held out in the sticks where no one can see/be bothered by it is no protest at all. If we're going to accept protest as legitimate political speech (and I think we must), then we also have to accept, to channel McLuhan, that the medium is as much a part of the message as are the words.
Of course, it helps when there is some coherent message in the protest beyond a generalized "I don't like."
Eric Hines
If we're going to accept protest as legitimate political speech (and I think we must), then we also have to accept, to channel McLuhan, that the medium is as much a part of the message as are the words.
I would challenge that, Eric. One does not need to block traffic/public access to protest. If your protest does so, you are saying your free speech trumps anyone else's freedom of movement. And if that's the case, why you could hold a building full of people hostage by "protesting" around all the exits (which then also gets into an issue of safety... what if there's a fire?). Protest can be held in legal manners (ask the Tea Party) without being out of sight/out of mind.
You suggest one form of protest. Another form is civil disobedience, which deliberately obstructs and violates the law. One purpose of that is to point up the absurdity of the law and/or the punishment mandated for a law's violation.
"Honest" protesters who are engaging in a civil disobedience campaign, though want to be arrested, and they need to be arrested, else their civil disobedience loses effect.
But that's an additional difference between the Tea Partiers (and Gandhi's movement) and the OWS and their clones. The one had a coherent campaign and a clear message. The other does not.
Eric Hines
First, Mr. Hines beat me to the punch on the issue of it not being the tactics that were wrong, it's the strategic handling of these groups that's the problem.
Civil disobedience needs to target the offending parties. Tying up traffic in downtown affects everyone- that's certainly not acceptable. Also, last I checked, you're welcome to engage in civil disobedience, but if you break the law (rightous as you may be) you've still got to be ready to pay the price for that action. In fact, that's part of what makes it work is that you demonstrate that the point was so important that the repercussions were worth risking. In this specific case, let's add in the fact that they had a prolonged period of time in which to get their point across, and at some point, it's completely reasonable to ask them to wrap it up.
Grim-"From the perspective of America more broadly, the incident has provided a powerful weapon to those elements within the OWS movement who are genuinely baleful ... The image of the policeman spraying the students is now being turned into t-shirts across the country."
Really? I agree that the Adbusters person is intent on his brand of malice, but he's been at this for a long time, and this is as far as it's gotten in decades. I don't see it going much further, either. At any rate, that's neither here nor there- what is relevant to your commment is that they are always looking to manufacture 'moments' like this, and given that this is a free society, they will always be able to by pushing further and harder till they get the 'moments' they want (or think they want). That's one reason why it's never just men that sit down and refuse to vacate a space under police orders, they always make sure to have women, and if possible elderly and sometimes even children. The thing is, you'd think the Oakland evictions which were far more violent would have been a more significant event on those terms, but it's gone from the media already, and I suspect most of America couldn't care less, and most of the rest are happy they were evicted. I think your concerns are good ones, I just think that they're a bit premature.
One thing that concerns me is that some of this discussion would indicate that the police have to start thinking about how they do things like this so that it looks more necessary, and less casual. I don't want that to be the case. They have enough to worry about, and I don't want them trained to be able to utilize visual deception to achieve their goals. Besides, how should the officer have administered the pepper spray differently to make it more palatable or justifiable to the viewing public?
I suppose at this point, if the issue is hinging on the effect of this action, we'll know who was correct soon enough.
In more recent developments, from two different sources:
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/20/ucdeyetwitness.html
And
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/11/24/uc-davis-student-admits-protesters-surrounded-cops-and-wouldnt-let-th#ixzz1eg0HJP7Z
It appears that the protesters met beforehand, and agreed to surround the police with that human wall, and not allow them to leave.
Videos there show the group of police encircled.
I trust this deliberate provocation - and the act speaking for itself - modifies your opinion. Surrounding someone and not allowing them a means of withdrawal is not only an act of aggression, and a clear and present danger, but also monumentally stupid.
I don't see the part of the interviews that suggests pre-planning. One of them says "at one point we had" the another that "a collective decision was made on the fly."
In any case, what "surrounding" means in this context -- as the photos all show -- is sitting down with your hands clasped together. As you know from having trained in these matters yourself, the thing you are meant to watch are your opponent's hands (in case they have a weapon); and you are meant to take care to judge the threat posed by their mobility, as a running man can cross a large distance quickly.
A sitting group of people with their hands in plain sight is therefore a different order of threat than a standing mob pressing in on you, moving, with some members' hands not being in sight. There is room for talking (and indeed, it appears that the officer did talk to them -- he threatened to "shoot you" if they didn't move, a lethal option that certainly isn't legal for police under these circumstances in Georgia).
It sounds like the cops got scared, perhaps because their training was poor enough that they weren't able to properly judge the threat. It may also be relevant that the cop in question was a former Marine: a response of this sort, or even a more aggressive response, might have been fully appropriate in Iraq (where 'imprisoning' Marines could be to fix them for insurgent fires). This is one reason why it's so important to ensure a clean break between military tactics and training, and police tactics and training.
Douglas,
I sympathize with your desire that the police should not have to worry about what we might call the IO effects of their actions; but we might make the same wish for our soldiers.
The fact is that there is no alternative, especially given the Alinskyite leadership of OWS. These protesters at UC Davis are mostly college kids with a flawed understanding, but the leadership are committed radicals. That leadership is counting on overreaction that can produce propaganda effects.
I see our task as chiefly one of disaggregation. It is our task to explain to UC Davis students that they are mistaken, and just why, and what would be better. In order to do that, engagement is a more powerful weapon. To put it in PSYOP/MISO terms, face to face engagement is the most powerful tool in the PSYOP toolkit.
Of course, that's only by way of example; we have to keep military and police training separate. The police-appropriate concept here is that of the peace officer, who has to win converts from among a contested population (contested in this case by those radicals in the leadership; but contested in other cases by drug gangs, ethnic loyalties, etc).
This is not a simple matter of "enforcing the law." This is creating and sustaining a peace, which requires careful judgment and a range of options.
"It is our task to explain to UC Davis students that they are mistaken, and just why, and what would be better."
That's a pretty tall order with student radicals on a university campus in anything other than a years long time frame, don't you think? That's a bit impractical I'd suggest. If you're advocating that Campus police, or even police in general have PsyOp/MISO specialists, I think that would be great, but I'm not sure it's within the realm of practicability for smaller departments. It might behoove the higher grades in the departments (perhaps especially the campus cops) to have some training in these issues, and to have pre-developed strategies and tactics for events such as this, which are entirely predictable on college campuses. These sorts of demonstrations are anything but new, after all.
You know, I imagine you'd be a pretty good consultant in that field.
Now of course, if the majority of the American people are shown how this is incited and desired by the demonstrators, and it can be explained that it is a reasonable tactic, then the protestors have lost before they've begun. This is especially so if the protestors are as radical and distasteful as the OWS crybabies.
I do particularly like your distinction between LEO and Peace Officer as you've used it in the past, it's just that in this case, I'm not seeing a particularly significant divergence of the tasks.
Hmm, those are useful links. In one video, you can hear a protestor (being repeated by the crowd in that OWS 'people's megaphone' style) shouting "If you let them go we will continue to protest peacefully", implying that they would consider using force. It also shows the officers surrounded (pre-meditation or not is irrelevant), and an officer warning each individual sitting in the walkway that they would be subject to use of force if they did not disperse. In another video, it clearly shows a pair of officers attempting to lift a protestor for arrest, and her resisting (that's what the linked arms are for, after all). They did it rather procedurally, I suppose because they all knew what was going to happen. It also doesn't help the protestors credibility that when you read the interview at the boingboing link, he's clearly mis-stating the facts, when you compare what was said with the video.
One of the things that bugs me most about these protestors is that they actually make it more difficult for regular people to protest, making it necessary for more police to be present at protests, and requiring permits etc. I'd offer some comparison to how un-uniformed combatants cause more harm and inconvenience to the civilian populous because of their tactics, and so the majority of the burden of that harm is on them rather than their uniformed opponents.
I wonder how one becomes a consultant to police agencies?
These protesters do make it more difficult (although, as I said above, they're a mixed bag: the ones we have in Athens seem to have gotten permits, and are being quite orderly and polite, perhaps due to the Marine I mentioned who is leading that group). I put that down to the valorization of Woodstock and that whole era; the radicals leading the movement are making it hard on all of us. Some of these kids have reasonably good points to make, if you listen to them -- we really should think about reforming our educational institutions so that people aren't graduating with worthless degrees and tons of debt. (Gov. Perry's $10,000 diploma concept is a good one, if it can be made to work). Furthermore, it really is the case that their generation is getting raked over the coals by the Baby Boomers, who spent all the money and now are going to ride out their expensive social programs while making these kids into paupers and debtors.
The problem is the radical leadership (who are also Baby Boomers, actually). If we can disaggregate the kids, we might be able to make something out of this movement ourselves -- and yes, that's a long term project. What's important to me is handling their outrage in accord with our principles in the meantime.
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