So, chaos erupted at a concert you were at. Rent-a-cops resorted to pepper spray to try to slow the chaos to which you yourself responded with "lol not that bad I'm going to continue with the madness." You ended up arrested. This equals abuse of power in your mind. OK. Fair enough I guess. I ask this question again though. Are protesters being arrested unjustly in this occupy wall street movement en mass? This thread and video seem to imply that had this man not been in uniform he'd be arrested and mistreated by the evil police. So again I pose this question: Is there reason to believe that? Is there evidence to support it? Or is this just dumb people getting behind a screaming man for no reason?
Yeah, I'm not defending the mob. I was trying to succinctly explain the context and reasoning for my wrongful arrest, so forgive me if I didn't make that clear. They shouldn't have torn down the fence. But make no mistake, it went from fun-loving, aggressive concert crowd to virulent, throwing-beers-at-cops, mob mentality when the outnumbered officers escalated the situation. It wasn't a riot until the pepper spray and tasers came out. Youtube "Death From Above Riot." I'm in several of them.
I didn't think you were, but it's easy to blame the police if you remove responsibility from the mob. I bet the police called it a riot when the fence caved in and people entered when they shouldn't have. Your point about the arrest and reasoning for it is well taken though. At least they booked you for something that didn't stick.
Outside of the Boston crackdown, I don't know of any direct police aggression to which he would be responding to. Again, it is projection. Misguided projection additionally, since those cops are "not the bad ones." I don't really think there has to be direct police conflict at Occupy locations for his point to be justified. I also, do not feel inspired by his dialogue. I am also not defending his rant or its content. Personally, I think the cops have handled the protests, from everything I've read, pretty responsibly. But, to me, that says a lot about the relationship between the laws, their enforcement, and the trust between the enforcers and the polis. That people, simply speaking their minds, are lucky not to get arrested, should not be the standard of good police work. We are conditioned to fear the force, and expect such standards of "service and protection" in which we may be arrested or search and seizured without having committed a crime. That's a high price to pay for what I perceive to be, very little protection from other injustices I may be subject to, and need their assistance. I am trying to make a more intelligible "f**k pigs" argument, and I'm inevitably going to be casted as the defiant, criminal hell raiser. That's alright.
If we really lived in a "police state" none of these protests would even be happening. But you gotta love the hyperbole.
Yeah, you are right. It is an incomplete depiction of 1984 or whatever a true police state, and hyperbolizing it as such, from a few instances, amounts to political rhetoric, and I am not immune to such rhetoric. I said we live in a police state, because of the legal power that is put in the hands of under-qualified, under-educated police officers. Perhaps I should have said "Policed State." Do you really think the hundreds of officers which, at this very moment, all over the state of texas, are hiding on the side of the road behind speedometers so that they can stop speeding all together? Of course not. If you want people to slow down, you put cameras and lasers up. It is a guise to fish for criminals and to raise revenue for the dwindling budgets of small and large municipalities alike. Our police force targets, not protects, the public at large.
You don't think there needs to be actual police misconduct for their to actually be a point to be gleaned from his protesting against the police? I guess I just disagree. If anything, this video demonstrates the poise of the police and the irrationality of a protester. Again, you use the term "lucky to not get arrested." If there are not examples of them being wrongly arrested in any significant number, how can one be "lucky" to avoid a fate that the vast majority avoid? That would be like me saying "Man, I was lucky to avoid being struck by lightning today!" Your perspective is tainted because you were involved in a chaotic riot that you think was caused by police overreaction. You dismiss the idea that the crowd of over a thousand by your number tearing down a fence and rushing into the area put lives in jeopardy, and that an outnumbered rent-a-cop force tried to control the situation with the only means they have: non lethal pepper spray. They resorted to this tactic and the crowd, including you by your own admission, blew them off and continued with the "madness." It escalated into a bad situation and you lay the blame at the feet of law enforcement, not yourself or the crowd that damaged property, disobeyed orders, violated the law, etc. You then extrapolate from your situation to this and say people who are not doing the things you and that crowd did are lucky to not be arrested. Your leap in logic is flawed.
Using our city as an example, when they tried to put up cameras the populace revolted. They prefer the idea of a police offer randomly catching the occasional traffic violator vs. a camera catching any and all. They think that means they have no fear in violating the law. A simplified statement. Yes, the police target the citizens to enforce the law. Your fellow citizen is partly to blame because they prefer this system that they can cheat and get away with it vs. one where they wouldn't be able to.
Yeah. I am biased. I think you would be too. I also completely disagree with your depiction of my arrest circumstance, but I'm not going to derail this thread with such rebuttals. It was unlawful, and this is not uncommon. This is what the man is protesting against. I do no agree with his decision to let the NYPD have it, and they proved their own point. It must be said though that he has the right to say what he said, and that if he is wearing civilian clothes, he is likely to get arrested. This would also be unlawful. Perhaps lucky was the wrong word.
So again I ask, can you point out examples of these protesters who are doing similar things being arrested to back up this claim? I've asked it multiple times. The theory is being presented that somehow if he weren't wearing a uniform that he would be tasered, arrested, heck, possibly assaulted, all unlawfully. That his uniform is the only thing protecting his Constitutional rights here. Back this claim up. Since the vast majority of these protesters are not being arrested, tasered, beaten, etc. I think it is more accurate to say that anyone who is arrested/etc. unlawfully is "unlucky."
Entirely true. When I am in Switzerland, where I live and work part of the year, I observe a populace which has essentially no police presence, and remarkably low levels of violent crime (esp. for an industrialized, conservative country with high gun ownership). In my estimation, this is because every step you take, is videotaped, or assumed to be. The speed limit is 50-100 km, depending on the road. If you go 1 km over, you see a camera's flash, and you know you will be getting a ticket in the mail in a week. Most Americans refute this "big brother" oversight and invasive and undemocratic. They call the Europeans sheep. I ask my fellow citizen: which fear is healthier? The fear of the hidden camera, or the fear of the all-powerful, ego-driven, drug-sniffing state trooper hiding behind that overpass, waiting to sift through your pockets and glove box?
Your hyperbole is so over the top. The vast majority of people pulled over for speeding never have a police officer search their car or ask them to get out of their car, etc. If there is a "fear" of it in the average citizen it is irrational.
I hate cops as much as the next guy, but I can put myself in their shoes. If a bunch of wannabe rebel college kids in Austin are yelling at the cops, one even throws a beer, and then the rest want to condemn the system for the kid getting arrested by taking videos with their flipphones and making slanderous accusations all over Youtube, you bet I'd be annoyed. Not sure what evoked the pepper spray. I'll give you that one.
I cannot prove he would have gotten arrested without his uniform. I draw that "likeliness" from my own biases, and experiences observing law enforcement (and crowds). This goes beyond my own arrest. Clearly, you trust your local officer more than I do. Again, as I perceive it, the Marine's rant is against general police abuses, and it doesn't matter to me that those specific officers did not act out.
I have no problem with one ranting against general police abuses. I am an advocate for your rights and believe the government we have in place from local to federal tramples those rights. I think it is silly to say something like if he didn't have his uniform he'd be arrested when you can't point to examples of people being arrested for the same thing. It isn't like this is an isolated incident of one man on one day protesting. There are thousands of people protesting around the country every day right now as part of this movement. I see very few reports of their arrests and the ones I've heard about involve direct violation of the law.
Yeah I can empathize with those cops as well. I got arrested, and they did not. They were outnumbered a few hundred to one, and I could see the fear in their eyes. The last thing I would do in that instance is blindly pepper spray the mob confronting me. I'm not sure how my video, which would prove very valuable right about now, would be slanderous. I feel justified, to be upset, that I was arrested. I can't control the context, or actions of the the other thousand or so hooligans, and I resent that my case is inevitably defined by it. Again, I don't know who tore the fence down or threatened the police, but I know that I didn't, and that I got arrested while the 'rioters' all went home. Again, this is not really about my circumstance. I knew I shouldn't have used that anecdote, and that it would derail this thread. That's on me.
Yeah, it's like these dudes are equating this to the guy in Tiannemen(sp?) Square who stood against a column of tanks.
You should have bought a recover delete file app to see if you could recover the video. EDIT: In googling around, there appears to be software to do this for phones although it doesn't appear to be as "easy" as recovering deleted files from a normal hard drive. (easy being a relative term).
