Comment by pandaman
10 hours ago
Can't talk for all Red states, but in Austin, TX the city police is arresting even people who try to interfere with traffic, even more so people who interfere with federal agents so there is a little chance someone reads reddit, figures there is nothing going to happen if he or she lays hands on a fed and get lit. Now, I've seen quite a few of videos from Minneapolis and there were literally 0 MPD officers in any of those. I wonder where is the police in the blue states, definitely not on the streets where riots are going on.
I feel like calling protests that are overwhelmingly peaceful riots tells me everything I need to know about the chances of this conversation being productive. Framing the language in a way that intrinsically devalues the fundamental first amendment right to assembly and speech puts all of this into a very obviously biased conversation.
Some of the George Floyd protests devolved into riots. That is not what is happening in MN, or TX, or anywhere. Police or federal officers using riot dispersal techniques against a protest does not suddenly make the protest a riot.
ICE and CBP do not have the remit to behave like they are doing in these situations either - they do not have the same powers as local law enforcement. Yet we see them issuing unlawful commands - like telling Good to get out of her vehicle. They explicitly are not allowed to force a US citizen out of their car. Pretti was shot after the weapon he had never brandished or gone for was removed from his person while he has a multitude of CBP agents dogpiling him. (We could also talk how that shot was insanely dangerous and stupid for the CBP officer to begin with, even if there had been a threat - he very easily could have shot his fellow officers.)
It doesn't matter if MPD is there. If they're absent, this doesn't suddenly give ICE and CBP the authority to police in a way that they are explicitly not allowed to do. This doesn't give them the right to shoot people when they are not actually in danger.
Fundamentally, I do not understand why you think anything in your comment is a rebuttal to the point being made. I don't understand why you think it is even relevant to the discussion at all.
>Police or federal officers using riot dispersal techniques against a protest does not suddenly make the protest a riot.
I agree. Assaulting police or federal officers, harassing citizens and blocking traffic does though, and the police acts on that, not just randomly gassing people because Trump.
>ICE and CBP do not have the remit to behave like they are doing in these situations either - they do not have the same powers as local law enforcement.
Yes, they have different powers yet they employ sworn officers and those can arrest people who they believe are committing crimes in front of them.
>They explicitly are not allowed to force a US citizen out of their car.
Need a source for that, it's news to me.
>It doesn't matter if MPD is there.
It does though. Even in LA the mayor was not as dumb as to order LAPD to stand down and as the result zero people got shot by feds during more massive riots than in Minneapolis. Local police is more lenient and less likely to use deadly force even when met with violence, you'd imagine if mayor had any compassion for his constituents he'd sent the police to deal with them rather than leave it to feds.
> I agree. Assaulting police or federal officers, harassing citizens and blocking traffic does though, and the police acts on that, not just randomly gassing people because Trump.
The first of the things in this list has a very large gap with the rest. I have seen zero evidence there is any sort of widescale assault on police or federal officers with these protests. Some isolated incidents, yes, but isolated incidents are not riots.
Harassing citizens does not make something a riot. Blocking traffic does not make something a riot.
They might not be protected by the 1A (Well, depending on what you mean by 'harassing citizens' it very well might be, that's a very broad term) but that isn't the same thing as a riot.
> Yes, they have different powers yet they employ sworn officers and those can arrest people who they believe are committing crimes in front of them.
They can arrest people for committing federal crimes in front of them or with reasonable suspicion of a felony having occurred. This is different from what they are doing
> Need a source for that, it's news to me.
Some lawyers/law professors discussing this.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1196194852659037 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoBDxPeMfg
> It does though. Even in LA the mayor was not as dumb as to order LAPD to stand down and as the result zero people got shot by feds during more massive riots than in Minneapolis. Local police is more lenient and less likely to use deadly force even when met with violence, you'd imagine if mayor had any compassion for his constituents he'd sent the police to deal with them rather than leave it to feds.
Your entire argument seems to be based on the idea that if cops aren't around then it's the fault of anyone but CBP/ICE when CBP/ICE fuck up. Which is a weird abdication of personal responsibility.
> Local police is more lenient and less likely to use deadly force even when met with violence,
In particular here, I'd say it's not a matter of leniency - local police undergo training at a policy academy and a supervised training period when they enter the job. In combination this can result in years of training. They also have background checks done. Most large departments also employ some form (or even multiple forms) of psychological screening. They have ongoing re-training and re-certification around all sorts of topics including de-escalation and dealing with the public.
And police still fuck it up fairly regularly. Meanwhile, ICE has 47 days of training (the number chosen, of course, because Trump is president #47...) and no-to-minimal background and psychological screening. Police are less likely to use violent force because we have attempted to select for people that will not use it unnecessarily and also provided extensive training to them on when and when not to use it.
For example, even if you believe lethal force is justified in a situation like Good's, the immediate consequences show that it was the incorrect choice for the stated claim - after she was shot in the head, the vehicle accelerated at a far greater speed and with no human control over it. Many departments now train their officers to not be in front of vehicles like this because they know that not only does it unnecessarily increase the risk to the officer, but that in a situation like this one they do not have recourse to stop it from happening - shooting the driver of a car that is right in front of you does not decrease your chances of getting run over even if they are intending to do so (and by no means do I think it is likely that Good ever intended to do so), and if they are not actively attempting to run you over, can even increase it.
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Oh, well if you saw like four videos on YouTube or TikTok I guess that's sufficient evidence for me.
Please go ahead and present your evidence, show where is the police interacting with the "protesters" in Minneapolis.
I don't have a Tiktok account so I don't really have a means to search that, and it's tough to find stuff on YouTube because the recent murder is (understandably) hogging the headlines and the top searches, and I cannot be bothered doing more than a cursory search considering I don't really think you're arguing in good faith anyway. Regardless, I don't really think this is the slam dunk that you seem to think it is. You "not seeing MPD interact with protestors" is hardly strong evidence of anything.
But let's pretend you're right, MPD is completely absent, it doesn't forgive anything ICE has done, actually. It is disingenuous to act like it does.
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"I've proposed a hypothetical situation based off evidence I won't provide and now I'm going to demand sources refuting it because you said 4 TikTok videos is basically subjective bullshit" is just... not how honest discussion works. Come on.
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