The last decade of crowd policing has not been particularly lawful or orderly. Send in the riot squad, dramatically inflame and escalate the situation, perform extraordinarily dubious arrests and uses of force, eat a several million dollar settlement a bit later, repeat.
The last decade of crowd policing has not been particularly lawful or orderly. Send in the riot squad, dramatically inflame and escalate the situation, perform extraordinarily dubious arrests and uses of force, eat a several million dollar settlement a bit later, repeat.
@mattdpearce @RobertMackey This behavior is literally crushing the budget of Los Angeles. We already pay close to $4 billion a year for police forces. The liability claims don’t even come out of that figure. In the meantime, they are defunding everything else. @MayorOfLA @lacontroller
@mattdpearce That's why local governments want to give police almost complete immunity from even the most egregious use of force.
@mattdpearce Seems like many just view all this as the cost of doing business, where the business is sending a message. And/or all pols are scared of offending the police unions.
@mattdpearce @mehdirhasan Unless it’s “conservative” white people
@mattdpearce The GOP is getting the images they want to persuade voters that these are "violent" protests---and that this "disorder" calls for authoritarians to be elected. The Nixonian backlash.
@mattdpearce Escalate. General strike, demands won't be met without mounting pressure.
@mattdpearce @lizditz The cops get overtime and thrills though
@mattdpearce Cops were born from slavecatchers and strikebreakers This is who they've always been
@mattdpearce @pamelacolloff In my experience it goes further back. Every protest I've been at had BS arrests and dropped charges. And the conversation on the way always included determining if you were going to be arrested. Also recall the images of cops at close proximity pepper spraying seated people.