1861

Nnnno, you said it was a mistake to ignore him. I explained why I don’t think it is and you respond with…

1862

“he was obviously caught by surprise”

Assumption. Someone who suffers regular attacks, caused by…oh…pollution is going to have attacks near roads. Per your logic, he must avoid them.

“by a condition that he did not expect”

Assumption. Chronic conditions in general.

You’re building an argument on your assumptions. Moreover, why should PEACEFUL protesters expect police brutality, outside your desire for blood? Especially someone trying to peacefully LEAVE the area, after…oh…they’ve seen the police arrive, perhaps? Nope, can’t have people walk away, gotta punish them for having the chutzpah to protest!

1863

Yes, I have to make assumptions, because you did not provide complete information in your made-up example. If someone is doubled over, they are most likely in pain, and if they are in the middle of the road, they were most likely caught by surprise. The woman in Seattle was not caught by surprise by her condition, so your example is irrelevant.

Now you’re just rambling. Her inability to communicate effectively had nothing to do with “police brutality”; it had to do with being in the middle of a large crowd of people. If she wanted to peacefully leave the area after she saw the police arrive, presumably she would have done so before they started moving through the crowd (unless you assume that the police showed up without anyone noticing, and immediately charged the crowd). There are no indications that she was “punished” for trying to leave; from her report, it sounds like she just got caught in the crowd. You’re being ridiculous if you’re really trying to argue that the police presence there was sudden and unexpected.

1864

Besides which, I never said that people would refuse to respond to someone in the middle of the road, which makes your example doubly irrelevant.

1865

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno, you didn’t. You responded with a request of me to relate his latest posts to you. I responded by declining.

1866

Respect.

1867

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno, the word “why” at the beginning implies a question, the question mark reinforces this idea!

Not to mention the post you responded to in the first place.

You made the cryptic statement dipstick, you gonna back it up with more than pretending to be thick?

1868

Why shouldn’t you ignore Desert Journeyman? Despite all your efforts to have me do so, I’m not going to make his arguments for him. However, I will say ignoring people on a board is inherently silly. Added to that, I see DJ as espousing a point of view while listening to those who oppose him. What exactly are you looking for a in a discussion?

I’d understand ignoring someone if they resorted to schoolyard insults such as “dipstick,” but I think we’re all above that here.

1869

Or schoolyard insults such as “this is what YOU sound like” eh? Mister “Nnnnnnnnnnnnnno”?

He’s espousing the SAME viewpoint, over and over, over and over, no matter what. I already know his viewpoint, and I can see it won’t change or respond to anything. So why bother having his seven paragraphs showing each time? I’ll just assume he’s saying the same thing. And I’ll be right.

1870

You’re changing your viewpoint a whole lot? Anyone is? Why even have a discussion?

1871

sigh No, but he’s not bringing any new arguments to the floor either. He’s just saying the same thing regardless. I’ll happily and completely have a conversation with a person willing to listen and talk. All he’s doing is saying “Yeah, but she deserved it because rollercoasters!!” no matter what anyone else says using the exact same arguments. I honestly don’t think I’ll miss anything by ignoring him. Ever.
His entire conversational history in this thread was in his first post.

1872

Each situation is particular, and as such so should each response be. In each of these confrontations, both sides have choices, including the choice to act. In this situation, the protesters chose to act via inaction. It’s a choice, but a passive one. Left alone, they’d have continued to sit still until they got bored or hungry or wet or cold or their demands were met. The police chose to act via action. After an arbitrary amount of time, it was determined some deadline had been exceeded and the proper next course of action was spraying people in the face. The lack of urgency is apparent in the stances of the officers present, and of course in the nonchalance of Pike himself. End result: the violence present at this particular protest was one-sided in its entirety, and happened to come from the side allegedly better prepared and trained for these situations.

I agree that the wrong strategy was employed. What I am trying to say is that, given that mistake, the tactics, at least, seemed to me to be relatively unsurprising.

I don’t expect the UC Davis police to buck the Chancellor’s authority. Police are, in the best sense of the word, delegates. We often expect them to act as representatives when things go very wrong, and I am not myself immune to that behavior. However, I’m not surprised that the police chose to carry out the Chancellor’s orders, nor that they employed pepper spray to “soften” the crowd so that they could break the human chain with less chance of resistance. I’m also inclined to sympathize with the argument that a seemingly placid crowd can become ugly and dangerous very quickly. And with paradigms of policing that permit the deployment of fewer police, with a wider range of tools. I do think “more police” would be the best option, but I know that’s not always going to be on the table.

Watching the video of the police haul away protesters, they appeared wary but confident.

When you say, “I think that’s really the question here,” what you’re actually saying is, “I think that’s really the question here if all the presuppositions I’ve listed before it are true.” I disagree that they necessarily are. Why not interrupt the process before such a confrontation becomes such an inevitability? Why is there an “assumption of risk?” Because one confrontation between protesters and authorities in Oakland became violent? Were there other similarities between the two protests that lead police to draw this line from one to the other? Why not reach even further for informative past events? In Tahrir square, things got much more out of hand - so why not arrive with enough force to quell that kind of uprising? Because the police are not that stupid. They’re able to evaluate to at least some degree the situation they’re presented with. My argument is that they could invest more time in refining that skill and less time learning which end of the bottle the spray comes out of.

I agree. What happened at UC Davis was a mistake, but also comprehensible, maybe understandable given the assumptions operative in the policing community.

I guess what I’m after is the end goal. Is it the hope that there won’t be any more protests? I think that’s unlikely. If you agree, then shouldn’t we be coming up with solutions for the conflicting needs of the protesters and those of the authorities that don’t HAVE to involve violence? How do you step back from the assumptions you make, in which every protester must fear for his or her safety and whose only hope of avoiding pepper spray or a baton or a boot is to not protest? Isn’t that anathema to the founding principles of our democracy?

I think you go on protesting, if you’re that committed. I also think that people ought to write their elected officials or chancellors or what have you and indicate support for particular actions that reflect the sentiments of the folks out in the street, if they don’t care to join them. The main blame for this, I think, rests with the UC Davis chancellor, procedural misdeeds notwithstanding.

1873

What are you, 17?

You sound like a high school girl in that post. Hilarious.

1874

Spend a lot of time reading the writing of 17 year old High School girls do ya?

1875

Not to come off as too snarky, but the same could be said regarding your responses to him, and yet he hasn’t chosen to ignore you, or at least he hasn’t advertised it. Personally, though I disagree with the same basic premise of his argument you do, I’ve found the discussion engaging and enlightening. I’m not sure why I’d want to deprive myself of that.

But to be honest, if I’d seen posts like this one earlier, I’d have never broached the subject with you in the first place. Clearly, you’ve got some sort of criteria for determining which voices you will allow yourself to hear and I should have known better than to try and change that. I apologize to you and to the rest of the participants in this thread for the diversion.

1876

I’d like to see a shift in the balance of power between chancellors and police. Rather, what I’d like to see is an equal apportionment of blame as there is with power, and as a result of that a reliance on proper police training to resolve these confrontations instead of edicts from the university administration.

In other words, if the police are to learn anything from the actions of chancellor Ketahi and mayor Quan of Oakland, it should be that they will be sold out almost immediately when the heat comes down (or up). If they’re going to own the damage, they should get to own the conflict as well. So, if a chancellor says, “Get those dirty hippies off my pristine campus,” they should cut her off right about the time she says, “…and I don’t care what you have to do to get it done!” It should be on them to decide how to handle it. And knowing they will get no cover from the administration, and that they will almost certainly be filmed carrying out whatever action they choose, maybe they’ll choose an action that reflects more positively on them. Would it be so outlandish to see a police captain sit down with the leader of a protest and try to reach some accord, a proposal for when the protesters can voluntarily disperse? I’d love to see a police representative get up and say, “We have offered to let the protesters remain in place through Sunday evening, and in exchange they have promised to pack up their tents and clean up after themselves in time for Monday morning classes. Any protesters remaining after Sunday evening will be considered acting in violation of this agreement and will be removed from the area by the police.”

Of course, this would take an enormous amount of trust from both sides, and you don’t build that kind of trust with pepper spray. I’d be just as fine with the protesters taking the first step toward such an agreement, but they lack the organization and inherent authority we imbue the police force with.

Absolutely, but she seems unprepared to accept any of it. So, if you’re a cop, how many times are you going to take that bait?

1877

I have 21 and 18 year old daughters, so yes. :)

1878

Dungsroman called a woman a whore for disagreeing with him and made fun of me repeatedly when I said he shouldn’t do that. So I put him on ignore, confident that his misogynistic antics won’t be missed.

He then continues to talk about me (which people quote so I have to see it again) despite the fact that I haven’t talked to him in days so I used a quote from Moby Dick to compare the situation and put it on a Star Trek mug to be sure a person like him could understand it.

Not that hard at all.

And you’ve still yet to say why ignoring him is a bad idea, just saying that ignoring anyone is a bad idea because that’s not how conversations work. Since I’m fairly confident what his side of the conversation is given that he’s said the exact same thing over and over since the thread began, I don’t really see a point in reading what he has to say.

Now I’ve said that a couple times already because you refuse to acknowledge that that is what he’s doing. HIS point, however, has repeatedly been acknowledged and responded to but he just repeats himself over again, maybe with a new danger but it’s still the same “if a cop is going to hit you there’s nothing you can do but pray you remain conscious until he’s finished” line of reasoning

1879

Valentine, I think it’s adorable that you’re making assertions about the contents of another person’s posts, when you have that person on ignore. Kolonial knows what is being posted, and you don’t, yet you’re still making arguments about something you haven’t read! Amazing!

1880

I’d like to see a shift in the balance of power between chancellors and police. Rather, what I’d like to see is an equal apportionment of blame as there is with power, and as a result of that a reliance on proper police training to resolve these confrontations instead of edicts from the university administration.

In other words, if the police are to learn anything from the actions of chancellor Ketahi and mayor Quan of Oakland, it should be that they will be sold out almost immediately when the heat comes down (or up). If they’re going to own the damage, they should get to own the conflict as well. So, if a chancellor says, “Get those dirty hippies off my pristine campus,” they should cut her off right about the time she says, “…and I don’t care what you have to do to get it done!” It should be on them to decide how to handle it. And knowing they will get no cover from the administration, and that they will almost certainly be filmed carrying out whatever action they choose, maybe they’ll choose an action that reflects more positively on them. Would it be so outlandish to see a police captain sit down with the leader of a protest and try to reach some accord, a proposal for when the protesters can voluntarily disperse? I’d love to see a police representative get up and say, “We have offered to let the protesters remain in place through Sunday evening, and in exchange they have promised to pack up their tents and clean up after themselves in time for Monday morning classes. Any protesters remaining after Sunday evening will be considered acting in violation of this agreement and will be removed from the area by the police.”

Certainly this would be the preferred outcome. I suspect that a great deal of pressure would first have to be applied on the chancery. As for-profit institutions, many universities have what I would characterize as an utterly instrumental view of their police forces: chancellors, presidents, and boards are prone to engaging in public security theatre rather than effective security management. They are also inclined to use the contractual character of the university’s relationship with students to discourage behavior they find embarrassing. Consider that many universities formally discipline with fines those students who shout out, “Don’t come here!” to passing tour groups. This combination tends to mean that they will try to use police to disperse student gathers which they find unpalatable. Now, at a minimum, security and police chiefs should have the self-possession to speak frankly as to whether the university leadership is making a mistake, either moral or procedural. But how can society effectively penalize leadership that doesn’t listen? As long as students keep enrolling, those leaders have justified their management style.

Of course, this would take an enormous amount of trust from both sides, and you don’t build that kind of trust with pepper spray. I’d be just as fine with the protesters taking the first step toward such an agreement, but they lack the organization and inherent authority we imbue the police force with.

Isn’t this essentially what happened, though? The protestors arrived, got on message, and then were eventually – not immediately – told to disperse. According to their own testimony, they had positive relations with the UC Davis police up to that point in time. Some students chose to ignore the order to disperse. They also decided to use passive resistance. That left the police in a bad spot from the perspective of, say, an organizational sociologist. I agree that, above all, they should have chalked this one up as a loss and kept quiet about it. Still, when and if the police do act, the question remains: more police; “soft hand” first, even at the risk of being mobbed; or pepper spray first? I think maybe there can be some discussion of whether there are ways to evaluate a crowd for the likelihood of retaliation or mass interference. Maybe that’s what should have been done first.