George Costanza
A Friendly Liberal
I am kind of curious as to the circumstances leading up to this. Obviouisly, the cops were trying to control a crowd. I am not sure what the red barricade was for or why the people were gathered behind it.
I would like to know more before making a judgment. My initial reaction is to not get too excited about this. It looks as though the crowd was not responding to what the police wanted them to do. If what the cops wanted them to do was reasonable, then maybe pepper spraying them when they refused to do it was not so unreasonable.
Sound reasonable?
It sounds reasonable.
This is the official NYPD version of the story.
The Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police had used the pepper spray “appropriately.”
“Pepper spray was used once,” he added, “after individuals confronted officers and tried to prevent them from deploying a mesh barrier — something that was edited out or otherwise not captured in the video.”
Here are a few more videos of what happened.
(Videos clipped for sake of brevity)
Doesn't seem so reasonable when you get a better view.
I disagree. I watched the 9 minute video. It is pretty clear what went on. At first, the crowd is relatively orderly and restrained and the police are reacting accordingly, i.e., not doing too much - merely establishing a presence.
But as time passes, the crowd gets more unruly and more aggressive. It is obvious at this point, that several members of the crowd are now intent on provoking some kind of physical incident with the police. Now, the police begin to try and tighten things up a bit. The crowd reacts with predictable actions to resist police attempts to restrict them.
By the time the pepper spray was used, the police had a potentially bad situation on their hands. Now, whether they used the pepper spray against the members of the crowd who should have had it used against them is another matter. I didn't see the "sprayees" really doing anything that deserved being sprayed. But that's not the point, and police cannot be called upon to pick and choose when they have a potential riot on their hands.
You want to belly up to the front line of a confrontation like this, you should be ready to accept the consequences. I'm sorry - I call this one for the cops.
And that is really rare for me. Many of you know what I do for a living and how I feel about police in general.
Let me clarify one aspect of this post of mine . . .
I say that if you want to belly up to the front line of a confrontation like this, you should be ready to accept the consequences. While that is true in general, I have to qualify it in one respect. You should be ready to accept the consequences of REASONABLE and PROFESSIONALLY ADMINISTERED police action.
When the police beat the hell out of a no longer resisting suspect or pound a guy to death at the end of a car chase, we are no longer dealing with reasonable or professional police conduct. There are those who feel that if you run from the police, you deserve whatever you get when they catch you. I am definitely not one of those people. If you run from the cops, you should anticipate being taken into custody, cuffed and booked, once they catch you; you should not have to anticipate being beaten to a pulp provided you do not resist once they ultimately catch you.
In this particular case, I think the police conduct WAS reasonable and WAS professionally administered. Hence, it falls into the type of conduct you SHOULD be required to anticipate once you decide to "step to the front" of a demonstration such as this.
Last edited: