Pepper-Spray by a Cruel and Cowardly NYC Cop

[manifold]

They had just been asked to leave that area by the police. Instead of doing so, the three girls who ended up getting pepper sprayed stayed and screamed their heads off as another girl is getting arrested. You're right about the cop walking over from some distance and spraying them...but he was doing so because they were being so disruptive.

Screaming is disruptive?

How?

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

It's pretty silly to suggest they were trying to goad the cop from down the street into pepper spraying them.

But even if they were, all the more reason why the cop shouldn't have obliged.

 

[Oldstyle]

Tell you what, show me where 99% of the crowd was being violent and we will discuss the right of the police to indiscriminately use force on a large group of people. The fact is that 99% of the crowd was being peaceful and following the instructions of the police, and one or two police officers crossed a clear line by retaliating against anyone they could. That makes them wrong.

Period.

Only an idiot would categorically defend bad cops when they are wrong.

Ah, "you" are the one who said you didn't CARE if 99% of the crowd was being violent...I called you on the stupidity of such a statement...and then you ask me to SHOW you where 99% of the crowd was being violent? I NEVER SAID THEY WERE!

What makes the NYPD "bad cops"? They handled the situation remarkably well. The police had a small group of protesters that escalated the situation until they had to be arrested and when that needed to be done the NYPD handled it quickly and efficiently. What's amusing is all the talk about police "brutality". You'd get hurt worse in your average mosh pit than you would have getting arrested by those police.

I don't care, but it is a separate discussion. For the record though, if a crowd is being disruptive the police do not have the power to use force indiscriminately.

If you actually read my posts you will see I am focusing on a couple of incidents involving two individual police officers. I am pointing out how Bologna and another officer whose name I do not know violated NYPD policy. I am not attacking NYPD, I am attacking two bad cops.

I think most of the police there acted responsibly and professionally. It is possible there are other incidents that need to be examined, but I am unaware of them. You respond by defending them without a thought, and justifying there actions by pointing out other protestors were wrong. That means you are doing what you are accusing me of doing, saying everyone is guilty because someone else did something wrong.

How did the police use force "indiscriminately"? Everything that I saw in all these clips...and there are dozens of them, it's obvious that was the whole idea, to provoke a violent response from the police...were the police reacting in a completely professional fashion. As for your claim that there might be other incidents that need to be examined? This was about the most video logged event in the history of mankind and that one second blast of pepper spray is the best that the protesters could goad the NYPD into doing. I personally think the officer doing the spraying was wrong...not because he wasn't within his rights to use pepper spray on people refusing to leave an area they've been told by police to vacate but because it was what the organizers WANTED to have happen. He should have simply had them arrested just like all the other idiots that kept pushing things until THEY got arrested.

 

[Oldstyle]

Screaming is disruptive?

How?

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

So what. Police should respond professionally to things like that, not by proving them right and banging reporters heads off a parked car.

Now the kid in the green shirt is a "reporter"? Funny, I didn't see a Press Pass hanging around his neck. Who exactly is he a reporter for? You've done your best to portray what happened in the most sensational way possible but the fact is he was just another protester who was assigned to get video footage of the police making arrests. He was warned not to come out into the street, he disregarded that warning, got right in the middle of the arrest that was taking place and got arrested himself.

 

[Dude111]

What the fuck?

Yea,quite sad.....

They abuse these things like they were TOYS.....


They should all be banned from use,its apparent the cops DONT KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY USE THEM!!

 

[MikeK]

I watched the videos and the crowd was out of control. The key is I watched the unedited version of the videos. If they got sprayed for being in that crowd it is their fault. I have pictures and memories to tell you what an out of control protest can come to be like...if you had been here where I am at after June 2009 you would understand how quickly a situation can become explosive and deadly in a protest.

The protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, 1999, was "out of control," meaning windows were smashed, firebombs were thrown at police, cars were overturned and police were violently resisted. So in spite of your fantasy-based claim to "pictures and memories" it is patently clear that you don't know what you're talking about.

This Wall Street protest was very well controlled. What you saw was the crowd swelling beyond the constraints set up by police. What began with a few hundred protesters grew into several thousand and the police began to forcefully constrain that growth, which led to pepper-spraying and excessively aggressive arrest tactics by poorly trained and obviously incompetent cops.

those pictures aren't of the WTO protest in Seattle so your arguement that my claims are fantasy based perhaps you need to check out where I blogged about my experiences the entire time after the removal of Manuel Zelaya from office June 29, 2009. I lived those protests every single day as they took place in my neck of the woods. I am sorry that you didn't realize those weren't protests in the US....and mistaked them for the WTO protests...shows who didn't know what they were talking about...oops.

I am not concerned with what protests you are familiar with. And I know absolutely nothing about Manuel Zelaya and his removal from office. I am concerned with the Wall Street protest -- and the reason for it, and why your claim that it was out of control is absurd. As evidence of that I've offered the WTO riot in Seattle as a comparison.

If the Wall Street protest had gone out of control there would have been a lot of bloodshed and property damage, of which there was little to none.

 

[Xchel]

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

So what. Police should respond professionally to things like that, not by proving them right and banging reporters heads off a parked car.

Now the kid in the green shirt is a "reporter"? Funny, I didn't see a Press Pass hanging around his neck. Who exactly is he a reporter for? You've done your best to portray what happened in the most sensational way possible but the fact is he was just another protester who was assigned to get video footage of the police making arrests. He was warned not to come out into the street, he disregarded that warning, got right in the middle of the arrest that was taking place and got arrested himself.

yep he did..it is called obstruction of a police officer...though some will argue that obstructing a police officer in his duty is not against the law..and even yelling profanity at an officer is either disorderly or also obstruction.

 

[Oldstyle]

Screaming is disruptive?

How?

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

It's pretty silly to suggest they were trying to goad the cop from down the street into pepper spraying them.

But even if they were, all the more reason why the cop shouldn't have obliged.

You'd have to be one of the more naive people on the planet not to recognize the pattern of these "protests". They are less protests then they are staged media events. The Rand Paul thing? Staged to get an embarrassing photo. The Paul Ryan Rotary Club thing? Staged to make it look like Ryan's constituents were up in arms over his plan. This latest march? Staged to provoke a police response because the turnout for the march was so abysmal. The organizers were talking about 20,000 showing up for this thing. They got less than a couple hundred. What's laughable if you watch the video clips is that there are more cops, bystanders and media people there then there are actual protesters.

 

[Oldstyle]

So what. Police should respond professionally to things like that, not by proving them right and banging reporters heads off a parked car.

Now the kid in the green shirt is a "reporter"? Funny, I didn't see a Press Pass hanging around his neck. Who exactly is he a reporter for? You've done your best to portray what happened in the most sensational way possible but the fact is he was just another protester who was assigned to get video footage of the police making arrests. He was warned not to come out into the street, he disregarded that warning, got right in the middle of the arrest that was taking place and got arrested himself.

yep he did..it is called obstruction of a police officer...though some will argue that obstructing a police officer in his duty is not against the law..and even yelling profanity at an officer is either disorderly or also obstruction.

I lived in one of Boston's rougher neighborhoods for years and saw a lot of arrests being made by the police that drew a crowd of onlookers. I can tell you from experience that if you want to go to jail just start yelling shit trying to incite the crowd when the police are there doing their jobs. The police take a dim view of that because it puts them in danger and you do so at your own peril.

 

[manifold]

If the Wall Street protest had gone out of control there would have been a lot of bloodshed and property damage, of which there was little to none.

Of course. But these douchewagons have convinced themselves that the cops actually prevented bloodshed and property damage by pepper spraying these harmless chicks.

 

[Oldstyle]

If the Wall Street protest had gone out of control there would have been a lot of bloodshed and property damage, of which there was little to none.

Of course. But these douchewagons have convinced themselves that the cops actually prevented bloodshed and property damage by pepper spraying these harmless chicks.

How exactly would a protest that small get "out of control"? You guys amuse me. The organizers of that "event" would have LOVED for it to shut down NYC with tens of thousands of rampaging protesters. Unfortunately for them there were so few people who showed up that they were outnumbered by the police by what looked like a 5 to 1 ratio. God, if you took the cops, the media and the onlookers off those streets you would have had about fifty people. It was PATHETIC!!!

 

[MikeK]

You're so biased in your "perception" Mike that you've chosen to view a heavily edited version of events instead of uncut versions that give a complete story of what happened that day.[...]

I am indeed biased in my perception of this issue. As if you arent?

I don't know if you are a cop, a former cop, a loving relative of a cop or just a right-wing shill, but you are focused on defending the police even though you have obliquely admitted in several of your messages that the use of pepper spray in at least one instance was gratuitous, therefore an example of unnecessary force. And in my opinion, as well as Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion, and in the opinion of everyone else who is on the People's side of this issue, all of the force used against those protesters was excessive. So the real question here is, what side are you on?

This protest is not about a sports event, the closing of a bar or some other relatively nonsensical reason. It's about an issue of national importance, the ruin of our Nation's economy through hacking of its financial system by a select group of Wall Street insiders who have bribed our Congress to facilitate their various schemes and have purchased our current President lock, stock and barrel, thereby impeding any investigation of their clearly criminal maneuvers and activities. So the question is not whether some pissed off citizen happened to step off a curb thereby justifying some uniformed goon trying to ram his head into a car. The question is, what side are you on?

We are not talking about some relatively insignificant local issue here. We're talking about the NYCPD vs an awakening American public. In purely objective terms the police are defending what has become a neo-aristocracy which is actively seeking to undermine the bedrock of contemporary American society, the middle class.

All of the video clips we've seen so far deal with a relatively minor aspect of this issue, that of some stupidly petty clashes between angry citizens and police who are defending the object of their anger. The following video clip captures this object in a moment of naked clarity.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PiXDTK_CBY]Wall Street Mocks Protesters By Drinking Champagne 2011 - YouTube[/ame]

When I saw this clip a book by Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution, came to mind. In this book Schama refers to historic descriptions of amused French aristocrats drinking wine on the balconies of le palace de Versailles as angry mobs of peasants cursed them from outside the gates.

OldStyle, which side are you on?

 

[manifold]

If the Wall Street protest had gone out of control there would have been a lot of bloodshed and property damage, of which there was little to none.

Of course. But these douchewagons have convinced themselves that the cops actually prevented bloodshed and property damage by pepper spraying these harmless chicks.

How exactly would a protest that small get "out of control"? You guys amuse me. The organizers of that "event" would have LOVED for it to shut down NYC with tens of thousands of rampaging protesters. Unfortunately for them there were so few people who showed up that they were outnumbered by the police by what looked like a 5 to 1 ratio. God, if you took the cops, the media and the onlookers off those streets you would have had about fifty people. It was PATHETIC!!!

This doesn't help your argument that Bologna was justified in using pepper spray. But I don't expect you to understand that either.

 

[Oldstyle]

You're so biased in your "perception" Mike that you've chosen to view a heavily edited version of events instead of uncut versions that give a complete story of what happened that day.[...]

I am indeed biased in my perception of this issue. As if you arent?

I don't know if you are a cop, a former cop, a loving relative of a cop or just a right-wing shill, but you are focused on defending the police even though you have obliquely admitted in several of your messages that the use of pepper spray in at least one instance was gratuitous, therefore an example of unnecessary force. And in my opinion, as well as Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion, and in the opinion of everyone else who is on the People's side of this issue, all of the force used against those protesters was excessive. So the real question here is, what side are you on?

This protest is not about a sports event, the closing of a bar or some other relatively nonsensical reason. It's about an issue of national importance, the ruin of our Nation's economy through hacking of its financial system by a select group of Wall Street insiders who have bribed our Congress to facilitate their various schemes and have purchased our current President lock, stock and barrel, thereby impeding any investigation of their clearly criminal maneuvers and activities. So the question is not whether some pissed off citizen happened to step off a curb thereby justifying some uniformed goon trying to ram his head into a car. The question is, what side are you on?

We are not talking about some relatively insignificant local issue here. We're talking about the NYCPD vs an awakening American public. In purely objective terms the police are defending what has become a neo-aristocracy which is actively seeking to undermine the bedrock of contemporary American society, the middle class.

All of the video clips we've seen so far deal with a relatively minor aspect of this issue, that of some stupidly petty clashes between angry citizens and police who are defending the object of their anger. The following video clip captures this object in a moment of naked clarity.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PiXDTK_CBY]Wall Street Mocks Protesters By Drinking Champagne 2011 - YouTube[/ame]

When I saw this clip a book by Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution, came to mind. In this book Schama refers to historic descriptions of amused French aristocrats drinking wine on the balconies of le palace de Versailles as angry mobs of peasants cursed them from outside the gates.

OldStyle, which side are you on?

When did I admit the use of pepper spray was "gratuitous"? What I said was I thought the police were well within their right to use pepper spray to disperse a crowd that refused to leave an area they had been told to leave but that doing so played into the hands of the protesters who were seeking confrontations with the police that they could portray as "police brutality".

As for what "side" I'm on? Why do those idiots that sought to shut down NYC and make the rest of their fellow citizen's lives miserable qualify as representing the "People's side"?

 

[Unkotare]

You're so biased in your "perception" Mike that you've chosen to view a heavily edited version of events instead of uncut versions that give a complete story of what happened that day.[...]

I am indeed biased in my perception of this issue. As if you arent?

I don't know if you are a cop, a former cop, a loving relative of a cop or just a right-wing shill, but you are focused on defending the police even though you have obliquely admitted in several of your messages that the use of pepper spray in at least one instance was gratuitous, therefore an example of unnecessary force. And in my opinion, as well as Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion, and in the opinion of everyone else who is on the People's side of this issue, all of the force used against those protesters was excessive. So the real question here is, what side are you on?

This protest is not about a sports event, the closing of a bar or some other relatively nonsensical reason. It's about an issue of national importance, the ruin of our Nation's economy through hacking of its financial system by a select group of Wall Street insiders who have bribed our Congress to facilitate their various schemes and have purchased our current President lock, stock and barrel, thereby impeding any investigation of their clearly criminal maneuvers and activities. So the question is not whether some pissed off citizen happened to step off a curb thereby justifying some uniformed goon trying to ram his head into a car. The question is, what side are you on?

We are not talking about some relatively insignificant local issue here. We're talking about the NYCPD vs an awakening American public. In purely objective terms the police are defending what has become a neo-aristocracy which is actively seeking to undermine the bedrock of contemporary American society, the middle class.

All of the video clips we've seen so far deal with a relatively minor aspect of this issue, that of some stupidly petty clashes between angry citizens and police who are defending the object of their anger. The following video clip captures this object in a moment of naked clarity.

When I saw this clip a book by Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution, came to mind. In this book Schama refers to historic descriptions of amused French aristocrats drinking wine on the balconies of le palace de Versailles as angry mobs of peasants cursed them from outside the gates.

OldStyle, which side are you on?

Holy crap, what a fucking self-important emo-queen...

 

[Unkotare]

I lived in one of Boston's rougher neighborhoods for years .

Where?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Ah, "you" are the one who said you didn't CARE if 99% of the crowd was being violent...I called you on the stupidity of such a statement...and then you ask me to SHOW you where 99% of the crowd was being violent? I NEVER SAID THEY WERE!

What makes the NYPD "bad cops"? They handled the situation remarkably well. The police had a small group of protesters that escalated the situation until they had to be arrested and when that needed to be done the NYPD handled it quickly and efficiently. What's amusing is all the talk about police "brutality". You'd get hurt worse in your average mosh pit than you would have getting arrested by those police.

I don't care, but it is a separate discussion. For the record though, if a crowd is being disruptive the police do not have the power to use force indiscriminately.

If you actually read my posts you will see I am focusing on a couple of incidents involving two individual police officers. I am pointing out how Bologna and another officer whose name I do not know violated NYPD policy. I am not attacking NYPD, I am attacking two bad cops.

I think most of the police there acted responsibly and professionally. It is possible there are other incidents that need to be examined, but I am unaware of them. You respond by defending them without a thought, and justifying there actions by pointing out other protestors were wrong. That means you are doing what you are accusing me of doing, saying everyone is guilty because someone else did something wrong.

How did the police use force "indiscriminately"? Everything that I saw in all these clips...and there are dozens of them, it's obvious that was the whole idea, to provoke a violent response from the police...were the police reacting in a completely professional fashion. As for your claim that there might be other incidents that need to be examined? This was about the most video logged event in the history of mankind and that one second blast of pepper spray is the best that the protesters could goad the NYPD into doing. I personally think the officer doing the spraying was wrong...not because he wasn't within his rights to use pepper spray on people refusing to leave an area they've been told by police to vacate but because it was what the organizers WANTED to have happen. He should have simply had them arrested just like all the other idiots that kept pushing things until THEY got arrested.

You really do not get it, do you. There is a brand new concept that was developed about 18 quadrillion years ago called proportionate response that police departments in free countries follow. What it basically means is that you only respond with force when force is used against you. That photographer that had his head banged off of a parked car was not using any force at all, and was clearly standing to the side and not participating, yet some jerk with a badge decided to step put of department policy and attack him.

As for the women, even if they were calling the police fascist pigs and demanding they let everyone go, they were not using physical force resiting or attacking the police, so Bologna had no reason to respond to them with force, or with pepper spray.

 

[Synthaholic]

NYPD Now Has Two Pepper Spray Incidents to Investigate

Adam Martin 3:21 PM ET 1,917 Views Comments (9)




A new video showing Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in a second pepper-spraying incident during the weekend's Occupy Wall Street protest came out overnight, a few hours before the New York Police Department announced it would investigate Bologna's use of the spray, which it had previously defended. The original video of Bologna spraying four women detained behind netting has been pretty well parsed by folks who say it goes against the department's guidelines. The new one also seems to show a violation of the department guidelines as Bologna sprays what appears to be a photographer who wasn't being detained.


The video clearly shows Bologna spraying the side of the face of someone wearing an identification tag and holding a camera. It's unclear whether he's got a police-issued press pass, but he doesn't seem to be participating in the main demonstration. That would appear to contradict the department's guidelines, summarized in this department report on pepper spray that quotes the NYPD Patrol Guide (the report is from 2000, but the language it quotes jibes with snippets reported in this New York Times story, and refers to a Guide appendix, P.G. 212-95, confirmed in this truncated version of the 2010 guide):

Patrol Guide 212-95 lists five situations in which an officer may use pepper spray. Pepper spray may be used when a police officer “reasonably believes” that it is necessary to: 1) protect himself, or another from unlawful use of force (e.g., assault); 2) effect an arrest, or establish physical control of a subject resisting arrest; 3) establish physical control of a subject attempting to flee from arrest or custody; 4) establish physical control of an emotionally disturbed person (EDP); and 5) control a dangerous animal by deterring an attack, to prevent injury to persons or animals present. The Patrol Guide states that officers should aim and discharge pepper spray into a subject’s eyes, nose, and/or mouth in two short one-second bursts at a minimum of three feet for maximum effectiveness.
The Patrol Guide prohibits the use of pepper spray against subjects who passively resist (e.g., going limp, offering no active physical resistance). It further cautions that if possible, pepper spray should not be used against persons who appear to be in frail health, young children, women believed to be pregnant, or persons with known respiratory conditions.
​

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who had previously called the initial spraying incident "appropriate," told reporters on Wednesday that the department would investigate the incident. The New York Times quoted him speaking about the first incident with the four women.

“I don’t know what precipitated that specific incident,” he said, but added that demonstrators as a group were engaged in “tumultuous conduct” and were “intent on blocking traffic” as they marched down University Place on their return from Union Square to the financial district, where the protesters have been encamped for more than a week.
​

After the initial incident, the blog U.S. Law published a rebuttal to NYPD spokesman Paul Brown's claims about the incident on Sunday. "Pepper spray was used once," Brown told The New York Times, "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." Amid its lengthy rebuttal, U.S. Law points out:

While other women were loudly reacting to the violent nearby arrests they were witnessing take place in the street, there was no physical impediment to the police work on the sidewalk in the immediate vicinity for at least 18 seconds prior to the release of spray. Were there any confrontation, it had been quelled long before the pepper spray was deployed.
​

The Civilian Complaint Review Board has is now reviewing the incident in addition to the police department's Internal Affairs Bureau.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

So what. Police should respond professionally to things like that, not by proving them right and banging reporters heads off a parked car.

Now the kid in the green shirt is a "reporter"? Funny, I didn't see a Press Pass hanging around his neck. Who exactly is he a reporter for? You've done your best to portray what happened in the most sensational way possible but the fact is he was just another protester who was assigned to get video footage of the police making arrests. He was warned not to come out into the street, he disregarded that warning, got right in the middle of the arrest that was taking place and got arrested himself.

The Supreme Court has actually ruled that press badges are not required to be a reporter, so the fact that you do not see one does not mean squat to anyone other than you.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Every time someone was arrested by the police those three idiots started screaming trying to make it out to be brutal treatment. It wasn't and their whole "act" was nothing more than an attempt to get good video footage. Just as the Rand Paul supporter stepping on the activist's shoulder was EXACTLY what they went there looking for, this officer using pepper spray was EXACTLY what these protesters were looking for. A one second blast of pepper spray and our three little drama queens were all vying for Academy Awards. It's the tactic of the far Left now. Cause a confrontation. Get it on video. Scream about police brutality and the suppression of your First Amendment rights. The activist at the Rand Paul rally claimed to have a concussion which was quite amazing seeing how the guy stepped on her shoulder and neck. It's all theater.

It's pretty silly to suggest they were trying to goad the cop from down the street into pepper spraying them.

But even if they were, all the more reason why the cop shouldn't have obliged.

You'd have to be one of the more naive people on the planet not to recognize the pattern of these "protests". They are less protests then they are staged media events. The Rand Paul thing? Staged to get an embarrassing photo. The Paul Ryan Rotary Club thing? Staged to make it look like Ryan's constituents were up in arms over his plan. This latest march? Staged to provoke a police response because the turnout for the march was so abysmal. The organizers were talking about 20,000 showing up for this thing. They got less than a couple hundred. What's laughable if you watch the video clips is that there are more cops, bystanders and media people there then there are actual protesters.

Let me see if I can explain this to you in small words. It does not fucking matter if this was a protest or a staged media event, the police are still legally required to follow the same rules.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If the Wall Street protest had gone out of control there would have been a lot of bloodshed and property damage, of which there was little to none.

Of course. But these douchewagons have convinced themselves that the cops actually prevented bloodshed and property damage by pepper spraying these harmless chicks.

How exactly would a protest that small get "out of control"? You guys amuse me. The organizers of that "event" would have LOVED for it to shut down NYC with tens of thousands of rampaging protesters. Unfortunately for them there were so few people who showed up that they were outnumbered by the police by what looked like a 5 to 1 ratio. God, if you took the cops, the media and the onlookers off those streets you would have had about fifty people. It was PATHETIC!!!

Wait a minute, I thought you were complaining about it shutting down traffic and impacting the lives of millions of people.

By the way, thanks to the way a couple of idiot police officers, and more idiots who defend those idiot police, that protest is growing larger.