The Gadfly
Senior Member
- Feb 7, 2011
- 2,190
- 614
pepper spray is the lowest and safest form of force to use against resistance...there is an almost universal and instant compliance rate
did you want the officers to go hands on and fight the kids ?
night sticks ?
no I think what you really want is them just to able to break the law
thusly the death of free expression
Well, no. It's not low, and it's not safe.
They are inflicting pain for minor acts of civil disobedience.
In other words, the lowest, safest form of law breaking.
I want a country where you can engage in civil disobedience without being attacked by the police.
Complete, utter bullshit, of the sort I have come to expect from the Leftists and anarchist fringe of this board!
First of all, these protestors refused a lawful order to disperse, THEN linked arms so as to make it more difficult for officers to remove them. That crosses the line from passive to active resistance, right there, and is ample justification for use of force to effect arrest (as well as adding a charge of "resisting arrest" to any other criminal charges against them). When the police order you to do something, you do it-you can argue the matter before a judge in a court of law later. I guarantee you the court will grant you that right, although it may or may not rule in your favor. The courtroom, not a public street or campus, is the lawful and proper place to argue the validity (or lack thereof) of a police order or an arrest. These people chose to willfully disregard that. Pepper spray and/or CS gas are the lowest thing on the force continuum, with the least probability of injury to the subject(s), to disperse a crowd that links arms and refuses an order to disperse. It is arguably less potentially harmful to the subject(s) than physically separating them in order to handcuff and remove them. If the order to disperse is lawful, so is the arrest, and the (very limited) force used to effect same. The "right of the people peaceably to assemble" has been repeatedly held by the courts NOT to include any "right" to refuse to obey lawful orders from police, nor any "right" to resist lawful arrest.
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