Look at What Happens to Peaceful Protesters in the States

That's not what I said at all. You are putting words in my mouth.

Yes, I think it's extremely unlikely that anyone would just start spraying a group of women who are standing peacefully behind a barricade. Attacking someone who had provoked him is credible. Attacking people, especially women, who had done nothing to provoke him ... no, you have to meet a huge burden of proof to make that credible.

More prevalent than when? Any time people start engaging in mass civil disobedience, if the police are not on their side, protestors are likely to get hurt. It always has been that way and always will.

 

I'm going to crawl out on a limb here. I don't have any statistics at hand, but I would wager that police brutality and suppression of opposing viewpoints have actually decreased in the last twenty or so years, rather than rising -- at least in 'western' countries.

One of the reasons is obvious: it's gotten a lot harder for rogue cops (or just stupid ones) to lie about an incident, when half the spectators around the action are using their cell phones to take stills and video's.

 

That seems likely, although you might also see distortion that make it look more prevalent because a cop-said/protester-said situation is a lot less likely to make the news than a video of a cop bashing the protester. So even if incidents go down, we might be hearing of more of them.

 

Given that time frame I think you are spot on.
Draw it out to 100 years or so and we get back to the good old days when the local Police force was available for hire to keep the streets clean..

 

I meant more prevalent than in the U.S. alone, to supplement the thread title for the outside U.S. examples I gave in the same sentence . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

Like society in general, there will always be, and there always have been, members of the police forces who readily resort to violence and assault. As has been mentioned, the abundance of CCTV and phone cameras that can capture our every action will act as a deterent to some, but as we can see it does not stop them all.

Going back to the killing of the newspaper seller at the G20 protests in London, the police at first denied there had been an assault. The video had been taken by a banker from New York who was in London on business. Proving that there are some good bankers in the world, he became dismayed at the lies being spread by the police and the media about the incident and put his evidence in the public domain.

The perpetrator had to be "given up" by the police as it was not possible to identify him from the video. It seems that when police wear riot gear they are allowed to cover their ID numbers. This is apparently a new law that came in under anti-terrorism legislation, I'm not sure if this is just a UK thing or if it applies elsewhere, but it certainly looks like another step to creating a police state.

The police, in all our countries, should be ruthless in bringing any of their members who step out of line to justice. At the moment it seems that they try and protect wrongdoers in their ranks, and thus lose the respect of the public.

 

Maybe he forgot where he was and thought he was at a union rally.

 

Here's another view.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/09/25/18691267.php

 

On that link there is a link to a post from one of the women . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

More here . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

From the quote in post #54: ‘‘And don't be angry with the police; there's always a bad apple.’’

I think she's right here, and it's most generous of her not to blame them all for one going out of line, just that one should be corrected to improve the system :idea:, and as there always will be bad apples, it is a continuing process to get rid of them . . . . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

This sure helps to prevent these kind of incidents from happening or, when it happens anyway, it could help to take the bad apples out of the force

Cheers,
Angel

 

Right..!!

Sad, but true . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

There may be more to the story than we see. I heard a snippet of a news report that stated the protesters were trying to continue their march outside of the government approved protest area. Dozens were already being arrested for non-compliance with police requests to cease and desist.

I am also very suspicious of the behavior of the girl in the grey shirt after the peppering. Being a fan of spicy chicken, on occasion I've made the mistake of rubbing my eyes before washing my hands 3 or 4 times after eating. Never has that sensation prompted me to wave my hand in the air like someone at a revival. You clutch at your face, grit your teeth and curse. Kinda like the other people in the video are doing.

Just this morning was a report on another protester screaming how his college educated parents had just lost their home to "this bank", and it wasn't fair. A curious reporter tracked down the parents and found that they still had their $500K house, the mom was making $100K and the father had 2 doctorate degrees, while the poor suffering protester was a law student at George Washington U, paying $70K a year in tuition.

People on either side are not above staging events in order to advance whatever cause of the moment. However, I find it ironic that people protesting for more government intervention of "those people", become victims of more government intervention themselves - and don't like it.

 

Oh... you must like those girls then

Interesting about this 'poor' student . . . .

Cheers,
Angel