Douschebag Hall of Fame

Danny Bateman said:
Is this just a normal human response?
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No. That is a chickensh#t, abusive response. Spraying her (or anyone) who is complying and moving in the correct direction is complete bullsh#t. Guy should lose his job immediately. That is not even in the same ballpark to what I have been referring to. I don’t care if she was press or not, that’s uncalled for and counterproductive.

Maybe I need to watch more of these videos or keep my mouth shut. I guess nobody but me would know this but my comments over the past few days were based on what I saw on the news on TV and one compilation video that had been so severely edited, you could not tell what the heck had really occurred. If this is the kind of behavior everyone is on my a$$ for, then I understand. We haven’t been talking about the same things.
 

But, just so everyone can pick out one thing and dwell on it (wouldn’t want things getting dull), I do understand how the police can easily mistake (in some cases) many of these press people as just another protester or rioter. Street clothes, a cell phone and yelling press......I mean I could do that. Doesn’t mean I’m press and I wouldn’t expect it to lend any legitimacy to my claim of being press. But regardless, no person who is trying to comply should be hit, sprayed or abused. That cop is another example of why we are in this situation to begin with.

 
If I was rioting...I would have a friend "filming me" and yell "PRESS PRESS PRESS" if cops came.  

Just like when I was 17 and hammered outside a movie theater for a midnight showing of Pink Floyd's The Wall and the cops pulled up on me while I was puking behind the theater and I told them I was "sick from Taco Bell".  

 
JJ Husker said:
No. That is a chickensh#t, abusive response. Spraying her (or anyone) who is complying and moving in the correct direction is complete bullsh#t. Guy should lose his job immediately. That is not even in the same ballpark to what I have been referring to. I don’t care if she was press or not, that’s uncalled for and counterproductive.

Maybe I need to watch more of these videos or keep my mouth shut. I guess nobody but me would know this but my comments over the past few days were based on what I saw on the news on TV and one compilation video that had been so severely edited, you could not tell what the heck had really occurred. If this is the kind of behavior everyone is on my a$$ for, then I understand. We haven’t been talking about the same things.
 

But, just so everyone can pick out one thing and dwell on it (wouldn’t want things getting dull), I do understand how the police can easily mistake (in some cases) many of these press people as just another protester or rioter. Street clothes, a cell phone and yelling press......I mean I could do that. Doesn’t mean I’m press and I wouldn’t expect it to lend any legitimacy to my claim of being press. But regardless, no person who is trying to comply should be hit, sprayed or abused. That cop is another example of why we are in this situation to begin with.
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Thanks for giving a bit on this, JJ. You've always been pretty reasonable in P&R and this is no different. 

I agree with everything here. The police could definitely have problems IDing folks in some of the environments I'm seeing on social media - smoke and tear gas billowing up everywhere, fireworks going off, running, yelling. Hard to believe this is America. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Ferguson did not seem near this bad - or perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.

And obviously you're right, the destructive, violent rioting and looting are obviously horrible. I'm seeing reports that a retired police officer was killed defending a shop in St. Louis today and it was caught on Facebook Live. Just awful. The human toll of this continues to mount.

I just hope we can all hear each other out on this complex stuff without going off too much on each other. They're important conversations to have - literally life or death, in many cases - but just about everyone is on a hair-trigger right now. 

 
RedDenver said:
I understand where you're coming from, but you're more concerned with the tone/style of the reporter than with the actions taken by the police. The job of the police is to defuse tensions, not merely say, "well, we warned 'em" and then respond with force.

De-escalation Keeps Protesters And Police Safer. Departments Respond With Force Anyway.
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Please don’t tell me what I’m more concerned with. I provided pushback over one incident that I knew to be misleading and several others that were not obvious. I will stand by my position on that one incident until the cows come home. And then as often happens here on HB, and more specifically P&R, some chose to portray me as the spokesman for every police transgression under the sun. I defended the police for incidents I felt it was deserved. And yeah, maybe I am a little more comfortable than some others with feeling that, in many of these situations, the mob and some reporters should recognize when things are going south and be more proactive about following instructions and requests. I guess I don’t exactly know how the police transition from extremely passive to a more aggressive approach. De-escalation makes sense but I’m also very much a realist. Everyone knows at some point, when the protesting has morphed to rioting, the police are going to start to push it and start clearing areas. I accept that for what it is. Once it is beyond that point, I get a little more heartless with my reaction. It’s who I am. But please don’t mistake that for defending indefensible actions. I know what they are and they sicken me just as much as you. But this is a message board where rhetoric, hyperbole and villainizing are used to create greater differences than really exist. So, if any of y’all need to act like I’m the bad guy, I can handle it.

 
JJ Husker said:
Sorry, I focused on this part of your response...

(the thing you also actually said)

I guess I overlooked the better than normal portion.....of you walking it back :P
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The police, collectively, have to be capable of and trained to be better than 'normal' in terms of stress management. Because it's a demanding job, and a thankless job, and a high stress job, and an incrediby important job. Same with surgeons, EMTs, firefighters, and so on. I think 99,999 out of 100,000 people would agree with that and not find it controversial.

Of course mistakes will happen. But I guess a somewhat more controversial but still not really all that controversial opinion is that A) not enough is being done pre-emptively to mitigate those mistakes and B) not enough is being done after those mistakes occur to ensure accountability and justice.

 
Landlord said:
The police, collectively, have to be capable of and trained to be better than 'normal' in terms of stress management. Because it's a demanding job, and a thankless job, and a high stress job, and an incrediby important job. Same with surgeons, EMTs, firefighters, and so on. I think 99,999 out of 100,000 people would agree with that and not find it controversial.

Of course mistakes will happen. But I guess a somewhat more controversial but still not really all that controversial opinion is that A) not enough is being done pre-emptively to mitigate those mistakes and B) not enough is being done after those mistakes occur to ensure accountability and justice.
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But if your surgeon has a bad day, and people are mean to him, he should be able to leave his scalpel in your esophagus and, if you complain, it's probably because some whiner is editing all the videos to make surgeons look bad.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 
Landlord said:
The police, collectively, have to be capable of and trained to be better than 'normal' in terms of stress management. Because it's a demanding job, and a thankless job, and a high stress job, and an incrediby important job. Same with surgeons, EMTs, firefighters, and so on. I think 99,999 out of 100,000 people would agree with that and not find it controversial.

Of course mistakes will happen. But I guess a somewhat more controversial but still not really all that controversial opinion is that A) not enough is being done pre-emptively to mitigate those mistakes and B) not enough is being done after those mistakes occur to ensure accountability and justice.
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I don’t think A and B are controversial at all. Anybody that doesn’t agree with those isn’t paying attention.

 
knapplc said:
But if your surgeon has a bad day, and people are mean to him, he should be able to leave his scalpel in your esophagus and, if you complain, it's probably because some whiner is editing all the videos to make surgeons look bad.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Ohhhhhh, now I get it. It’s an analogy just for me. It all makes sense now. I’ve been a total idiot.

:facepalm:

 
knapplc said:
https://i.imgur.com/medV8y6.mp4

Just a surgeon having a bad day. Right?
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Nope. That is another completely chickensh#t move by the cops. There’s another one that should be immediately fired and charged with assault and reckless endangerment.
 

These are much better examples of police violence and excess than the ones I saw the other day. I would hope that nobody (including you) actually thinks I would defend that behavior. Maybe find a more questionable one where we can fight over the slight nuances.

 
JJ Husker said:
Nope. That is another completely chickensh#t move by the cops. There’s another one that should be immediately fired and charged with assault and reckless endangerment.
 

These are much better examples of police violence and excess than the ones I saw the other day. I would hope that nobody (including you) actually thinks I would defend that behavior. Maybe find a more questionable one where we can fight over the slight nuances.
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So you didn't watch all the videos posted in that thread before jumping on the horse. Got it.

That's what we've been on you about these last several days. Good on you for admitting that.

 
knapplc said:
So you didn't watch all the videos posted in that thread before jumping on the horse. Got it.

That's what we've been on you about these last several days. Good on you for admitting that.
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No, I did not watch all the videos that have been posted. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on here the past few days but ain’t nobody got (should have) that much time. And I’ve spent entirely too much time watching the protests on local news, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. I like to rotate between the 3, mix them together in my mind and then hope something approaching reality distills  :lol:

 The two I’ve just seen tonight are bad and very clear. The few I watched a couple days ago were nothing like these. I felt justified defending what I saw and there were people raising a stink about those same videos. Mostly, I was just not buying the MSNBC or CNN whiner guy story as I saw it unfold on live TV.

 
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