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Police Disperse Bush Protesters with Pepper Paintballs
help_cecil_help writes "The AP has this story on how Bush protesters in Jacksonville Oregon were dispersed by local police using 'pepperballs.' The Jacksonville City Administrator described the projectiles as 'like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper'."
wether you support Bush or not this is fascism.
The police didn't start firing pepper balls until people in the crowd started pushing them.
Is it excessive? Definitely. But rather than calling this fascism, I'd call this hyper-sensitivity by law enforcement, probably mostly due to the constant terror warnings and the much higher than normal tension over this election.
Fascism? No. This is a bunch of cops who would rather inflict than be inflicted upon. I highly doubt either candidate would tell the cops to do this!
From the article:
Yeah, most cities have noise ordnances. And: You start pushing them, they get worried about their safety, and respond. An earlier protest didn't get the news coverage, so I assume there were no pepper bullets fired there. Just a bit of a mob mentality (two opposing sides yelling at each other - it'll get heated!), and a few self-preserving cops.Nothing to see here. Move along.
Well then -- go out, get shot by a cayenne pepper paintball, then come back and tell us how you feel.
So Republican slashdotters: go and tell your party that an independant voter won't even consider your cantidates because of this. Change this from within because they certainly aren't listening to us external voices.
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I have never, ever seen anything like the reflexive hostility of this administration to normal political opposition. This Bush should expect it; he got into office on a hugely controversial court decision and with fewer votes than his opponent, and has proceeded to embark on an extreme right-wing program targetting access to and even information about birth control, gutting of pollution regulations and the doctoring of scientific information on government websites to conform to a partisan agenda.
Nothing can excuse this. Nothing. And then we read about the arrest and harassment of people whose only act is to register their discontent with the acts of the President, over and over and over.
I have few beefs with the President over the most controversial of his actions, over in a hot, tired and dusty land far away... but the rest of this stuff threatens the very soul of America if it is allowed to continue. So the only thing I can do is to vote the rascal out, as a lesson to him and any who would follow him:
Thou shalt not abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press, or tell falsehoods about the conclusions which our taxpayer-financed research has given us, or let anyone contaminate my air and water for the bonuses of the corporate executive class. Not In My Name.
(And that goes for anyone pandering to the postmodern PC idiotarians on the other side too; throw sops to them, and you've declared yourself my enemy.)
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I can hardly wait until we can spread American freedom all over the world.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Instead, like said above, they decided to take it out on everyone. I can see where past thoughts would have said to stop the entire protest because it could errupt into something very large. But, the police could have arrested the few perps and allowed the rest to go on. Anyone at the protest, who would have seen the people pushing their luck, probably would have supported the arrests and spread the word throughout.
Problem is that Americans see on TV how fast a crowd of peaceful people protesting can errupt into a mob of car-pushing, fire-lighting persons. Probably without even thinking, and going on what they have seen in the past, the police made the wrong decision.
It is time that police organizations around the country start to re-think the idea of crowd control. From the RNC to this situation, we have too much policing and not enough protesting.
The biggest security hole sits between the keyboard and chair.
-Andrew McAllister
You would compare a shirt that says "Hitler was right" to one that says "Protect our civil liberties"?
Your argument is only valid if the Bush gathering found the phrase "Protect our civil liberties" repugnant.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
tdemark. Tony. You're not being reasonable. Perhaps I'm simply feeding the trolls, but...
...as wearing a "Hitler was right" t-shirt to a Jewish bar mitzvah?
Are you seriously suggesting that wearing a t-shirt that says "Protect Our Civil Liberties" is just as offensive to the President of the United States of America...
This isn't even about the women's rights in this instance. This is about what the President and his administration finds offensive.
How is reminding the president of one of his duties "pissing in [his] Cheerios"?
Sorry, Tony. You're a bad, bad troll. If I had mod points right now...
In Soviet Russia... well, the same thing happens.
Your argument is only valid if the Bush gathering found the phrase "Protect our civil liberties" repugnant.
No, it is only valid if the organizers felt that the shirts would make the attendees uncomfortable.
i would chalk this up to the police begin stupid. since political emotions are really high right now. i find it really hard to believe bush (or kerry should roles be reversed) or his people would tell the cops to start peppering people, for this very reason, it will get reported.
the cops started to move the crowd for 'security reasons', i am sure. one cop was probably green and got jittery.
i have seen cops stand there and ignore people screaming at them during new years parties or when the local team wins a huge game. i have even seen them wrestle down the few trouble makers and let everyone go about there business. sometimes the crowd gets dispersed w/ pepper/gas. usually once some morons flip over a car or something.
what are cops going to do? let property get destoyed or pepper some people.
in summary, more likely jittery cops than political.
always mosh clockwise
From TFA: "Jacksonville City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen said the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted by firing pepperballs, which he described as projectiles like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper. Two people were arrested for failing to disperse. There were no reports of injuries."
Police were pushed, then responded or: "He [Richard Swaney] said he was walking with the crowd away from the inn when he was hit in the back with three separate bursts, one of which knocked him down. He felt a stinging sensation he thought was rubber bullets and smelled pepper. "I don't think I moved fast enough,'' said Swaney. "I can't believe this happens in the United States. It was very peaceful. I think this is the way tyranny begins.''
The two statements don't exactly jive, and both one could say are biased--a protestor who got hit in the back while walking away and the city administrator. Who to believe? At best the city administrator's account is accurate and we have hypersensitivity by the police. If the city administrator's account is wrong and the protest was peaceful then we have something worse. Unfortunately we have no account from an objective, independent third observer to decide the matter.
Let's say I come to your family's bah mitzvah wearing a shirt that says "Hilter was right." What would you do? Probably exactly what the event organizers did.
Are you suggesting that the phrase "protect our civil liberties" is as offensive to Republicans as "Hitler was right" would be to Jews?
How is "protect our civil liberties" an anti-republican statement? It should be a pro-every-party statement. That should be a phrase that is appropriate to promote whether you're a republican, democrat, green, socialist or libertarian.
And by the sounds of it, at least one of the women is an actual Bush supporter. So by this move, it seems that you can not be both a Bush constituation and a defender of the Constitution?
Your arguement is incredibly weak.
That isn't what they said. They didn't say "uncomfortable". They said the shirts were OBSCENE.
Since when is "protect civil liberties" *OBSCENE*?!
Can you please point to the location in the quoted article where the organizers call the shirts "obscene"? Actually, can you point to any location in the article where the organizers are actually quoted as to their reasoning?
- Tony
And what's with the epithet? I never even met Kenny!
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You make some good points -- my own cause (more trees, less Bush) isn't helped by name-calling.
Just one clarification:
Tolerance - [...] Appointing a record number of minorities to key cabinet positions is not tolerance.
One of the things that made Bush a reasonably good governor here in Texas is that he was more truly color-blind than your typical "I have black friends" Democrat. He carried that virtue into the Presidency as well, which gave me hope that even with Gore's contested defeat, the country would still have a chance.
Unfortunately, Bush proved that women and minorites can be just as dumb as white guys. That hubris knows no color. That Condoleesa Rice is just as qualified as any white male to make bad decisions. That Colin Powell can be duped into lying to the UN just as well as any white Secretary of State. And Hispanics can be just as radically right-wing as Anglos.
I hope that part of Bush's legacy is a true integration of the upper echelons of government. I just hope that his legacy can start being tallied next January 21.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
These are PROTESTS. They're outside. There are lots of people there. Didn't anybody bring a fucking video camera?
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
1.) How do they implicitly argue that the president was/is curtailing civil liberties? Depending on how you interpret it, they could have been supporting Bush, because he's defending our civil liberties.
Okay, now laugh.
2.) The article said they had tickets. How is that not an invitation?
Oh yeah, because that wouldn't give the rest of the crowd a flimsy excuse to act like even bigger cocks and escalate the situation further. That NEVER happens at protests...
It all comes down to whether you believe that there are a few problem cases or almost all are problem cases. I believe that there are a few, you seem to believe that most of them are problems.
Oh shit! Look out! It's a mild irritant designed to disperse large and unruly crowds before they get out of hand by making it slightly uncomfortable to stay in the same place! NAZIIIIIIIIIS!
Let's try to keep the Nazi chatter under control, okay? Thanks.
How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?
40
I have an idea. Let's throw YOUR BITCH ASS into the middle of 500 people that disagree with each other and see how YOU react when you get pushed around.
Been there, done that. Germany in the 70's. I was military and we had hundreds of people protest us. We were assigned to keep people out of one of our sites. We did it without any conflicts even though we only had our squad at that site. It's actually very easy to do, if you follow the training.
Do you sit back and let the situation escalate into violence or do you take steps right then and there to make sure that doesn't happen?
Like I said, you remove the problem cases and leave the rest of them alone. As long as they don't try to break through, they can sit and sing as long as they want.
You're a fucking liar if you say you don't end it right there if you can.
No, I've just had more training and practical experience dealing with protests. The majority of the people, in my experience, are calm and reasonable. It's only when the cops over-react that they become problems.
Those weapons are meant for "riot dispersal". There are some differences between an angry crowd and a riot. If you're acting within your rights, your constitutional rights, and a police officer under orders from your government shoots you in the face with a paintball, filled not with paint but with cayenne pepper, to restrain you from further practice of your consitutional rights, guaranteed to you as a protection against government abuse, intentionally worded to allow no exceptions, is that a success? For who?
there are a lot of sensational reports of events like this.
what were the protesters doing prior to this, ie throwing rocks, about to riot. etc
i honestly havent seen a report to say that. so i dont know, but i usually find it hart to believe that the police saw a bunch of bush protesters and couldnt wait to shoot them with pepperballs. (or were commanded too)
all it takes is one officer to PERCIEVE a threat, for all hell to break lose. thats pretty key when understanding an action like this, one officer feels threatened and uses appropriate force for that situation. the problem starts when everyone else gets into it.
Because for the president of the United States, the supposed defender of our constitution and the rights of all Americans, to have people arrested who are guilty of nothing more than being energetic about our liberties, is both tragic and criminal, and shows how little the president actually cares for those liberties whenever it comes time to put words into action. Given a choice between accepting a difference of view, or even encouraging those who wish to broaden our liberties, the president has them arrested. That, in my book, is the very definition of anti-American.
The responsibilities of the office of the President of the United STates are quite clearly delineated in the US Constitution. Among the duties of the President, and sworn to in the oath of office, is "to protect and defend the constitution of the United States." By removing someone who wore a shirt marked "Protect our Civil Liberties," the Repbulicans in charge of this gathering, have implied that they do not agree with that phrase. How can a man swear to uphold the US Constitution as required of him, and find repugnant the phrase "Protect our Civil Liberties?" If performing the duties of the office are so offensive, then why run for re-election? The job description has not changed in 200 years, and is unlikely to change in the next four.
I am more than uncomfortable with a group of republicans who are uncomfortable with protecting our civil liberties. That is the foundation of the US government.
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