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'."

Comments

Re:Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster

[dar]

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.

crowd control

[zxnos]

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.

Re:Best reaction

[Atzanteol]

Probably the best reaction from the police that could have been made was to instead grab and arrest the offending few and allow the rest to protest peacefully.

That often doesn't happen though. While you're arresting those few, the people around them sometimes get angry and begin to resist the arresting.

Anyone at the protest, who would have seen the people pushing their luck, probably would have supported the arrests and spread the word throughout.

Again, very naive IMHO. Police tactics are setup the way they are for a reason. They used pepper to avoid injuring anybody (in the past all they had was guns and hoses). The mob was broken up, and nobody was seriously hurt. If this is fascism, it's changed over the last 100 years (reply not to you here, but others who are way over-reacting)

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.

(don't forget the DNC too). There are people who make a living trying to figure out the solution to this problem. You think it's an easy one? 500 people with maybe 20 cops to control them? It would be nice if we could trust the protesters to be 'nice' and to not destroy things. History shows they are prone to do otherwise though. Mobs get angry, and *very* out of control. If it gets out of control the police are blamed, if they stop it early the police are blamed. If you're so friggin' smart, what's your solution?