[okwhatthe2]

You're forgetting that in many cases these protests turn violent as a direct result of police confrontation. In that regard these surveillance operations only increase the likelihood of escalating tensions between citizens and police.

[gumby]

> You're forgetting that in many cases these protests turn violent as a direct result of police confrontation.

I don't know that either of your assertions is true. I suspect very very few demonstrations turn violent (a negligible number) and I suspect that a small but significant number (maybe as high as 1/3) of those that do, turn violent due to police involvement.

But I have seen no numbers; they could be the opposite for all I know. The episodic nature of how news reporting is done (where most events are treated sui generis or are arbitrarily linked due to the structure of reporting) makes it impossible to tell unless someone actually does a study.

There is nothing in principle wrong with various entities monitoring public statements. In terms of policing there are several structural problems in how it is performed, in California, the US, and in the world at large. I doubt anyone would disagree.

[sheraz]

Please explain that line of thinking. How does increased surveillance increase violence?

If anything it gives law enforcement a heads up of where thier presence might be needed.

[krapp]

Police sometimes intend to incite violence at these events as a pretense to breaking up lawful protests. Especially when they are the ones being protested.

edit - changed often to sometimes, since 'often' really isn't accurate. Lazy writing on my part.

[arca_vorago]

Please dont forget that its not just the ones in riot gear either, often the black-block anarchists who start the destruction of property which gives the lea the excuse to kettle/arrest protestors are plain cloths police/contractors acting as agent provocateurs, who then fade into background or even pass through police lines right before the push.

Crowsds are so easily manipulated, its a time old tactic.

[daveguy]

> often the black-block anarchists who start the destruction of property which gives the lea the excuse to kettle/arrest protestors are plain cloths police/contractors acting as agent provocateurs

That sounds very conspiratorial. Is there any evidence for that claim?

[DanBC]

There was a scandal in the UK were undercover police officers went way too far in infiltrating groups, sometimes causing violent (against property) action to happen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28123438

[nosuchthing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

  COINTELPRO (a portmanteau derived from COunter 
  INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at 
  times illegal, projects conducted by the United 
  States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at 
  surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting 
  domestic political organizations.

There seems to be minimal oversight for employees of domestic law entities.

[imagist]

In many cases, law enforcement presence is what causes the violence.

Cops in the US are people with guns who have been trained that force is their only tool. The idea that cops will ever decrease violence is deeply misguided.

[sheraz]

Frankly, your comments are ignorant and uninformed.

Surely there are documented cases of abuse of police power, but it is not all of the time. In fact, those cases are a very small minority when compared to all citizen-police interactions.

You are woefully misinformed if you think that police in the US are taught that violence is the only tool in their repertoire. And even more so that you would say that police presence is the cause of violence.

[imagist]

> You are woefully misinformed if you think that police in the US are taught that violence is the only tool in their repertoire.

"There have been too many lives lost to police killings. Too many phone calls telling families that their loved ones, particularly young black men, won’t be coming home. But in most cases, it isn’t because individual police officers are consciously racist or think black lives don’t matter. It is because officers perform the way they are trained to perform."[1]

"Officers are trained to shoot until the threat is no longer present."[2]

Paul Waldman: Did you think what the officers did [in Powell's shooting] was appropriate? It seems pretty clear that that's standard operating procedure.

Maria Haberfeld: Yes it is, absolutely. [3]

> And even more so that you would say that police presence is the cause of violence.

Could you explain to me how a person with a gun could ever decrease violence?

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/police-g...

[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/19/ferguso...

[3] http://prospect.org/article/expert-us-police-training-use-de...

[TeMPOraL]

> Could you explain to me how a person with a gun could ever decrease violence?

The way every standing army out there does it by just being there and having guns?

As for the quotes, the biggest issue I see with the police brutality topic is lack of hard numbers. "There have been too many lives lost to police killings" is meaningless in this context. How many? 5 this year? 50? 50 000?

Eyeballing numbers from [0], the US - a 300 million country - has about one million police officers with arrest powers. 5, or even 50 deaths over one million officers is, frankly, an irrelevant statistical blip, not a major and important issue.

Now I'm not saying there is no issue in the US. I haven't seen the numbers, because they tend to not show up in the discussion. It seems to me however, that this is another media-driven issue - i.e. something that does not exist until media start talking about it, and worst case may actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy afterwards.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_...

[ubernostrum]

The way every standing army out there does it by just being there and having guns?

Now contrast with all the posts going around social media from military veterans explaining the training they got on rules of engagement, including use of deadly force as an absolute last resort when all other options fail after explicit attempts, and look at how often the narrative with police is simply shoot first, then shoot more, then keep shooting. And that's without getting into increasingly-recorded incidents where we see things like officers retroactively planting guns on corpses to back up a claim that "I had to shoot him, he was going for a gun!"

Also:

5, or even 50 deaths

Try 2.8 per day[1] that we know of, which is over one thousand per year.

http://www.vox.com/a/police-shootings-ferguson-map

[imagist]

> The way every standing army out there does it by just being there and having guns?

And how is that, exactly?

The cold war, where much greater threats than the threat of standing armies were at play, exhibited itself in violence all over the world.

It shouldn't require explanation that the threat of violence doesn't prevent violence.

[MaysonL]

The most peaceful Central American country doesn't have a standing army – and that's arguably a main reason it is the most peaceful.

[pjc50]

Increased confrontation causes violence. In particular, finding groups who are protesting against previous police violence and provoking them tends to incite violence.

[mc32]

There's inherent tension in group demonstrations. Typically most people want to peacefully protest but you also have an element of anarchists and hooligans who jump on the bandwagon and counterintuitively do more harm than good for a movement (by turning "regular hard working folk" against the movement due to needless violence and destruction).

That said, I agree with OP, if you're posting in a public forum, don't turn around and then say you expect privacy. The internet is a broadcast medium, in this sense, you can't push the genie back in the bottle once you let it out.

So, if you're going to say provocative things which don't broadcast them and then expect only your followers to pay attention.