[g8tor]

I don't read that article as supporting the title that descalation leads to less violence. it does discuss evidence for escalation being correlated with more violence. but you can't blanket say that's causal.

These are complex situations that don't follow rules. The mob consists of peaceful protesters, violent protesters and looters. people's membership in any of these groups can be multiple and shift over time.

it's not reasonable for police to make an assessment who is who on the ground because their job is not to be a jury. what is reasonable is that once a gathering crosses the threshold of criminal activity it becomes illegal.

one solution is to just arrest everybody after giving them time to disperse. but to do that you need overwhelming numbers. not always the resources to do that.

you can't just stand there and let people beat you, stab you, lob projectiles at you. you have to respond to that force with force. You also need to protect property again using force.

again unless you have overwhelming numbers you can't engage in hand-to-hand combat or using battons. this strategy cannot be used by itself to bring the crowd under control. so each officer needs a force multiplier some sort of tool that can effect multiple people. it's a given that in such situations any such tool will affect multiple people even those doing nothing violent.

tear gas and rubber bullets are okay tools. but I think there needs to be more. when a patient becomes psychotic and dangerous in a hospital or asylum you don't mace their face. you give them a sedative. instead of CS gas it would be great if there was some sort of sedative gas to just slow people down enough to sap their will to continue.

police have to handle the situations as best they can using the tools they have.

I don't think you can say that big protests are all about the death of one man or the treatment of one group. I think the causes of people's unhappiness here is systemic and this is probably just an outlet where people feel now we can stand up.

the police can't cure the people of their anger no matter what they do.

when I see this chaos, I remember ahow US media lionized what happened in Hong Kong not even 1 year ago, and I can't help thinking of the proverb, people in glass houses....

[paulannesley]

> instead of CS gas it would be great if there was some sort of sedative gas to just slow people down enough to sap their will to continue

That is the most casually delivered fucked up dystopian line I've seen on HN.

[g8tor]

heh :). why thank you

I still think it's a great idea

[roelschroeven]

It would be a greater idea still if the people could use said gas against violent police officers, thus preventing all the misery in the first place.

[g8tor]

That's right from your perspective.

[mindslight]

> it would be great if there was some sort of sedative gas to just slow people down enough to sap their will to continue.

It's called food. If the price of food hadn't just doubled (no sales, low unit prices sold out), and urban supermarkets didn't continue to have bare shelves, we wouldn't be seeing the same level of unrest.

I'm certainly not trying to downplay the longstanding grievances behind these protests. But there are orthogonal reasons causing them to happen at such scale.

[MagnumOpus]

> the police can't cure the people of their anger no matter what they do

However, mayors or governors could. Tell AGs to have compulsory investigations of all policce shootings. Charge police officers who don't report corruption or violence with conspiracy charges. Bust police unions which arehelping criminal cops and charge them under RICO statutes.

[g8tor]

That's correct from your point of view.

Actually, what I was trying to say, and I did not say clearly...was I don't think the anger that is driving this unrest is only a result of police violence.

I think it's a lot of anger from multiple causes, economic, the lockdown, and so on. That's why I said, no matter what police do, they cannot cure that.

Hopefully I made it clear now.

[hef19898]

Tear gas and rubber bullets against, at the start, peaceful protesters. not okay tools. Neither is encircling groups or overwhelming them with larger numbers.

This way of thinking, looking at it as a war-like situation and vocabulary, is what leads to escalation. On the other hand, neither is a completly off-hands approach. Tough call, right? Funny thing, when white guys with masks, tactical vests and AR-15s stormed official government buildings, e.g. in Minisota, police didn't intervene.

And seriously, hand-to-hand combat? Hope you're not a cop.

[g8tor]

> Tear gas and rubber bullets against, at the start, peaceful protesters. not okay tools.

Correct from your perspective.

I don't think it was used when the gathering was peaceful unless it was area denial. I think there's some or all of property damage, arson, looting, arming and throwing, before they use those tools.

Interested to see a video with context from the current unrest where that's not the case.

By hand to hand, I mean the stuff that happens when police and gatherers engage at close quarters.

There's lots of these scenes from the HK unrest. it basically is hand-to-hand combat with batons like I said.