[Strang]

I don't doubt that police escalate unnecessarily either.

I'm not even making reference to any current situation. I'm just assuming that there exists a scenario in which it would be reasonable and necessary for the police to dissipate a crowd. Is there a way to do that without rubber bullets and tear gas? Will this create a gap in the "use of force continuum" that will now be filled with something more unjust?

[didibus]

The issue as I see it relates to collateral damage. If you anthropomorphize a crowd as if it suddenly becomes a single entity that is acting criminally, you're clubbing tons of innocent people that are peaceful and law abiding with it.

I see it all the time, people start talking about The Crowd with a capital C. Or sometimes The Protester with a capital P.

So a few individuals in a crowd are acting up, and to react to that, instead of going after them directly, we target the entire crowd of people, which includes almost always more peaceful and legally abiding individuals than not and we use force against them all without discrimination. Often times the crowd even might have peaceful children, elderly, handicapped people, yet you fire the toxic gas, the rubber bullets, the flash bangs at them all.

The Police role at a protest should be to protect the crowd from individuals endangering it first and foremost, and then to protect the bystanders and some of the surrounding private/public property, all from the individuals that are breaking the law. It is not a battle between Police and Crowd or State and Crowd, people have the right to peacefully assemble and protest without any time limits.

So if you agree with that, the question goes back to collateral damage. I just don't see where else people would accept such a undiscriminating use of force. Would you be okay that an entire apartment building be tear-gassed just to stop an escalating case of conjugal violence happening in a single unit of the appartment complex? I wouldn't, and I don't see what's different with the situation here.

[chrisseaton]

> I'm just assuming that there exists a scenario in which it would be reasonable and necessary for the police to dissipate a crowd.

If they're assembled illegally, then surely you want to arrest them and have them face justice, not let them go by dispersing them.

If they're not assembled illegally, then leave them alone.

[Nursie]

In the UK crowds are contained until they can be dispersed, without the use of this stuff.

I don't have all the answers, but perhaps studying other countries with lesser police violence problems might help.

[kqr]

The "problem" with studying other countries is that US citizens are armed to their teeth compared to citizens of most of the rest of the civilised world. Police in the US pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives.

Not that this excuses their actions -- just pointing out that it's a systematic problem that's hard to weed out by looking at countries where police often leave their weapons in the car when they go to confront suspects of non-violent crimes.

[Nursie]

I said I didn't have all the answers, but I think that's part of the problem here -

"Police in the US pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives."

Do they? Really? Or is that an overreaction even in the US? Couldn't a different approach and an emphasis on peaceful de-escalation before paranoid use of deadly force be better?

Again, I don't have all the answers, but I bet there are lesons to be learned from elsewhere.

[kqr]

I'm sure statistically even the US police are relatively safe (as in they might well be more likely to die or be injured from car crashes, like the rest of us.)

But when the stakes are that high, being statistically safe on average does not take into account what the gamblers' call the individuals risk of ruin.

So yes, I think they have to consider that an armed citizen could incapacitate them for life at a distance with nearly no warning. And this risk is many times greater in the US than elsewhere.

[saurik]

Which is then why police see it as OK to semi-arbitrarily incapacitate random people for life (by hitting them with rubber bullets, for which there are ridiculously many stories of people losing eyes or having internal organ damage--think about how you don't even want to be hit in your lower back with a fist for fear of it damaging your kidney--with studies showing like a 15% rate of permanent disability of some form from being hit by the things) and then tell sob stories about how a protestor threw something at them, which of course barely hit/hurt the officer because throwing things is really difficult? Yeah, no: I have absolutely zero sympathy for police officers taking this position.

[kqr]

It's important to distinguish sympathy and understanding. To solve a problem, understanding is required.

[Nursie]

> So yes, I think they have to consider that an armed citizen could incapacitate them for life at a distance with nearly no warning

That's different, and a valid consideration of risk, as compared to what you said before - "pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives."

Approaching a situation in a state of mortal fear, every time, rather than with a calm understanding of real risks, and this fear mindset feeds into their behaviour, this might be part of the problem.

[TheCoelacanth]

The absolute last thing you would want to do to someone armed with a lethal weapon would be to antagonize them with a weapon that won't consistently eliminate them as a threat.

These "less lethal" weapons aren't being used to defend against actual threats, they are being used to terrorize unarmed protestors.

[thomastjeffery]

> The "problem" with studying other countries is that US citizens are armed to their teeth compared to citizens of most of the rest of the civilised world.

I don't see that as a problem. Police are at least as heavily armed. I'm not aware of any instances where armed protesters created a dangerous situation.

The overwhelming majority of violence has been perpetrated by armed police on unarmed civilians. "Less lethal" weapons are used as an excuse to continue this pattern.

[kqr]

Well, it obviously is a problem, since the default threat level all around is insanely high in the US, where this problem is greater than in other civilised countries where the default threat level is lower.

[thomastjeffery]

The perceived threat level is not the actual threat level.

[kqr]

Correct, but humans are driven by their perceptions of the truth, not by the truth.

[Shish2k]

> US citizens are armed to their teeth

With the justification of “We need the power to resist against a government who turns on its citizens” - now that that’s clearly BS, maybe time to tighten the gun laws and de-escalate the whole country? :P

[mindslight]

So maybe if We The People give up the paltry remnants of our right to self-defense, the cops won't attack us so severely? This is such a tired argument, and it's completely refuted by the lack of police riots against the tacticool protestors a few weeks prior.

The police are supposed to be civilians, and the government is supposed to be subservient to the People. If the police have access to a type of weapon, the general population should as well. If someone cannot handle being a police officer in this society, the answer is simple - find another job.