Yeah, pretty much what I figured.

[trinityvixen]

On the heels of xannoside 's post, and my response to it, evidence of what I was talking about. With numbers and everything. Non-lethal weapons may decrease the numbers of deaths in violent confrontations, but they increase the numbers of incidents that use force, period. Suddenly, you've got a lot of people being harmed who might not otherwise have

Comments

[edgehopper]

It's a real problem--I just wish people cared about it more outside of the protest context. In the last year, the most I've heard about police brutality in the media came from Lt. Bologna's spraying in NYC (probably not justified) and the UC Davis spraying (definitely over the line). Bad, painful, violated rights, but no permanent harm. Meanwhile, tons of cases of "puppycide" (a term for the police practice of shooting dogs at the outset of all SWAT raids, regardless of the dog's threat or the violence of the suspect) and arrests of people for taking pictures and video of police don't get much coverage outside of left- and right-libertarian blogs (http://www.theagitator.com/ has really good coverage of both, but make sure you're psychologically ready to read about the puppycide incidents before doing so

[trinityvixen]

I care about this a lot, actually. I've been following stories of tazer abuse for a while, very chagrined the whole time. It has nothing to do with it just being used against protesters; clearly, as the article mentions several studies that investigated use of non-lethal weapons in years prior, most researchers aren't exclusively focused on anti-protest spraying.

I have to call bullshit on this, though:
After seeing the damage done by Occupy Oakland and in London, it's tough to fault police for taking a hard line against young, leaderless anarchists.

It is hyperbole to call the OWS people, smelly and intrusive though they may be, anarchists. It is just wrong, according to the defition of the term anarchy/anarchists. You can throw the word around all you like, but you just sound like you don't know what it means. Do not use words incorrectly.

It is likewise inaccurate to link protesters to rioters like the ones in London, despite however many rhetorical points you think you score for that analogy. You do it to condemn the one (

[edgehopper]

I'm not criticizing you for failure to talk about the problem outside the protester context, I'm criticizing the media. Sorry if that wasn't clear

[trinityvixen]

I'm not criticizing you for failure to talk about the problem outside the protester context, I'm criticizing the media. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Sorry for the overreaction there. You're absolutely right that this isn't covered nearly enough. Just read about a 61-year-old disable man tazed to death. He fell off his bike and was having a seizure. Someone reported him as a drunk and the cops tazed him instead of trying to restrain him. He's DEAD. It's just...wow, the first thing you do when someone is having a seizure, whether it's a drug fit or not, is not taze them. That's not recommended by any group that makes tazers.

[cubby_t_bear]

It's not a problem with a good solution. If you let people run riot, well, you'll get a riot on your hands. If you remove nonlethal tools from the hands of cops, well, UC Davis is infinitely preferable to Kent State.

You could wish that in every case the police are clever and patient, the protesters are reasonable and law-abiding, and the hotheads aren't crazy enough to provoke something, but that's rarely the case.

[xannoside]

That pre-supposes that each of those incidents/events would become another London or Kent State if they hadn't had those tools.

You just can't make that claim credibly. Surely we've all seen student protests in person that involved hundreds of people and then just went away.

The point is not that the police always need to be clever and patient and hotheads not be crazy, but that there is a wide gap of escalation involved between talking to the protesters and using "non-lethal" methods on them.

[cubby_t_bear]

Not each. It's a question of how many. How many UC Davises are you prepared to have, to avoid a Kent State? How many police tazings of delinquents in libraries are you prepared to have, to avoid a shooting of the same?

Given the relative fatality rates, my answer to each of those questions above is "well over N, where N is a very very large number, but try to keep the number low if we can."

While I'm all for research, my suspicion is that you may be able to mitigate, but not end, the fact that you're going to have ugly incidents involving force, and more of them when the cops have nonlethal tools. If nothing else, people are less intimidated and willing to defy authority when they know they're going to get sprayed, not shot.

[xannoside]

How many UC Davises are you prepared to have, to avoid a Kent State? How many police tazings of delinquents in libraries are you prepared to have, to avoid a shooting of the same?

What on earth makes you think that there is an inverse relationship between the them, or a direct relationship at all? I could just as easily say, with as little research, that the pre-ponderance of non-lethal interventions and the community dissatisfaction they always generate is contributing to the likelihood of another Kent State.

If nothing else, people are less intimidated and willing to defy authority when they know they're going to get sprayed, not shot.

How do they know they're not also going to be shot? If non-lethal methods are as not intimidating as you suggest (which they would have to be for the relationship you suggest to exist), why use them at all?