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 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

Why obviously? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson

One incident proves nothing for your argument.

The circumstances are not even close to normal.

Palindrome wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Pepper spraying them would result in conviction for assaulting a peace officer.

Lol if only they were.

I wonder if it would though, if they are assaulting me first I am entitled to fight back using appropriate means under common law.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Surtur wrote:

Palindrome wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Preventing the officers from leaving when they wanted to and demanding the release of suspects held in custody.
Those are threats to the safety of the officers.
Plus we have the protestors behavior and retoric which was clearly agressive.

The next time I get kettled by the poilice I should be within my rights to pepper spray right back at them then.

Dear god this should be exalted as the worst argument on Dakka ever. And that's saying something.

Thanks, that means a lot to me. I was also making a semi valid point. Why should the police get carte blanche?

Just because you''re being detained by the police or they're doing something that they have the AUTHORITY to do, doesn't give you a right to fight back. If that were the case, every traffic ticket would result in a brawl with the cops. Giving people the right to fight against police is terrible. BTW if you do pepper spray an officer, you can be shot and killed as you have hampered his ability to defend himself against a likely attack as well as assaulted him. He has a priority to keep his tools away from someone who could use them against himself or others, that means handcuffs, pepper spray, baton, patrol car, taser and guns. I would highly encourage you to find a citizen police academy or criminal justice course to expand your knowledge of police workings.

Hell they're lucky the cops acted with so much restraint... in the face of a mob like that pepper spray was the lowest level option available to police. Batons would not have been out of the question or more serious options like tear gas.

The Lieutenant made it pretty clear "If you stay here, you'll be subject to the use of force." at least three times, and the third time they LAUGHED at him like it was all a game. Reality is clearly not something that enters into the protestor's heads at any point during this. The icing on the cake is when they "give" the police permission to leave.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/No-charges-for-pepper-spraying-UC-cops-3882346.php

I'd like to credit Lieutenant Pike and his officers for their careful management of the incident and getting out of the situation with no officers harmed by useless fethheads.

I'm not convinced California university students shouldn't be pepper sprayed once a semester just on general principal.

 Seaward wrote:
I'm not convinced California university students shouldn't be pepper sprayed once a semester just on general principal.

Just some of them.

UC Davies debate about to happen again? If so.....I WANT MY WATER CANNON!!!!!

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Hell they're lucky the cops acted with so much restraint... in the face of a mob like that pepper spray was the lowest level option available to police. Batons would not have been out of the question or more serious options like tear gas.

The Lieutenant made it pretty clear "If you stay here, you'll be subject to the use of force." at least three times, and the third time they LAUGHED at him like it was all a game. Reality is clearly not something that enters into the protestor's heads at any point during this. The icing on the cake is when they "give" the police permission to leave.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/No-charges-for-pepper-spraying-UC-cops-3882346.php

I'd like to credit Lieutenant Pike and his officers for their careful management of the incident and getting out of the situation with no officers harmed by useless fethheads.

Actually a baton is considered equal force to pepper spray in the eyes of the law. Fun fact. It's good to see they were not charged though. Pity it's going to civil litigation now.

If only they followed this advice: (nsfw)

I freaking love Chris Rock.

 Surtur wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Hell they're lucky the cops acted with so much restraint... in the face of a mob like that pepper spray was the lowest level option available to police. Batons would not have been out of the question or more serious options like tear gas.

The Lieutenant made it pretty clear "If you stay here, you'll be subject to the use of force." at least three times, and the third time they LAUGHED at him like it was all a game. Reality is clearly not something that enters into the protestor's heads at any point during this. The icing on the cake is when they "give" the police permission to leave.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/No-charges-for-pepper-spraying-UC-cops-3882346.php

I'd like to credit Lieutenant Pike and his officers for their careful management of the incident and getting out of the situation with no officers harmed by useless fethheads.

Actually a baton is considered equal force to pepper spray in the eyes of the law. Fun fact. It's good to see they were not charged though. Pity it's going to civil litigation now.

If only they followed this advice: (nsfw)

Spoiler:

I remember my force criteria training, but common sense wise not legal wise, pepper spray is a softer option then a proper beating

Would the beating though depending on the suspect? From what I heard and read...chavs aren't well liked in the UK....

it would. for some people pepper spray is mearly unpleasent, not something that stops you in your tracks. A beating/tasering is what will be needed to stop a person like that.



US Cops get their batons out rarely compared to pepper spray. its simply quicker and safer because you can use it at a distance. Similer to a taser.

I feel like the baton is a last ditch weapon option compared to the othe non-lethal impliments.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

So now we have that wrapped up I guess we don't need trials, evidence and due process since if you are arrested you are obviously guilty.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

Quite.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

So now we have that wrapped up I guess we don't need trials, evidence and due process since if you are arrested you are obviously guilty.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

Quite.

Oh quite right, when you're arrested you should just show up when you please to the court house to address these silly little claims against you. Then the judge can give you a piece of hard candy, pat you on the bottom and say, "Now there's a good lad!" while you skip out the doors.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

I have no idea where your from but its clearly not from an area with a strong police union.

I respect cops. I also hate cops. My mother spent 21 years on Buffalo PD, the last 9 in Internal Affairs. She wont even tell me some of the worst things because she worries it will make me lose all faith in police.

But they're human. Humans with not enough training, too many responsibilities, and not enough accountability. Its not easy to deal with the scum of humanity day in and day out. But realistically thats what they do. Everywhere across the world. The worst we have to offer thats who they deal with. Giving them more power is not the answer. But neither is giving them none. But that also plays largely into my belief that if you changed the drug laws things would be a lot different. Better IMO, but im no expert. Well at laws at least. Got that drug thing down pretty good.

 Surtur wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

So now we have that wrapped up I guess we don't need trials, evidence and due process since if you are arrested you are obviously guilty.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

Quite.

Oh quite right, when you're arrested you should just show up when you please to the court house to address these silly little claims against you. Then the judge can give you a piece of hard candy, pat you on the bottom and say, "Now there's a good lad!" while you skip out the doors.

Innocent until proven guilty is the basis on which western law is built. To claim that someone who has been arrested on suspicion of a crime has actually, unequivocally committed that crime is wrong until their guilt is proven in a court of law.

 Medium of Death wrote:

Massive cases of incompetence, corruption, making up the rules as they go along, generally not knowing the law etc etc etc

In my experience, the highest contributing factor is public ignorance. The public, quite simply, are too poorly educated to know what is appropriate behaviour on the part of law enforcement officers and some will react badly to what should be viewed as normal policing.

This is exacerbated in poorer communities where most everyone will have been arrested at some point and their personal and emotional experiences, coupled with their ignorance of police powers and what constitutes proper policing, leads to a very bitter and inaccurate view of police.

For example, I had one extremely irate scrote (that is, a scumbag who wasn't currently committing a crime) tell me that the police were abusing their powers because they shut down his noisy party at midnight. He insisted that because it was the weekend, he was allowed to keep it going to 1am and the coppers only shut it down because they had a grudge against him because of his record.

There was no grudge, and no right to be noisy until 1am, it was all imagined on his part but no less real to him because of it.

 Lone Cat wrote:
Thanks. it's time TASER should be standard police gear of the GB. (and p'rhaps. every 'developed' nations on earth)

or why shouldn't it be?

Tasers are a less lethal option. When you absolutely need to stop someone right now, to protect life or prevent serious injury, then you don't use a taser. You use a gun.

Further, a taser is not a compliance tool. You don't just tase someone because you want them to do something.

It's a tool used to incapacitate people in dangerous situations where it is not justified shooting them, and pepper spray would be ineffective. It's legitimate applications are real, but also quite narrow.

Unfortunately, the temptation to use the taser as a pain compliance tool is very strong, and it happens very often.

It's a tricky issue. We're currently trialling a system whereby only the section sergeant carries a taser. It's the sergeants job to attend any bizarre, unusual or exceptionally dangerous situations and assume direct control from the beat coppers, and generally the situations where the use of a taser is acceptable will also be the sort of situations that aren't terribly time sensitive. A guy with a knife standing off against police will probably continue to stand there for five or ten minutes while the Sgt arrives with a taser, and generally when a job like that (Man with knife on street) comes over the radio, the sergeant will be on his way anyway.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Surtur wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

So now we have that wrapped up I guess we don't need trials, evidence and due process since if you are arrested you are obviously guilty.

But obviously you arn't listining to reason so why bother.

Quite.

Oh quite right, when you're arrested you should just show up when you please to the court house to address these silly little claims against you. Then the judge can give you a piece of hard candy, pat you on the bottom and say, "Now there's a good lad!" while you skip out the doors.

Innocent until proven guilty is the basis on which western law is built. To claim that someone who has been arrested on suspicion of a crime has actually, unequivocally committed that crime is wrong until their guilt is proven in a court of law.

I believe you missed the point again. You may have just made a strawman argument while you were at it, I'm not 100% sure. We aren't talking about innocence or guilt, but police use of force to detain someone. You have an unreasonably low threshold for what an officer can do. No officer could do his or her job if they didn't use force as needed. If you're being uppity, the officer doesn't have to sit around and wait for you to throw a punch. The officer has the authority to defend themselves from harm as needed. That's why handcuffs exist and the wrap and the spit guard. If you are under arrest, you need to comply or face the consequences. Getting them into handcuffs or any other restraining apparatus may take force. Let me ask you, at what point do you think an officer may use force? When the suspect is not complying with the officer's orders? When the suspect threatens the officer? When the officer is attacked by the suspect?

 Surtur wrote:


I believe you missed the point again. You may have just made a strawman argument while you were at it, I'm not 100% sure. We aren't talking about innocence or guilt, but police use of force to detain someone. You have an unreasonably low threshold for what an officer can do. No officer could do his or her job if they didn't use force as needed. If you're being uppity, the officer doesn't have to sit around and wait for you to throw a punch. The officer has the authority to defend themselves from harm as needed. That's why handcuffs exist and the wrap and the spit guard. If you are under arrest, you need to comply or face the consequences. Getting them into handcuffs or any other restraining apparatus may take force. Let me ask you, at what point do you think an officer may use force? When the suspect is not complying with the officer's orders? When the suspect threatens the officer? When the officer is attacked by the suspect?

Please read this, said by Grey Templar

Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

To take this approach is to directly nullify the entire premise of innocence until proven guilty.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Surtur wrote:


I believe you missed the point again. You may have just made a strawman argument while you were at it, I'm not 100% sure. We aren't talking about innocence or guilt, but police use of force to detain someone. You have an unreasonably low threshold for what an officer can do. No officer could do his or her job if they didn't use force as needed. If you're being uppity, the officer doesn't have to sit around and wait for you to throw a punch. The officer has the authority to defend themselves from harm as needed. That's why handcuffs exist and the wrap and the spit guard. If you are under arrest, you need to comply or face the consequences. Getting them into handcuffs or any other restraining apparatus may take force. Let me ask you, at what point do you think an officer may use force? When the suspect is not complying with the officer's orders? When the suspect threatens the officer? When the officer is attacked by the suspect?

Please read this, said by Grey Templar

Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

To take this approach is to directly nullify the entire premise of innocence until proven guilty.

No it isn't. Restrain just means handcuffs. I understand he used improper terminology, that it should be you are suspected of committing a crime, but that's not really what you've been arguing.

'Obviously you have violated the law' is the contentious part, the police detain you because you are suspected of violating a law, until you are found guilty then you are only suspected of violation

Right, minor slip up. The point still stands.


And really, from the policeman's perspective you have violated the law. You won't actually legally be charged till you have your day in court, but its the cops job to make sure you get your day in court.

I'd also like to point out that there is a world of difference between a policeman arresting/detaining you and "assaulting you".

Police have quite firm training on appropriate levels of force with which they can use to restrain people and yes, they can use quite a lot of force. However, they cannot assault you; that implies a level of unreasonable force.

For example, a policeman may tackle you to the ground, pin you and handcuff you (assuming your behaviour warrants it). He cannot then start kicking you or pepper spray you while you lay on the ground.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Please read this, said by Grey Templar

Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

To take this approach is to directly nullify the entire premise of innocence until proven guilty.

Don't be disingenuous. You know very well what GT was saying, and the fact that he worded it poorly should not be taken as licence to misrepresent his position.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
This incident is clear that the police's non-lethal methods of defending themselves is ineffective. They need better non-lethal weapons.

There's no such thing as a "non-lethal weapon", any weapon can kill given the right circumstances or incompetence on the part of the wielder, there are only weapons which are less-lethal than the alternatives.

And no, the police should not be armed, and nor they should be carrying tasers, or bear-mace, or microwave cannons, or whatever the next innovation in doing violence is, because it's been shown during the pilot schemes for these sorts of things that if you give an officer the option of using mace or tasers, they will use that option even in situations which they would previously have solved without them, and where they were clearly not necessary.

It's a horribly utilitarian truth that having a system which occasionally results in an officer or a member of the public being killed is the better option, because tragic as those events are, the fact is more people would die -civvies AND police officers- more often in a UK where every officer carries a ranged weapon.

Besides which, the police in this country have shown themselves to be just as susceptible to corruption and cover-ups as any other, the IPCC and the courts are enough of a joke as it is, the last thing we need are scum like Simon Harwood wandering the streets with tasers and handguns.

I'd just like to state for the record after some of the more intense arguments from U.K. dakkanauts that their constables should not be armed, I'm extremely glad I live in a nation where not only are the police armed, but so am I.

When they bring in rigorous psychological testing to weed out the evil so-and-sos who make up a (small)minority of the police and give the rest a bad name, when they stop with the herd mentality that means they stick together and cover up any wrong doing, when they charge police who have abused their power. Maybe then the police can have less lethal means of protection rolled out for all officers. Until then they should be treating even tazers as firearms and restrict them to a few who have had proper training.

Guns should never be given out to every officer however, noone does well out of that (except maybe criminal gun dealers).

 Yodhrin wrote:
And no, the police should not be armed, and nor they should be carrying tasers, or bear-mace, or microwave cannons, or whatever the next innovation in doing violence is, because it's been shown during the pilot schemes for these sorts of things that if you give an officer the option of using mace or tasers, they will use that option even in situations which they would previously have solved without them, and where they were clearly not necessary.

It's a horribly utilitarian truth that having a system which occasionally results in an officer or a member of the public being killed is the better option, because tragic as those events are, the fact is more people would die -civvies AND police officers- more often in a UK where every officer carries a ranged weapon.

While this does apply to pain compliance and incapacitation, it doesn't apply to the use of deadly force. A taser has an (unacceptable) use outside of it's intended function: punishment and compliance. The same is true for batons, sprays, etc. If you want someone to do something and they aren't doing it, or you just want to hurt them, then you can use this less lethal tool on them.

The same doesn't apply to guns. No one is going to shoot someone for lipping off at them, or refusing to get out of a car. Well, no one except the nutters, but there's no accounting for them.

IMO, it's vitally important for the police to be able to defend themselves with lethal force where it's warranted.

 Kaldor wrote:
IMO, it's vitally important for the police to be able to defend themselves with lethal force where it's warranted.

Why would you ever need to use lethal force to defend yourself? Surely temporarily incapacitating someone serves the same purpose without anyone actually dying. How can it ever be warranted? In this thread we have seen people claim it's warranted to inflict violence on a non violent protest because of some perceived threat.

In Britain we don't kill the worst criminals after due process, so why would anyone grant the police the right to do so without a shred of evidence that the person is even a criminal?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Surtur wrote:


I believe you missed the point again. You may have just made a strawman argument while you were at it, I'm not 100% sure. We aren't talking about innocence or guilt, but police use of force to detain someone. You have an unreasonably low threshold for what an officer can do. No officer could do his or her job if they didn't use force as needed. If you're being uppity, the officer doesn't have to sit around and wait for you to throw a punch. The officer has the authority to defend themselves from harm as needed. That's why handcuffs exist and the wrap and the spit guard. If you are under arrest, you need to comply or face the consequences. Getting them into handcuffs or any other restraining apparatus may take force. Let me ask you, at what point do you think an officer may use force? When the suspect is not complying with the officer's orders? When the suspect threatens the officer? When the officer is attacked by the suspect?

Please read this, said by Grey Templar

Why are they assaulting you?

Obviously you have violated the law and the law requires they restrain you and bring you to justice.

To take this approach is to directly nullify the entire premise of innocence until proven guilty.

How? Being arrested does not make you guilty. That does not happen until the Judge/Jury declares it.

If you remove societies ability to detain suspects until guilt is proven... well good luck buddy.