Crowds and police ...
After reading several threads about police violence I would like to believe these are all isolated incidents but unfortunately it seems like there's a trend going on amongst police officers in regards to violent behaviour. I sometimes get the idea the whole world is turning into a big police state. Has it always been like this or are we just more aware of it now because of the internet?
No. It's been commonplace for centuries, but hardly been about a "police state."
Crowds tend to do things in ways that human beings would not normally act alone. Same thing for police. People are crowded together, supporting each other. Same thing for police.
The problem is when people are caught in-between, such as this man. The police are trying to enforce a push-back line, and they do not break their tight formation. One can argue that they should have for this man. Unfortunately, the police don't see it that way. Why?
Because protesters commonly use the "innocent bystander" tactic to break the police line. I'm not saying that is what this guy was doing, in fact, it sounds like he was an innocent bystander. But the key to some crowds is to rout the police, and one way to do that is to break their tight formations and lines. I've seen this done in video, a standard tactic, take advantage of police who do care, and then they are all routed (which only causes more police to arrive from other areas to control it).
Frankly, I like the
Constitution we have here in the US, especially our
Bill of Rights where the supremo, numero uno Amendment is
The Right to Assemble. It is often over-sold as
The Right to Free Speech, but a simple history lesson shows that
Assembly and
Press was it's main, staple purpose (Speech being a natural, supportive aspect).
Our police know and respect the right as unalienable. Sure, there are still some incidents. Some in the '60s in our South were sad, people using their state's rights to deny individual rights. There have been other incidents, like the shooting at Kent State University (although that is the poster case for
not sending in the National Guard for control, and leaving it to state or local agencies, not military). There will always be cases.
But for the most part, the US has always been a nation of assembly, often unsolicited and, quite often, unwanted. We don't even make denying the Holocaust and the Nazi parties illegal. People say the US is "screwed up" for this and many other things, including our individualistic tendencies, which lead to violent tendencies, and our strong default of "innocent until proven guilty" which results in a lower conviction rate of other nations.
But it does mean, by default, police in the US do side with the rights of the civilian and innocent by default, and keep that in mind when trying to enforce the law. It's hardly flawless, but I do see a major difference in attitude -- even if those attitudes result in other statistics that people feel are "screwed up." But that's the story of the American experiment, a nation that has always been "screwed up" from the viewpoint of most other nations.
