Here's a video of some of the shit thats happened.
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930
This is serious shit. It may have started as the police responding appropriately to rioters but it has advanced to WAY more than that.
I've been watching for 20 minutes. Cliffs on what I saw
- A group of 40-50 individuals, PEACEFULLY, protesting. No one being violent, they aren't even being particularly loud.
- Some members of the media covering them, commenting that the police have cut them off from their news vans and won't allow them to return to them
- Police issue an ultimatum. Members of the community ,ust disperse and members of the media STOP RECORDING.
- Many protesters sit down and raise their hands up to show they aren't a threat.
- Police respond by firing rubber bullets, firing tear gas, and throwing flashbang grenades at the crowd.
Make your own judgment.
I think in these situations, police need to show a little more restraint and perhaps use a bit of the old adage, discretion is the better part of valor, meaning that causing people that are loudly protesting to disperse, may cause more harm and anger than allowing them to stay and protest.
When people are rioting and looting, by all means gas and rubber ball their ass back to the stone age. People are angry over the shooting of an unarmed teenager. Sure, it's become a circus, but I don't think the tear gas tactics are going to disperse the people protesting and will only attract more media. I think if the police either just stood their ground, or stood by, ready if the protests got violent again, the crowd and media would get bored and move on.
I absolutely disagree with any order to turn off cameras. You can barely hear it, so not sure where that came from, but that shit is getting old, and it embarrasses me that some departments still push that shit.
I still stand by what I said earlier, about this level of lunacy destroying any chance for a legit investigation. They may just decide that they have to charge the cop, regardless of evidence just to stave off more looting, and that is not justice.
What I would propose, is that all police shootings have to be reported to the FBI, and the FBI or the justice department needs to investigate
AND follow up with the results. So even if we have a number, say the popular figure being thrown around by the mouth breathers on disinfo wars-5000,
we have no idea how many of those were ruled good shoots and how many were bad shoots. I want to know that stuff, and I think everyone else does as well. Right now, police departments have to report the number of shootings they have, but there is no place to differentiate if it is police shooting or not. And no follow up. It is also the same with legit self defense cases when they arise.
So, even though I can tell you how many shootings there have been in my city in the last 12 years, and how many legit self defense cases and police shootings-the FBI does not require or ever list the results. I can tell you in the last 12 years there have been two justifiable homicides in my area. One was a cop shooting a man who was firing a gun at people and the other was a store owner shooting an armed robber who had fired a shot in the air for emphasis. Aside from that, we get dozens of shootings by gangbangers a year and the occasional murder.