Meatspace anonymity manual

petro petro at bounty.org
Tue Jul 10 21:52:07 PDT 2001


>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, petro wrote:
>
>>>The only logical conclusion I can see to skirmishes between black-clad
>>>anarchists, going on "street operations", and governmental riot control
>>>forces, is that the police are eventually given the right to just gun the
>>>protestors down, irregardless of whether they have *done* anything. Unless
>>
>>Maybe in Finland, but here in the US, the government official that gave
>>the orders to shoot a crowd of protestors would *not* be working much
>>longer.
>
>(Actually the police here have far more stringent requirements for even
>drawing a gun than they do over there in the States. But that's not really
>the issue.)

	But is there as much scrutiny and backlash when they do?

	Here in the US, it is getting to the point where cops in 
larger cities won't even bother to deal with certain crimes in 
certain neighborhoods, as they are afraid that even if they do 
everything by the book, they will get fucked.

	From http://www.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy.shtml

	"One officer, 17-year veteran Eric Michl, put it this way: 
"Parking under a shady tree to work on a crossword puzzle is a  great 
alternative to being labeled a racist and being dragged through an 
inquest, a review board, an FBI  and U.S. Attorney's investigation 
and a lawsuit."

	And it is certainly the case that any one who gives the 
orders to fire into a crowd will face some sort of civil suit 
(whether right or wrong, when there is big bucks at stake, the suit 
will be brought).

>The police are already given broad discretion in their use of force. (For
>instance, to stop a fleeing suspect.) I fear that the mechanisms which
>brought us dedicated riot control forces could very well grant the police a
>catch-all licence to kill when "threatened" by a group of protestors. The
>Bloc attire and their interest in direct action constitute a highly
>plausible threat. So could any larger crowd of angry people who refuse to
>disband, if people ever start to think of protestors merely as "anarchists"
>or "hooligans".

	In this country, that discretion is being severely narrowed. 
There is a case in Seattle (IIRC) where a black man was (allegedly) 
*DRAGGING A COP WITH HIS CAR* and was shot dead. People got upset at 
the police for this.
-- 
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so
afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such
knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.
           





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