Police Brutality: Not Just for America Anymore

Apparently, after a cop kidnapped an murdered a young woman a few days ago, the police decided to rough up a protest on her behalf:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1261051

At a minimum, the cop who.murdered the woman will see prison time will see prison.

Any cop fired as a result of this protest will be gone for good and not shuffled elsewhere like in America.

the cop was not on duty when he committed the murder, unless new information says otherwise. If the cop was off duty how was this police brutality? The murderer happened to be a cop. He could could have been a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, etc. Bring me up to speed here on any new information.

I sympathize with those attending this vigil, as this is a case that has shaken the UK seriously. A man charged with protecting the public (the British attitude toward police is not the same as the American attitude, because British police in general do not act the way American police do in general, though there are of course exceptions in both directions) kidnapped and murdered a young woman. Even though he did not do it in the line of duty, the people feel seriously betrayed by this breach of trust that they are supposed to be able to have in those whose job is to protect them.

But the British approach to the pandemic has been very strict. Hardly a day goes by without news of someone fined heavily for violating Covid restrictions. The police who broke up this protest did not do it at all because it was protesting the actions of a policeman. They did it because the law does not allow such gatherings, and they were given the job of breaking it up.

So I'm actually torn on this. It is by no means a case for denouncing police violence, such as what happens so often in the USA. The vigil was set up because the action was so horrific (it actually speaks well of the UK that a police officer committing a horrible crime is a rare enough event that it shakes the whole country) that people felt the need to react in a very public manner. Should the authorities have sort of "looked the other way" concerning this event, even though it was clearly and explicitly illegal? Perhaps. But then a lot of other people would feel justified in public gatherings as well, and the Brits have actually done a terrific job of bringing what looked at the beginning of the year like an out-of-control surge of infection under control. So I can also understand the "no exceptions" approach, since the well-being of the whole country depends on it.

The COVID reason given is iffy given that locking up everyone in the enclosed space that is custody will hardly decrease the chances of infection.

The PR around the arrests has been hideous - the Met basically used the standard "baby, why you make me gotta hit you?" logic of abusers, in regard to an event caused by the inability of a man not to molest/harass/kill a woman.

I was led to believe there were a very small number of actual arrests (single digits). Is that a misunderstanding on my part, or perhaps a failure of the news reports I read?

^The story Shirogayne linked to said four people were arrested. It also talked about the Covid issue and that there was a legal challenge to the protest. I don't think Brits have the equivalent of a 1st Amendment right to peacefully protest. It doesn't mention actual brutality by the officers who were at this protest, just that they made arrests. It doesn't seem like the thrust of the protest was against cops, but rather against that women in 2021 still can't count on safely walking home.

Seems a stretch to me to say that the cops were singling these protesters out because the murderer was in this case a cop.

If this cop was kidnapping and murdering a woman in his down time it makes me me wonder what else he’s been up to, yikes

Yeah, the UK are going Fash in a big fucking hurry.
They're stepping on the gas.

The UK government want to pass a law next week which criminalises any protest which causes disruption to society. It's really not good.

Yes, because the only people in custody would be people arrested specifically at that event, and not anyone else arrested in the biggest city in the UK.

hmmm.....isn't the idea of a protest (even peaceful ones) to disrupt society at some level? In other words if society has no idea the protest is even happening, then it wouldn't be too effective would it? It would be like a silent firecracker.

Imna let someone else take this one. Specifically calling out his aversion to BLM protests being “too political”

So I don't get what you're saying.

Are you saying that the correctional facilities there aren't taking precautions to prevent the spread of Covid?

Or that police should not be arresting people because the fact of arresting people puts them at risk for Covid exposure?

Or what?

OH WOW YOU FINALLY GOT IT, HOLY SHIT



Now remember that the next time you bitch about "thugs" wrecking a neighborhood or disrupting the freeway.

I'm saying that putting people in enclosed spaces where COVID transmission is more likely (even with precautions) than leaving them unarrested in the open air where they CAN socially distance is counterintuitive.

Obviously, the police have to arrest people who have actually committed crimes.

Arresting people for increasing the risk of COVID exposure only to put those people at greater risk of exposure is just daft.

There are two British cops on TBBS admitting this was a bad move, not just due to the optics but because they know firsthand that precautions are not cutting the mustard.

Cognitive dissonance is alive and well!

you seriously can't discern the difference between "wrecking a neighborhood" and "disrupting a freeway"? One causes thousands/millions of dollars worth of damage and puts people out of business or their homes, the other one might make people miss work, school, appointments and airline flights.

see post #19

"not just America"

Talk to some First Nations folks in Canada about the RCMP

I assume you share my dim view of places like FL and OK passing laws immunizing drivers that run over protesters then?

Which, would be an interesting test case to try that out on a Proud Boy and see how much immunity you get.

It totally depends on the situation. It's not one size fits all (or shouldn't be anyway). If a mob of agitated protesters surrounds your car and starts trying to get into your car or breaking your windows or flip it over or other actions that could imply an immediate threat of violence then hell yes you should hit the gas and get the hell out of Dodge.
However if you deliberately target a group of protesters or deliberately drive near a protest looking for trouble, then hell no you can't run them over. I guess we'll find out soon enough, it's about that time of year already.

I'm pretty sure "a bunch of protesters surrounded my car and started banging on my hood and trying to break my windows" has happened in Proud Boys' masturbatory fantasies a lot more than it has happened in real life.

I think I am in agreement with you in saying there should be some sort of agitator statute. The people who would surround a car and start bashing it and possibly try to hartm the people inside are not peaceful protestors. The person who approaches the group of protesters, or group of whatever, to fuck with them is also part of the mix. If you are walking away and people are chasing you that is completely on them. But if you went over and poked them then you are on some scale part of the melee that happens.

Perhaps there are sometimes both sides should be locked up and face charges because neither walked away, and both kept escalating and participating in the fight. This is why the requirement to retreat for self defense is important. Because that is a breaking point for legal responsibility. If that person says awful shit and then walks away you do not have the right to assault them. Maybe you ask the property owner to tell them to leave, or maybe you call the cops if you feel there is danger. However, you do not get to swing just because they yell shit at you. If you try to go away and they follow you then they are attacking you.

If it can be proven that you drove over to a crowd, or into a crowd, that you could have avoided then you are guilty. If you start yelling shit and the crowd surrounds your car and then you are afraid both sides are guilty of wrong doing if you harm people driving away. You called them over to your car to say some shit and even though you may now be legitimately afraid of what might happen, you were trying to get their attention. That would require proof of you doing something to instigate, but it also should not absolve them of their responsibility to not hold you captive if they can let you exit. It may be the case in a crowd that it cannot disperse so you can drive through and you just have to sit there also. It would have to be judges by the circumstances and witnesses.

I have personally been in a position where a crossing guard attempted to get into my car because he was angry with me for having to come to a sudden stop and he did not feel i had listened to him bitch enough. I would find out later he was a very angry old man who liked to yell at people and used his influence with the town to get his position as crossing guard and people had complained about him. I ended up driving away as he was trying to get into my car and he fell over from hanging onto my car because he wanted me to stop. In my thought the dude was not doing the crossing guard thing because he never came out with the stop sign. He came out to try and get me out of the car for some reason. I do not know what he was going to do, so I drove away. Then I found out the way the law was written, if you drove away from a robber/rapist/carjacker and they got injured as you escaped you are guilty of leaving the scene of an accident. I talked to lawyers about this amazed that was the case and multiple lawyers told me horror stories about driving away from the scene of a personal injury accident where the people who were driving away were found guilty because of how the law was written.

What I am saying is there does need to be some better legal wording in these incidents, and I think this is a place where circumstance and evidence of who did what should come into play to find a person guilty of a crime. We may need a lower level crime like vehicular assault applied in multiple levels to truly satisfy the ranges of incidents that can happen and are either defined under to strict a statute or no statute at all.

Years back I say an article about a person in a car who had an incident with some bike riders around NYC. They got him trapped at a light as he was trying to get away from them and started breaking his windows to get into his car. He had to run them over to get away with his family. The video showed this was the case. They were attacking his car and trying to break into it and had quickly made a human road block at an intersection because they were on bikes and could get in front of him and were basically protestors in the moment. Not all the people there were trying to break into the car, but all the people had blocked the car in. I think it turned out that he ran over the people who were in the way a.nd the ones breaking into his windows were not hurt because they were not in front of the car.

So this sort of thing could happen. What do you do if you yell something at some people, they surround your car, and only a couple of them start trying to fight you and no one is helping? The people blockading your car at that point are trapping you in a dangerous situation. I would say you have some legal liability in that case for being an instigator, but they would also have liability for impeding your progress if you were trying to escape and they could get out of your way.

Not only that, but at that point, they aren't protesters. They're an angry mob.

The right tries to define all left wing protests as violent mobs and riots.

What their listeners (i.e. oldfella, forbin, paladin) don't even try to work out, is that the right is just as bad when it comes to angry mobs; and that most protests are left wing and are peaceful.

Apparently, excessive noise is one of the stipulations in the new law being considered in the UK that would be criminalised. It leads to a potential 10 year jail sentence.