Undercover cop aims gun at photographer at Oakland protest of police killings

Nope, not even slightly.
I’m saying he IS factually wrong and I’m calling him out on it.
I’m also saying if the mods of the board deem him to have done something to warrant a ban, then he should be banned. It is, after all, their “playground”.
Good on you for putting words in my mouth though, That makes all kinds of arguments much easier to win.

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does it matter to you if @W96 is wrong on the facts? so far the account has not been suspended although it certainly seems set up to express one particular point of view and excuse that point of view past the point of absurdity. i think that point is silly and counterfactual but good on @W96 for having the courage to take a stand in favor of police infiltrating legal protests and then waving a gun around and pointing it at unarmed protesters when his cover was blown. it takes a lot of guts to stand up for police misconduct and creating a public danger. is that your stance as well?

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That’s precisely the really shitty part of these assholes’ conduct. It’s a protest, not a shootout. You want to assert your control of a situation, why not pull your BADGE and establish yourself as a cop?

I know there may be 2 sides to this story, but it’s telling how quickly these jerkoffs escalated things to the point of armed force.

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The news said the cops had already been assaulted before waving the gun. They were highly outnumbered. If that’s true the situation had already escalated.

##notallnews

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I think in this situation they are trying to keep protests from turning into riots. At least that’s what they said. Nothing wrong with that. Now , if they are really trying to turn protest into riots there is a huge problem. We know some police departments have been guilty of this in the past but that’s not what this is about. Is it? This is about outnumbered police who claim to have been attacked while trying to protect protesters from those who would incite a riot.

Who is telling the truth? How do you know?

I’ve always thought that the purpose of the canted grip was to cause ejected brass flies high into the air, so it makes a more satisfying tinkling sound when it hits the sidewalk/floor/pavement.

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Escalation is a continuum, not a true-or-false state. Pointing a deadly weapon at a crowd is very near the final conclusion of that continuum.

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That’s what is being claimed – the protesters say that the two were inciting damage, and that’s how they were identified as undercover provocateurs.

Pointing guns at photographers documenting the scene also tends to make one less believable.

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Ahh, Berkeley, so many reasons to love you…

good for you, sticking up for the armed policeman waving a gun around in the middle of a crowd after he had been outed. it’s refreshing to see someone step up and back the boys in blue despite misconduct and creating a public danger by waving his gun around and pointing it at anyone who was trying to document him. it takes a lot of courage to support that kind of incompetence and stupidity and i’m glad to see someone with the courage to do that. my hat’s off to you.

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If it stops further violence it concludes the continuum as apparently it did in this example. It seems to me that a conclusion was necessary to stop further escalation. Bravo.

Sometimes it’s the penultimate step in the continuum…

These cops made provocative decisions at every branch on the decision tree. The fact he didn’t open fire should not be counted to his credit, since he created the situation in the first place.

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Not if he was attacked first as he claims. In that case you would be “victim blaming” which is cause for moderation apparently.

Why were they there?

The officers, who Browne said he is not identifying, had been trailing the crowd in an unmarked car and began following on foot at Ninth and Harrison streets, after vandals marching with the group had smashed the windows of a T-Mobile store in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood and made off with merchandise. A nearby Wells Fargo ATM was also damaged.

3- like this:

“Just as we turned up 27th Street, the crowd started yelling at these two guys, saying they were undercover cops,” Short said Thursday. “Somebody snatched a hat off the shorter guy’s head and he was fumbling around for it. A guy ran up behind him, knocked him down on the ground. That guy jumped backed up and chased after him and tackled him and the crowd began surging on them."

So, I dunno. They were doing their job and then made an arrest and defended themselves. What horrible cops.

It is funny how the civilians get the benefit of the doubt to the point of ridiculousness, but the cop is evil from the beginning. I suppose that is clickbait 101. Can’t we extend the presumption of innocence to the cops as well?

Are you new here?

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There’s accounts of these cops banging on bank windows before the T-mobile store window was broken.

@Federal_flashes @DaveId those are the ones who were hitting bank windows before T-Mobile got looted! #berkeleyprotests

From the linked storify:

@marymad livetweeted the California Highway Patrol conference call Dec
11 2014, that addressed last night’s incident where two undercover CHP
officers were outed by the crowd in which they had been marching with
during the evening.

From marymad:

CHP calls them plainclothes not undercover. They have been using them since the protests broke out. #oaklandprotest

They were wearing masks. After someone took off one of their masks, he put it back on. There’s reason to doubt that this is what plains clothes means.

One arrested for public intoxication “out of the group” - no names and booking info for that and other arrest. #oaklandprotest

So after watching them loot from the inside they took a person in for public intoxication?
This was your point wasn’t it? They didn’t take anyone in for attacking cops, so maybe it didn’t happen?

FTA: http://www.ktvu.com/story/27606016/undercover-cop-pulls-gun-on-demonstrators

One Berkeley resident, Dylan, who declined to give his last name, said he pulled off the officer’s bandana.

The two CHP officers started to walk away, but the protesters persisted,
screaming at the two undercover cops. One of the officers pushed a
protester aside. The man responded by pushing back and then the officer
tackled him to the ground, handcuffing him.

“I’m a white man, and I pulled off (the officer’s) mask, but they punched a black man,” Dylan said. “He got arrested.”

Seems to me that you mean to say that both civilians and cops should get the benefit of the doubt, but that’s not what you’re doing is it?
Look, you dismiss civilians, and let other people dismiss cops, that way we get a balanced story! Seems fair.

I think this is one point where most people can at least agree: People don’t seem to trust cops.
How does trust work? Is trust owed or earned? Can you forgive without any remorse in sight?

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It is funny how the civilians get the benefit of the doubt to the point of ridiculousness

You do know the whole protest was sparked by police killing civilians, right? Civilians who got no benefit of the doubt from the cops?

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