And there were arrests? Yes? No?
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The only thing arrested was their development.
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There are cops in the video. Eye witnesses. And all they do is gently suggest the perps move along.
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There’s nothing to prevent this from happening indefinitely. They’re allowed to freely harass and threaten anyone they like with no consequences. As long as they don’t kill anybody (with fists or guns- being a walking bioweapon is a-ok apparently, as is violently forcing badly-needed health services to shut down), they walk free, confident that they can push their conspiracy-fueled rioting even harder the next time, becoming louder, more obnoxious, more violent. So far, their confidence is justified. Meanwhile, still no end to people of color being murdered by police for the crime of existing.
EDIT: Imagine you’re a child and you throw a tantrum… and your parents immediately give you whatever you want. You run around with no pants peeing on everything and everyone ignores it. You break another child’s nose and the only consequence is being gently shooed away to play elsewhere. You threaten a teacher and instead of being sent to the principal’s office, the school shuts down and you get the rest of the day off. That’s what anti-vaxxers get to do every day. Is it any wonder they’re constantly acting out like giant toddlers?
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Dick moves all the way down.
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Tragedy of the Qommons.
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In this instance I think it was the fact they were thoroughly outnumbered that meant there was no action from the police. Hopefully there is some follow-through from the video evidence that was collected.
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One benefit of them being anti-vaxx (and so likely anti-mask as well) is that their faces are visible to security and surveillance cameras. They haven’t quite realized that there’s a reason bank robbers wear masks.
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It seems antivaxers are following a long established tradition of popular jurisprudence 
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Police are almost always outnumbered in situations like this. That’s not an excuse to do nothing.
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Keep in mind that the anti-vaccination, anti-mask hysteria is official policy of the Republican Party. This is not a random bunch of malcontents; this is a bunch of malcontents operating on behalf of a political organization. The GOP must be held accountable for what they have done.
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Exactly. If police are only required to stop mobs when they outnumber the mob, then mob rule is the new normal.
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Putting the cop out in cop out!
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Not an excuse to do nothing. To my eyes it appeared that they were protecting the workers of the testing clinic and trying to get the rowdies to move along. Protecting the public is their first responsibility.
What would you have had the two police officers do? Break out the batons and tasers and guns? The memory of the Capitol insurrection is probably in the back of their minds. This is not a docile crowd.
You’ll also note that I said thoroughly outnumbered. It doesn’t mean that the police need to outnumber protestors, by any means, to take more aggressive action. But we should all be wary about encouraging police to escalate a situation. Especially when we rail about the need for police to de-escalate in other areas.
The good news is that there is video, and it should be possible to find and charge the people responsible, or at least name and shame them.
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And nobody was arrested.
Sigh.
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There are some “anarchists” who have been going down the antivax rabbithole recently (they have started appearing in the last month or two). I don’t know if it because they are trollies who aren’t really anarchists, or if it is because they are anarkiddies whose response to the government telling them that vaccines are a good idea is to respond with “you can’t tell me what to do”
Constantly reading then downvoting their idiocy is draining, no matter what they are.
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I’m sure it’s some of this… I know an otherwise smart, radical scholar, who has been pushing anti-vax nonsense for years. I checked on the twitters recently and he’s still doing it. And his wife is in pharmacology.
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I think we may be in a death spiral of madness. Either as a country or as a species.
I don’t mind self immolation due to one’s stupid beliefs but they will take us all down.
The world is on fire but they deny fire exists and insist on pouring gasoline onto everything and lighting matches to prove there is no fire.
Possibly too much cultural “Your opinions and belief system are as valid as anyone else’s” combined with a shockingly poor education.
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The people who are out there pushing back against vaccine mandates, masks and social distancing are, by and large, the same people who would be railing against the “your opinions and belief system are as valid as anyone else’s” crowd*. At least, that is my conclusion based on the coverage I’ve seen and experiences I’ve had. Instead it comes back to good ol’ 'murican individual liberty. FU can’t tell me what to do, right? Unfortunately that ideal has run headlong into the defining public health crisis of our time.
The poor education part though, that is bang on. Conservatives spent decades dismantling US public education systems, defunding education in Black and minority communities, and fighting back against teaching things like evolution, all the while fomenting distrust in scientists.
*This of course is the classic conservative caricature of progressive values like tolerance. Many of the anti-vax/anti-mask protests are straight up organized by white supremacists now.
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