Answers on a postcard, please!
Make sure to turn the postcard so it’s in portrait mode rather than landscape.
“Maybe the soldier thought the human was a threat? Or maybe the human verbally questioned the authority of the soldier. Or threw an unidentifiable yet potentially threatening object at the soldier. I’m not sure, man – soldier’s are weird. They get to kind of just run things, you know?”
– Confused in Canada.
According to commenters on other sites and threads (give that the weight it deserves …) the response may have been due to the person getting near that line of police who had their backs turned. Apparently when cops deploy like that there is actually a team tasked with literally watching their backs. I’m still in the way over-reaction camp personally.
Why? Because most cops are asshole thugs.
Choose the likely outcome:
- “Unable to identify the officer in question.”
- Paid leave & later “cleared of any wrongdoing.”
- A slap on the wrist.
- Significant and appropriate discipline.
The real question: “Were the riot police brought onto a peaceful scene of a large group of citizens calmly wandering the streets (mostly, at least) for the sole purpose of escalating a non-violent situation into this insanity?”
Because Arizona!
I’m going with “because he can”.
She clearly looked at him in a threatening manner, or, uhh, something.
April fools?
close.
Because 'Merica.
Fuck YEAH!
And yet the police complain that they don’t get any respect. I wonder why?
Because SPORTS.
Looks like somebody watched The Raid before coming into work and got over-excited.
Let’s do it to them before they do it to us!
There sure are asshole cop thugs. There sure are awesome cops.
The problem is not really about cops as individuals. The problem is that the institution of the police no longer resembles what it did 30 years ago. The trend has been increasing institutional impunity, increasing militarization, increasingly answering problems in the public and private spheres with police as first responders (along with decreases in things like institutional mental health support), increasingly complementing the police’s lethal weapons with “non-lethal” anti-crowd/pro-torture weaponry.
If you want to less of this monstrous bullshit, reform the institutional shape of the police.
You will need to take on the police unions while you are at it (I am not anti-union, just acknowledging the role they play in creating today’s police institution).
Indeed is is an institutional problem, one made worse by the fact the institution is primarily staffed by bullies and asshats while being funded in the name of terror prevention.
In this case, the cops showed up in riot gear an hour before the game was over. They planned for a fight, armed themselves for it, and then made it happen.
Supplementary interesting material (from Deadspin’s coverage):
https://vine.co/v/MeqvEnZjvlM
Maybe she was recording video in portrait rather than landscape.
What country were the army-guys from?
How glorious that piece of footage would have been if she happened to just stop short, and the cop went sailing over the bench after tripping on it.
Because it is in their nature.
Sadly this is what came to my mind on reading the description and then reaffirmed by watching the video. Citizens as the enemy of Civilization. (perhaps population and populous are better words here)
He would have gotten his friends to beat everyone in the area until his embarrasment wore off.
