Note that Minneapolis state police have claimed that the reporters were released from jail the following morning after confirming themselves as media, which CNN responded by saying they had identified themselves before their arrest and it was only through the Goverers interference that their reporters were released the following morning.
> I wonder what those officers were thinking, arresting a reporter on live camera.
Speaking as someone who's been to a lot of protests, ranging from "peaceful as a baby" to "as street medics we treated 1/3-1/2 of the protestors"... the same thing cops are always thinking. As an institution, they don't like the press, oversight, or public scrutiny of their actions. They react the same way to people with press credentials for less prominent organizations, and to regular humans with phone cameras who have just as much a right to record video, the same way all the time.
Since there clearly aren't penalties for corruption (even corruption-lite like this), it's no surprise that it persists. While we can understand why they do it, that does not make it acceptable, and there have to start being consequences.
I can't help but feel that strong independent oversight is necessary, as the status quo is clearly insufficient.
I think the level of impunity of "I am the law" instead of laws being laws, has taken over far too many in the police department. The level of police misconduct that's been captured in camera in the last few days is disturbing. There's always one police officer that rushes into a peaceful situation, from behind, and starts violence. This sort of assault on humans is taken to be their responsibility, apparently, and all the rest of the police stand idly by as one of those in their uniforms commits acts of violence against peaceful people.
I would not be shocked if a majority of the property crime was also police instigated. If they are willing to do this to people, it's far easier to knock out some windows.
>> all the rest of the police stand idly by as one of those in their uniforms commits acts of violence against peaceful people.
That seems to be the problem. It's not so much that one gets out of hand, it's that they don't police themselves. If they want to stop it they'll have to begin with the smaller digressions - like speeding or illegal parking when there's no reason for it. Stop your bro from thinking he's above the law even when it's not a really big deal.
We need stronger whistle blower protections, laws and incentives. The only people who can police the police are the police. So society needs to create the situation where the incentives to police themselves reward them greater than the current corrupt, immature and racist rewards they reap today.
You can't reward someone who is in power into not being corrupt and not abusing their power. You prohibit, stop and punish them. Begging only goes so far.
> I think the level of impunity of "I am the law" instead of laws being laws, has taken over far too many in the police department.
For a more organized version of the mentality, see the Constitutional Sheriffs movement. I forget where I first came across the movement but here's a top Google result about it:
I like the way it highlights a quote without having to deal with a bunch of actual quotation marks. If something you want to quote includes quotation marks it can be confusing to read (especially on mobile). It also reminds me of commenting out things when programming.
It took quite awhile before they decided to arrest the reporter (Omar Jimenez). I suspect the decision came from higher up given the time delay (due to communication). I was watching this particular reporter late last night / early this morning and his coverage was, IMO, excellent to give some context and feel for the ongoing situation.
It was pretty surreal to watch, for me, and notice absolutely no actions from law enforcement, fire departments, or the national guard on site obviously strategically chosen by some upper leadership (governor?), likely to minimize the situation from escalating. The reporter pointed this out multiple times. It was probably the right call IMHO.
I suspect when law enforcement finally did move in afterwards, it was also strategic to minimize that escalating the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if the arrest was strategic just to minimize on-the ground coverage.
I tip my hat to Omar Jimenez and crew for the coverage they provided.
Cannot be the right call. The tax payers lose in the coverage and they lose in the lawsuit.
Having police officers paid so little that you put up with 18 violations, or willfully ignore them out of comraderie is fundamentally a system that is not sustainable or worth having pride over.
Police officers make bank. In many places their salaries are public record. Plus, they get overtime and contract work as well. So their salary might be $80,000 per year, but they get overtime at like $60/hr, and they get work doing private security for movie theaters, events, etc. Probably at a similar rate.
Then you factor in top tier healthcare and a very generous pension program, and their total compensation balloons.
That's not even getting into collusion by the department to defraud tax payers. Quite a few departments have gotten in trouble from auditors for paying overtime to officers who didn't work the OT, which went on for years before being discovered. Then you have retirement benefits which are based on the last few years salaries, so people close to retirement get a bump in salary and OT in order to pad their retirements. That's no illegal, but I think it's unethical.
> and they get work doing private security for movie theaters, events, etc. Probably at a similar rate [...] That's not even getting into collusion by the department to defraud tax payers.
I once helped to organize a permitted bike race. As part of the permitting process, we needed approval from several city departments, including the police department.
In the prior five years of attending races, I never encountered a situation that would call for on-site security. Despite that, our permit required us to hire 4 security people. Oh, and the security people were required to be officers from the local jurisdiction.
It really felt like paying protection money to the mob.
I also had to go through this process when throwing an event. The little money we had for a < 300 private event venue was then put at risk and we had to raise money last minute. It was almost funny how many obstacles we had to go through in general for that event, but the requirement of security made everything a little bit worse
It didn't just feel like that, it is exactly like that. The mob, cartels, and government are pretty much all the same. Some group that claims a monopoly on force.
To be clear, when I referred to making the "right call" I was referring to the choice of inaction from police and national guard units last night/this morning during ongoing protests. I think ultimately, this will lead to less damage.
At this point, from some of my friends in the city, it sounds like there just isn't much oversight at all---they've now been caught on video taking guns from people with valid licenses and now arresting the press. I don't think that we can effectively apply logic when the police system seems so disorganized.
There are police departments that are an organizational mess and there are departments that are even corrupt. There was a case here in Illinois in Cicero 20 years ago where the State Police were brought in to take over the force until the leadership could be replaced because of corruption.
I can't say anything about the situation with the Minneapolis PD, but it seems like it has a major training problem, there was also the case a couple of years ago of the cop that shot and killed a (white) woman in her PJs who was reporting a possible crime out of the window of their patrol vehicle.
These seem like flagrant violations of constitutional rights; I would be interested to hear from a lawyer what kind of legal liability the police (as a department and as individual bad-apple officers) are opening themselves up to by behaving this way. Hopefully justice is served and constitutional rights are protected.
I don't believe they are opening themselves up to any legal liability. See [1] and links for a disturbing list of recent examples of police receiving qualified immunity. One example from the article:
> On May 18, the court turned away three of these appeals, including a jaw-dropping case in which police were granted qualified immunity after literally stealing $225,000. (There is no clearly established right not to be robbed by cops, the court held.)
There's not enough liability, perhaps, but there's certainly some. Here[0] is a list of police department settlements and another[1] of individual police officers being tried and/or convicted for recent high-profile killings. Note that media coverage is inherently sensational and therefore not reflective of reality--just because the media gives much more attention to killings than to the legal repercussions doesn't mean that the latter doesn't exist.
In this particular instance, surely CNN has a strong case against the Minneapolis police department?
Good point, I retract my blanket statement of "no legal liability." I should have said that they are not criminally liable.
Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found criminally liable for murder even in the most egregious of circumstances (only the most egregious ones are prosecuted at all and even most of those result in acquittals).
On the other hand you are right that link [0] shows that it is much more common that the police are found to have civil liability. Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
I agree. There needs to be more accountability for police.
> Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).
I think this might actually be eminently desirable that the taxpayer is on the hook. We shoulder a lot of responsibility for our police (not the actions of any given officer, but the system that either fails to weed out 'bad apple' officers or fails to adequately train them or whatever other systemic failure is responsible) and it's right that we shoulder the cost for our lack of will to enact police reform or take it seriously. Of course, I don't think the liability--criminal or civil--is adequate in magnitude, and I would like to see more of both.
How do you suppose you increase accountability for police officers (or any other police reform) without public support? And how does increasing accountability give police officers the special skills that they increasingly need, for example, to for interacting with mentally unwell members of the community? "Figure out how to be a mental health professional or face jail time"? To use your "doctors" analogy, we also have a system that adequately trains doctors and filters out the unfit.
It's become clear time and again that they never open themselves up to actual liability. But it would be interesting to hear how wide the gap is between law and reality in this case.
> It's become clear time and again that they never open themselves up to actual liability.
I understand that the criminal justice system is very often lenient on police officers, and I'm strongly in favor of increased police accountability; however, there are still many cases of police officers going to prison and departments/municipalities being sued for police misconduct, so to say that there is no actual liability is hyperbole.
We've seen multiple murders by police happen on camera in the past couple years, with little to no action taken. The present one is the first case I know of where anyone from inside the government actually called for an investigation, and it was probably because they were afraid of the very riot situation we now find ourselves in.
When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
People inside the gov't here are calling for an investigation because we actually think, in Minnesota, that we're "better than this". White people in Minnesota (and I am one) truly do think that we have less racism & we're better than folks in Ohio, California, Tennessee, Florida, NY. That's why if you look at videos of the protests here, so many white Minnesotans have showed up.
Now, if we'd looked at the statistics (homeownership gap, achievement gap in education) or listened to black Minnesotans, we'd know that we're not better than anyone else in the US. But there is at least a desire. We really do have folks in leadership who want to be/do better, even if we're failing at it.
> We've seen multiple murders by police happen on camera in the past couple years, with little to no action taken.
I don't doubt this, but I don't see how you get from there to "there is no liability at all".
> The present one is the first case I know of where anyone from inside the government actually called for an investigation, and it was probably because they were afraid of the very riot situation we now find ourselves in.
I'm not sure what you mean by "anyone from inside the government is called for an investigation"; do you mean you don't think police officers in these situations are never or rarely investigated, charged, etc? Or are you speaking about some other government official (and if so, I don't know what you're talking about specifically or how it relates to this broader conversation about liability).
> When they can kill someone who isn't a threat, on camera, and face no consequences, why would we expect them to face consequences for something like a frivolous arrest?
Your premise is wrong. A quick Google search turned up this collection of police department settlements[0] and this collection of police officers[1] charged in recent, high-profile killings.
Note that there is a middle ground between "there is no accountability" and "the system is working just fine"--we absolutely should increase police accountability, but "there is no liability/accountability" isn't accurate or helpful.
You are both right. However, in the article [1] a large number of police officers were either acquitted, are awaiting sentencing, or were not punished, what the general population would consider, fairly.
When we hear about police departments agreeing to settle - that does not give us, as a society, a closure. Individual police officers have committed crimes, but now the tax payers are paying for that? That's not accountability.
To folks saying "they're highly organized", listen to Walz's press conference -- they're not organized, the National Guard didn't get a plan so didn't go in, it's a series of excuses.
How it played out was interesting though. Arrested reporter first and only after some time came back and arrested the others.
If the intent was to arrest them all, they would have said "you're all under arrest". This smells like they arrested the guy, went "oh shit lets arrest the others too so people don't say we're racist"
Sounds like their modus operandi. What would they do in most situations? Find a reason to justify their actions. Who knows about all the bullshit they came up with on so many prior charges.
The crew headed by the white reporter moved when police asked, they were behind “the line”. The crew that was arrested should not have been but it’s not the same scenario.
Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusation to make.
Of course we can’t know, but the police are giving bogus explanations so it’s hard to give them good faith. They would probably do the same if they arrested a white crew.
The larger story is that there is close to zero accountability for police in this country. At least a small minority of cops are racist and violent and use the opportunity to murder citizens and other police will not speak out.
The person you are replying to just pointed out the race of relevant parties.
> Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusation to make.
Come again? First, the post doesn't rise to the level of "accusation." In fact, it explicitly leaves open the possibility that it's a coincidence.
Second, should we just not mention statistically relevant variables? Not report on facts? Do you doubt that race played a factor in this specific case, or that it is often relevant?
I don't think the police of that city hold a high enough social credibility to be given the benefit of the doubt right now. There is a long and well documented history of racism in that department. So when they do something that might be driven by racism, and the only information we have to go in is past behavior, it would be foolish to assume that racism didn't play a part in their decision.
The producer and camera man were not so it was not strictly based on race. I just find it very convenient there is no other video of the arrest. They were probably the only camera crew around and the cops wanted them gone.
Who gave the order is responsible for this reasonless arrest. I grew up under a dictature only to emigrate to ‘the free-est’ country in the world and see it turn into a dictature is a sad thing. And what’s to come is even worse and more dangerous.
My first hunch is the arresting officers were scrubs, brought in from other jurisdictions to staff up in response to the riots.
In the after math of the 1999 WTO riots, many of the worst abuses were committed by LEOs brought in from the outlying areas. Scrubs who didn't have the same training as the locals (and state patrol). Nor have any kind of personal regard for the city and its people.
Even so, at the time, I was really struck by the comparison between our SPD and DC Metro. DC has more crowds, riots, protests, disturbances, etc. DC Metro has a lot more experience, training, professionalism. And it shows.
From my personal experiences in Seattle, there's no way I'd risk protesting in and around the Twin Cities, and risk some noobs shooting me.
You are more or less correct. The arresting officers were State Patrol; they're from all over but they're not from the community.
I have protested in St. Paul and Minneapolis many times and in general SPPD have been decent at protests, and MPD has made an effort at protests. There has been a real effort to improve community relations but there are some notable bad apples (as long as Bob Kroll is speaking for MPD employees, we are going to have trouble -- listen to any interview with him to see why.) They have experience with the Super Bowl, many Black Lives Matters protests (Philando Castile was killed in 2016), and the RNC a while ago in St Paul. I was at the RNC protests and the interaction with the police was like a dance -- a relatively polite interaction with horses and concussion grenades, in which I honestly was not that worried about bodily harm -- until the Hennepin County law enforcement came in. Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey.
Everyday policing has been quite different than behavior at protests. And things are different now.
The outside officers were also acting on direct orders from the FBI and not SPD or the city mayor in the case of the WTO riots. Having been in said riots where idiots dressed in black started smashing things, thus drawing in the FBI (and there's been numerous accusations over the years that the Black Bloc groups were also under FBI direction). Getting whacked by a baton while I was filming was not fun but I got whacked because the officer missed his actual target who was standing slightly behind me and had been busy throwing bricks and then dodging in behind other people.
What was the officer who murdered Floyd on live camera thinking, fully aware that Floyd was dying? Probably the same thing as these assholes. That they will get off without any punishment because of qualified immunity. The same thing every police officer in America thinks when they are about to murder or hurt another person. It's hardly a secret.
I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that it's okay to arrest them if they're not live? (Not attacking you--just hard to understand intention through text)
It really seems like their intention was to cook up charges, then realized they screwed the pooch and pretended it's all okay because now they're free. It's not. The intimidation has lasting effects and they know it.
I'm not sure where the report of the following morning is coming from. They were released after about an hour and back on the air. That doesn't excuse anything, as they clearly identified themselves and were live on the air, but this is an exaggeration of what happened.
Isn't this situational irony ? reporters covering the events that were a result of unreasonable police actions themselves were subject to the unreasonable actions of the police.
I wouldn't call it unreasonable. They were told to clear the streets. They didn't actually clear the street. They stayed on the street. Reporters not following directions.
According to CNN's timeline the police asked them to move at 5:09 AM, the reporter asked where they wanted them, at 5:11 AM the police arrested them. The reporter was not given the chance to follow directions.
I'm not commenting on this particular case, since we don't have all of the facts yet, but it should only take seconds to comply with a lawful order, not minutes.
Just watch the video; it was a live broadcast of the whole encounter. They were told to move, asked where was OK to move, the cops didn't give an answer (ostensibly communicating with superiors over radio), and then they were simply arrested.
Y'all were right, the footage I saw earlier was clipped after the girl had ran.
That's enough of trying to see all sides for me today. This week is hell.
-----------------------
It was not a live broadcast of the "whole encounter" it was a live broadcast that started in medias res after the reporters were clearly surrounded by multiple officers of the law.
Not to mention that for the hour preceding 05:00 CDT, the National Guard and Minnesota State Troopers were announcing over loudspeakers that anyone in the area was to disperse immediately or face arrest.
So, it begs the question - what happened in the minutes leading up to when the camera started rolling?
Is it possible the crew had already been told to leave or they would be subject to arrest, and the crew did not follow this?
Are we counting being skeptical of a claim as taking the opposite side? Seems like the user is trying to understand the situation rather than advocate for a side.
It's not being skeptical, it's in fact the exact opposite of any form of skepticism: it's being so credulous to one "side" that you make up falsehoods to excuse bad behavior, instead of using that same time to look for actual facts.
I don't know how this style of thinking has in the past decade or so come to be thought of as "skepticism," it's just incredible bias against one side. A skeptical though process would be inventing equally fabulous motivations in all directions, not just one.
This is a pragmatic point of view, not necessarily what I believe is "right":
Generally speaking, you don't stand around and try to have a conversation with the police. In a tough situation, the very last priority of the police is helping CNN get a nice camera shot.
Had they moved immediately upon being given the order to clear the street, then attempted to have the conversation, they likely would not have faced arrest.
It's possible the police were saying things that couldn't be heard on television because the mic was not in front of their mouths and they were wearing huge masks.
> I wouldn't call it unreasonable. They were told to clear the streets. They didn't actually clear the street. They stayed on the street. Reporters not following directions.
It was recorded, you know. You can watch it yourself. They were asked to move, they asked where they should move to, and instead of being told where to go they were arrested.
In my state, one must comply with any order from a police officer who is in uniform and acting in the performance of his or her duties. This is a law with criminal consequences.
My neighbour was 'arrested' by two men in police uniform, they later murdered him, burned his body, threw remains in the river and sold his car for parts. Him family only found out after the car parts showed up in repair shops.
You're in your rights too for sure, but given the semi-recent history of not giving a fuck 4th amendment along with how quickly the general public is to justify anything done by police officers I'd be scared as hell to do so.
That's an important distinction. If you're ordered to shoot yourself in the head by a cop, "no" is a perfectly reasonable answer, and likely to stand up in court.
I don't know which state you're in, but all the state statutes I've seen saying that you must follow a police order use the words "lawful order" in the text. Also many of them have limited domain such as "while on a public road" or "during a civil disturbance".
In the "refuse to move on after police asked you to" scenario here, the NYC case "People v. Galpern" is often used as precedent. In that case the defendant was found guilty simply because he was, in the officer's view, obstructing the sidewalk. He was not otherwise disturbing the peace. From this case, the courts tend to side on the judgement of the arresting officer unless there are extreme circumstances.
I'm in California. In our state, it's part of the Vehicle Code, but courts regularly construe it as applying anywhere in public. I have personal knowledge, unfortunately, that violating the California Vehicle Code is in many cases a criminal and not civil matter. The statute doesn't include any qualifier that the order be lawful. I suspect that "and was performing his duties" is meant to cover that question, representing a legal fiction that cops would never issue an unlawful order.
For those who are interested in reading beyond Galpern, some other relevant classic cases are Terry v. Ohio and People v. Cohen.
How is it legal for a police offer to arrest someone without any warning, without even telling them why they're being arrested, and without probable cause? What are the repercussions for these officers for falsely arresting people? Do they suffer any consequences, or do they suffer no punishment for this injustice?
This is extremely disturbing, and further evidence that the U.S. is a police state. I've never felt more ashamed of my country.
> How is it legal for a police offer to arrest someone without any warning, without even telling them why they're being arrested, and without probable cause?
Cops can hold you for some amount of time, generally around 24 hours without cause.
> What are the repercussions for these officers for falsely arresting people?
None
> Do they suffer any consequences, or do they suffer no punishment for this injustice?
> Cops can hold you for some amount of time, generally around 24 hours without cause.
This is simply not true. Police may not keep you detained if they do not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime. However, in real life, they do this sometimes, even though it's been ruled unconstitutional.
They do occasionally face repercussions. Thousands of civil rights lawsuits are settled quietly around the country every year, and some go to court and establish precedents, such as Turner v. Driver.
They don't suffer consequences enough, though, and depend on citizens not knowing that what the police are doing is wrong. It's also difficult due to the "thin blue line" BS where cops are elevated above the rest of society.
> This is simply not true. Police may not keep you detained if they do not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime. However, in real life, they do this sometimes, even though it's been ruled unconstitutional.
They don't have to charge you, so they don't have to prove it.
> They don't suffer consequences enough, though, and depend on citizens not knowing that what the police are doing is wrong. It's also difficult due to the "thin blue line" BS where cops are elevated above the rest of society.
The police themselves hardly ever face consequences; the settlements come from the taxpayer.
They actually do have to articulate their PC. If they don't, again, you can sue for civil rights violations. Not saying it doesn't happen, it does, but it's not correct to say they're "allowed to".
From my experience having been arrested and held like this before: No. They don't even have to attest to probable cause until the 24-hr limit hits, in which case they will then formally arrest you by taking you to be fingerprinted, a reading of Miranda, etc along with paperwork containing the attestation of probable cause, or let you go, again, with a pile of paperwork, and sometimes both, in which case they arrest you formally, give you paperwork, and an issued summons to appear in court before sending you on your way.
They can detain you briefly for something as simple as wearing jeans if someone committed a crime while wearing jeans but typically this is only for a handful of minutes. These reporters were fully arrested which is a different standard as you've written already.
> Police may not keep you detained if they do not have probable cause...
I believe this is called a distinction without difference. The police can always say you behaved suspiciously or they felt threatened by you. You can also be found guilty of resisting arrest, even if there was no reason for the arrest except that you were resisting it.
And cops know this and will verbally threaten you with it. I've had it happen to me. The cop actually said to me during a traffic stop he could arrest me for resisting arrest. I don't know why he said that. I guess I was not showing sufficient gratitude for the ticket he was writing me. I was being respectful, even though I knew of no law requiring me to be respectful to cops. That was over 20 years ago. It's nothing new.
Note also that 24 hours usually doesn't include Sundays and holidays, often Saturdays are excluded as well. Meaning if you get arrested before a long weekend it could be 4 days before anyone legally has to consider releasing or charging you.
> Cops can hold you for some amount of time, generally around 24 hours without cause.
This isn't totally true, at least not for the casual use of "cause". Cops must have "reasonable suspicion"[1][2] to detain, during that detainment they can discover more information which creates "probable cause", and probable cause allows them to arrest.
My guess is they were arrested for what is commonly called "resisting arrest"[3]. The way resisting arrest laws are unfortunately written, obstructing an officer in their duty is enough, they don't have to actually be resisting arrest. Basically of the cops told the CNN crew to get off the street, and the crew didn't, that would be "resisting arrest".
Minnesota's law:
> obstructs, resists, or interferes with a peace officer while the officer is engaged in the performance of official duties
Note that they were arrested, you can hear an officer say they are under arrest, but they haven't been charged or convicted. I doubt they will be charged. It is up to the county district attorney to press charges (the same DA who isn't pressing charges against the officer who killed George Floyd).
The press in the US are usually given a lot of freedom, and are allowed to be in places that the police don't allow regular citizens (riots areas, wildfire areas, etc.).
In this case, in the video, Jimenez asks the police whether they'd like him to move somewhere else, they don't respond, and then they arrest him, so it is quite hard to justify the claim that they were resisting arrest even on that definition.
Consider how one goes about changing a law. Generally it starts with citizens making a fuss to inform their elected representatives that they think the existing laws need to be changed.
Recently, in Minnesota, hundreds of people gathered in a protest on precisely this topic. They gathered to say (for their elected representatives and everyone else to hear) that they wanted a change to the laws and the system that permits police officers to kill people by kneeling on their neck when attempting to arrest them.
It was during this very protest that the CNN reporters were arrested.
So, as you can see, people are trying to solve that problem. They have been protesting loudly about it for the past decade (much longer, in truth, but there has been a renewed focus by the media within the past decade). And so far... well, you tell me whether you think it's working.
If the public so adamantly wants laws that elected representatives refuse to pass, then it seems that enabling direct democracy would be one solution to getting these laws passed.
Courts are normally extremely deferential to law enforcement. Coupled with the fact that increasing oversight or increasing restrictions on law enforcement leads to a barrage of "soft on crime" political attack ads, and you get what we have today.
The "soft on crime thing" was a lot more effective in the 90s when there was a lot more actual crime and so people were more afraid of it.
At this point I'm basically waiting for a politician to adopt "soft on crime" as a campaign slogan and rebrand it as a rehabilitation program where you turn drug dealers into docile flower shop owners as opposed to opponents who "make crime tough" by sending people to "crime school" prisons and turning them into hardened career criminals with switchblades and facial tattoos.
The real problem is the same as it is in general -- special interest groups (in this case police and prison guard unions and private prison companies) are the ones who spend the most effort lobbying on the issue. It also doesn't help at all when we disenfranchise "convicts" because we're then disenfranchising the victims of the system whenever it makes a mistake (which is often).
Laws that give the police _less_ power are generally written in blood. Meaning, there has to be a pattern of clear and obvious abuse for any change to happen. For instance, the now near-ubiqitous police body cams are a result of multiple well-publicized unprovoked beatings and murders.
The reason for this is that no politician is going to willingly step up for more police oversight and restricted powers, for at least a couple of reasons:
1) They will be painted by their opponents as "weak on crime" or even "supporting criminals" at election time.
2) They risk losing votes from emergency services workers, which are quite a large demographic in local elections.
Police can break the law too. An officer's actions may or may not be legal and that's determined after the fact in a court of law.
This doesn't happen all the time, but when police do break the law, or don't follow it correctly their actions come under scrutiny, data collected can be discarded from court, and even suffer personal blowback.
What you're asking is how did it happen? That's because it's illegal for a citizen to resist arrest (even unlawful arrest), so in the USA if you are being arrested, SAY you do not willingly submit, but DO whatever the officer tells you.
The thing many people forget is that the law doesn't happen just on the street in the US. It is a slow and flawed process, but police are just the front line of it, not the whole thing.
As someone else said, this will probably cost the police and city in a settlement.
Edit: Cops CANNOT just hold you for 24 hours. They have to have something to charge you with even if it's disorderly conduct. And you can then sue the local police if you have evidence that you were wrongly imprisoned. It is easy for cops to get cause so your chances of this are low, but it does happen. Once detained (with cause) I believe the 24 hour bit is true.
IANAL, this is based on my unprofessional research. I'd suggest you (everyone) do the same.
My understanding was in many states, the guideline for holding someone without a charge was generally 72 hours (where weekends and holidays can extend that period; prosecutors' right to not work weekends is more important than any of your rights ...), with a range of exceptions open for abuse (e.g. hold you for 48 hours, decide you're acting strangely and need a psychiatric hold, etc).
You are probably right. I don't think they have to charge you, but they do have to have cause. If there is video that they detained you without cause. I may have gotten my terms mixed up. In my understanding. Cause, is suspicion of a crime (disorderly conduct and resisting arrest are most commonly abused). Charge is the documentation of an accusation from the police of you breaking a law. The police also have to (are supposed to) document this interaction even if they don't charge you with a crime.
Cities can cut jobs, fire police, put police on notice etc. You might not feel like that is enough, but you better believe that any officer who costs the police money is going to be punished. Maybe not equally to someone else but that's not what I was saying.
Can and does. I'm not saying this is indicative of what frequently happens. But there can be real consequences for the police officers based on lawsuits. I also recognize this was not being pushed down from the city. My statement was an example of how police departments shutting down affect police and how that can happen.
I won't argue that police are appropriately punished due to misconduct. I will argue that they are punished.
I'm not going to scour the internet for these examples... I found one in 5 minutes. I assume there are more out there that would require me to spend more time than I'm willing to make the point.
You said doesn't happen. An absolute. I am saying it can happen and it's not the only form of punishment I'm referring to.
Police (the individuals) can be punished for their infractions. It doesn't happen nearly often enough (my opinion). But if you're saying it can't/won't happen I disagree with you. I'd even go so far as to say I believe you to be factually incorrect. While I will 100% change my opinion on this if given a study that proves this has never happened. It's easier for me to assert a shmeybe than for you to assert it never happens. All I need is one instance where as you need none.
Now if you want to say, that's not enough. We won't disagree at all.
It would make far more sense to take the costs out of the police pension pot, either the city pot (if it's a systematic problem) or the individual pot (if it's a "bad apple")
If the apparent penalty for murdering a member of the public is only getting fired, I can't see anyone higher up in authority giving a rat's @rse if an officer just grabs someone and arrests them without warning.
I was in elementary school when that happened so I wasn't paying attention to politics at the time. Regardless my point isn't to compare tragedies, but to highlight the absurdity of this, and the sad state of the U.S. right now.
Qualified immunity only matters for civil suits under 42 USC 1983.
Cops ultimately aren't disciplined because there's no political will. And there's no consequences on the ground because they have more weapons, and importantly ready backup from other cops.
If you were in a gang, and carried a gun, you could indeed arbitrarily force your will on others for some time.
What is far more disturbing than a reporter ignoring police orders and facing the repercussions is that a city is burning from mindless violence, this violence encouraged by a media and other prominent figures that relish in stoking racial tensions by selective reporting and misrepresentation of facts.
Edit: I'm wrong, the video I had seen was slightly abridged.
The video camera turns on while they were (likely) already told they will be arrested. They were perhaps ordered to move and did not move. The National Guard and state troopers in that particular area (< 15 miles from me) started ordering people to disperse or face arrest. I don't believe that press are exempt from this order especially when a state of emergency is declared.
Downvoters: please add comment why, or else this isn't discourse
Actually they had been filming continuously, and they had been previously told by police to stand where they were standing, and they had received no new instructions from the police since then, and there was an all-white group of reporters standing in a similar position on the other side of the police who did not get arrested. I understand the desire to come up with an explanation for what happened, I really do, but the fact of the matter is that police arrested these reporters for no reason.
While it may be tempting to jump to a racial interpretation of the arrest, it appears that the CNN reporters were just standing in the wrong place and in the chaos of the moment were arrested.
What chaos? The scene shown in the video looks really calm, with one protester, several reporters, and a very large number of police standing around apparently doing nothing more than looking intimidating at that moment.
You have just scolded the above commenter for jumping to a racial interpretation, and then jumped to an opposite conclusion yourself, on the basis of no evidence.
I hope that anyone seeing this situation and thinking, “I’m not sure how race plays into this,” will go back and learn some more about the history of race in America. I think a good starting place is the podcast “1619” which does a really good job investigating where racial problems in America came from.
Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think people will want to learn about what it really means to be Black in America. But I think if you really listen to what history is saying and really listen to what Black people are experiencing right now it will change how you think about events like this.
When a group of white people and a group with a black person are doing the exact same thing (reporting for cable news), positioned equidistant on opposite sides of a group of police offers and one group gets arrested and the other does not, how is that not racism? It is literally a natural experiment with a single variable (race) changed.
You're assuming that a single variable is being changed, but the far more likely explanation is that, given the high complexity of the situation, there are some other variables that you're not accounting for.
There were never ordered to move, it's all captured on film in that video. When the reporter asked "why am I being arrested?" the cop refused to even answer.
Everyone was ordered to move out of the area. They were asking for specific instructions on where to move to and didn't get them because there was no answer to that--the police didn't want them out of the way, they wanted the whole crowd gone.
I've spent half an hour watching various videos, this in the link and the video where mr Floyd is murdered. Then I watched some more videos of the kind.
As an european... Jesus f-ing christ, this is absolutely messed up.
The most insightful part of the video is where the start handing all the shit to the non-black film crew, then realize how bad it'll look if they only arrest the black guy.
You can attempt to whitewash it but we all saw what happened. Sorry, but you can't will away racism
I really don't understand this argument of "they arrested a latino man, and white coworkers of the black man (last), so it can't have been racially motivated"
Because it's not on topic. It is almost definitely crime or politics. From FAQ:
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Hackers should be interested in this. It's clear that social media has a hand in the current state of society, however you feel about it. I have a sense that people that don't want violence are going to win politically, and soon. When they do, there will be repercussions for all social media and commenting style systems. HN won't escape this.
If people who want violence win the next set of elections, then that should also be of concern to hackers of websites. Take a look at the actions of the US president, after being called to task for breaking TOS.
With the geopolitical changes that will come about due to the coronavirus and upheaval that is beginning in the United States, it seems that social/web technology is central to geopolitics. It really stuns me that our conscientiousness to society, or lack thereof, isn't discussed far more often.
Geopolitics - ideally separated from personal politics - are a frequent subject of posts/discussion here. Particularly around freedom of speech, authoritarianism, etc. Whether or not they technically should be, it's absolutely the norm.
While this is terrible, the special protections that journalists enjoy should apply to all citizens. If these weren't journalists but some poor random persons we wouldnt even know. Everyone can be a reporter nowadays thanks to technology, and there shouldn't be a class of officially recognized, untouchable arbiters of facts
That would be a pretty good idea. Just need to come up with some way to limit access to only the own citizens for sensitive information. Maybe if only certain trusted people had access, and they would do it as their job, and then they would report their findings, and investigate wrongdoings they found, and then we would give them money to be able to read those reports about government wrongdoings... hm, how could we call those people?
Actually they did have multiple crews. The other CNN crew was positioned in a similar way didn’t have any Black people in it and the police didn’t arrest them.
Context is huge in cases like this, and I still haven't seen a video showing the beginning of the reporters' confrontation[1]. Does anyone have a link to a video that shows what happened prior to the videos that are being widely publicized?
[1] This one shows a bit more at the beginning, making it look like the crew had already been asked at least a few times to move: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbXWAHad-4
You're right, context is huge. The area had already been cleared of protesters. There was no imminent threat of any kind. The crew of a national news organization showed their valid credentials.
> You're right, context is huge. The area had already been cleared of protesters. There was no imminent threat of any kind.
I'm asking if you or anyone else has video proof of that. Are national news organizations exempt from an order like this to move (I know in some cases they are, but again, the lack of contextual proof here makes me question what they were told prior to what we've seen).
I know this is meta, but... seriously people, what's with all the downvotes? How could more information/context around a current event be a bad thing?
I've been watching what happens, at they always come almost exactly 2 minutes after I post something - on this and another account I use. It's pretty clear that there's some downvote bot activity going on (in addition to the usual "haters").
I get that more context is always better, but the notion of "context" is infinitely expandable.
What were these reporters doing in the hour prior to the arrest? Oh, nothing? Well, where were they at the start of the riots? Just getting to the scene? Hmm well, what's the police officer's story; has he had bad experiences with the press in the past? And so on...
Most people have seen enough coverage of police officers doing unreasonable things in order to make a judgement call based off the provided context here. By asking for even more context, it comes across as though you're trying to cast doubt on this situation and undermine what's honestly a national issue at this point - hence the downvotes.
> Most people have seen enough coverage of police officers doing unreasonable things in order to make a judgement call
Bingo! That's the problem. People are making "judgement calls" based on highly publicized, recent cases of police officers doing "unreasonable things". Those cases represent < 0.1% of the police officers in the country. Making judgement calls based on what others have done is called prejudice, and last I checked, people are still innocent until proven guilty in this country. That goes for the reporters and the officers involved.
As for the amount of context we have relative to the video that's been published, I think any reasonable judge would conclude that (1) the person operating the camera was almost certainly recording before what we've seen published, (2) the events on published video obviously seem to refer to events that happened before what we see, and (3) those events that happened before are not just circumstantial details - they could easily swing the case in either direction. So yes, more context in this situation is absolutely necessary. Make no confusion - I'm not asking about what they ate for breakfast.
> People are making "judgement calls" based on highly publicized, recent cases of police officers doing "unreasonable things".
Define recent? Uneven application of force from the police based off of race is a known issue, and has been one for quite some time. In the past decade or so we have been able to witness more of these incidents due to the ubiquity of smartphones, but look no further than policies like stop and frisk as examples that illustrate the unjust policing of minorities [1].
In business, we have a philosophy of building goodwill. We do things to establish trust with our users so that when we inevitably screw up, they will give us a pass. But it's important to remember that goodwill is a finite commodity. Screw up one too many times without making concessions, and you will no longer get the benefit of the doubt.
No one is debating that there are plenty of good officers in the US, the issue is with the bad ones, and the lack of repercussions/changes in policy to address them.
Based on the language in the video, especially in the few extra seconds from the one you linked, it does seem like they were asked to clear the area that they were in. It is impossible to know for sure without the minute or so of footage that was clipped off prior to this incident. Completely agree that that additional context would be critical for making an accurate judgment of the situation.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "
This is worthy of discussion here, though. This is a confusing and excessive use of authority—the implications of which are significant and alarming.
To that point, how does this situation get fixed? Personally, this seems like a total failure of local governments. This should have been a relatively easy situation to mitigate (arrest the officer involved with the murder, even if just for show to calm folks down).
Now that it's spiraled, we're seeing signs of a police state which is very ominous. The question, though, is how calculated is this? My rational mind tells me that this level of force isn't something planned or trained for; just a reaction to the current events.
But it does set a precedent and as a country, we should be absolutely on guard and discussing this.
Why should US even be compared to those countries. It is a functional and mature democracy. Going through the thread I find it shocking that police brutality and unaccountablity is a common thing in USA.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
Do you have any proof to support your "obvious" claim? They were arrested live on air- early in the morning- I saw the 2 minutes or so leading up to their arrest, but not anything before.
Do you actually believe that the police force would send 50 heavily armed and shielded police officers to an area for the sole purpose of arresting 5 CNN reporters?
Clearly, they were not actually sent to arrest 5 CNN reporters. The CNN reporters were arrested for interfering with the work of police officers on the site of a violent riot.
If there was fire and broken stuff all around and a small army of police officers arrived at the scene and told me to leave, I would leave the area immediately and I wouldn't feel that this is impeding my freedom in any way.
Given the extreme situation, CNN people had no right to interfere with the work of police officers.
What if there was a bomb in the area which had to be diffused urgently?
For your first question- I have no idea. There was a heavy police presence in the area- I think they could have very well been sent to intimidate.
Your second statement is not clear to me at all, and you appear to have absolutely nothing to back up your statement. In the video they clearly asked where they should move to and got no response aside from "You are under arrest."
You are making baseless claims and don't even appear to have even watched any of the incident's video.
Obviously a lot of stuff happened long before the live stream started... The fires and thoroughly vandalized infrastructure indicate that. Based on my own experience with the media, I wouldn't be surprised if they only started transmitting the video when the situation started to fit their rhetoric. That's how the media works these days.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This story was not only covered in TV news, it literally was the TV news.
That flag indicates users flagged it--it doesn't mean any action has been taken by HN staff. It's essentially been reported to moderators by users, but unless you see the "[dead]" tag, it remains public and alive on HN.
User-flagged content can be pushed down on the rankings (comparable to a downvote), but if enough people upvote, it shouldn't make much difference.
It is 51 karma, which is quite low to clear as it takes only 10 to be x-upvote. OP - used to be 140+ points, which should put it easily on the 1st page - but it's flagged and gone.
I could be mistaken but I thought even though users have the ability to flag a post the post itself doesn’t become “flagged” until several different people flag it.
Of course. That's the point: creating new accounts and getting 51 karma is not hard - there are no requirements to be "different people", just different accounts.
The flags were overwhelmingly by long-established users including many whose past comments suggest that their sympathies would be with CNN in this situation.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349814)? They ask you not to post like this for a reason. The reason is that the posts are nearly always wrong. Probably more than 99% of the time even if one counts generously.
The story likely got reviewed and unflagged. Yet, it just went puff few minutes after making it to top 10 or so while it still had quite massive (140+ or 160+) points. It was gone for quite some hour.
The reply was about the fact the upvotes do not work well enough in contrast to flagging.
The flagging was done by users. HN doesn't want political arguments, which this is turning into. It's well within Y Combinator's rights to create a user-controlled off-topic flagging system. The moderators can restore this if they want to and cancel the flags.
It's sad how bad the echo chamber is getting recently.
Yet another black man dead to police violence and it gets flagged when a post about it stays up. This happened days ago (George Floyd being murdered, not this arrest), this is the 1st post to stick and gets flagged instantly, but there are how many posts about the Twitter/Trump fued?
Seems more and more recently that we simply aren't allowed to discuss certain things here at all. Pretending they aren't happening because discussion would be too hard doesn't make them go away.
There is nothing to discuss about the George Floyd story. The cops seriously fucked up. I have yet to see anyone dispute that. I haven't even seen a union remark defending the cop. This is not the place to check out the latest news stories. You want the latest news stories, go to Google, Yahoo, CNN, or where ever.
As for the Twitter/Trump feud, there is still debate on whether Twitter has grown into something which is a public space. While the Supreme Court has not declared social media the modern public square, they have referred to it as the modern public square in a ruling. It is worth to debate whether and what types of rules should be applied to the dominate social media sites. They certainly are moving away from just hosting for user content.
It's time to start demanding more. If the constitution of this website claims this topic is irrelevant, vote with your actions and/or demand that the rules are changed.
This story should not leave our mouths and ears until something is done.
Not an argument for this site I guess. But this is what happens when you have political leaders picking sides in violence. Trump literally tweeted "when the looting starts the shooting starts" (not before this event, of course -- it's an example). You think rhetoric like that doesn't have the effect of empowering police to abuse their power against people they don't like?
"Not an argument for this site I guess," hence the downvotes, heh. I agree though. And I'd take it a step further and say that the institution of policing in the US has historically always been on the side of systemic violence. Police forces literally started as night patrols to catch runaway slaves, which as about as racist as it gets. If there was a point in history where they somehow severed ties with their racist origins and underwent fundamental, institutional change, I've yet to learn about it.
>If there was a point in history where they somehow severed ties with their racist origins and underwent fundamental, institutional change, I've yet to learn about it.
The opposite, actually. The civil rights movement of the 60s was infiltrated, surveilled, and disrupted by secret police, and largely ended with it's greatest leaders being assassinated and mass riots.
Then Nixon launched the War on Drugs in the 70s and mass incarceration began.
In the 80s we saw Democrats and Republicans further ramping up the war on drugs, with the passage of laws such as the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986, while at the same time it was soon revealed that the CIA was helping their Nicaraguan Contra friends raise money by importing billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities as a part of the Iran Contra conspiracy, initializing the crack epidemic. The investigations into these wrong doings was quickly shut down, the investigative journalist leading the charge was suicided, and the government officials responsible were pardoned.
Fast forward 30 years, and the mass incarceration levels have been holding steady and communities are even weaker by some metrics than they were before the civil rights movement, though perhaps we've made some marginal improvements in states where cannabis has been legalized, but we've still got a lot more to do: namely, ending the tyrannical and racist war on drugs at the Federal level.
That's simply a recognition that looting begets violence, meaning that the looting must be stopped before things become more violent, and a call to action to those who appear content to let the looting run rampant as if it's somehow OK or justified.
In such an escalation both protestors and counter protestors would be shooting, so bringing the situation under control quickly is in the best interest of the protestors and the community as a whole.
Police abuse their power when leaders pick sides? And what about the Mayor? Has he not chosen sides? He lambasted the riots, but has allowed it to continue. Actions and words.
It will depend on the type of police force. In the case of a state police, it would be a combination of the state legislature and state judiciary. The real answer is surely lengthy and complicated, but suffice to say the mayor (thankfully) does not control the police... just as thankfully the president does not control the military.
> He lambasted the riots, but has allowed it to continue
How, exactly? I mean, it's not like the rioters are following his orders (or maybe you're saying they are?!). If you're just saying it's his responsibility, then sure, but he's not the only one. Aren't community leaders, the police, the governor and the president likewise "allowing" the riots to continue simply because they haven't stopped them?
I mean, Trump literally evoked an image of shooting rioters. Did anyone else do anything similar?
Depends where you live. The duty to retreat is different depending on location.
Shooting someone over dollar store items is dumb. But defending your sole proprietorship you have built up and is the only thing you have, understandable.
Frankly, if you value stuff over people's lives, well, I don't know how to teach you that you should care.
Secondly, this is a single, solitary reason out of the myriad of other reasons, why we, as as a species, invented insurance.
Please, give up your childish John Wayne fantasies, which, to be honest are barbaric and counter to the very essence of civilization, and join the adults who build societies and systems that protect people.
"I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention."
Martin Luther King.
More recently, though, someone whose business was, in fact, damaged:
"Let my building burn, Justice needs to be served, put those officers in jail."
Ruhel Islam, a Bangladeshi immigrant and owner of Gandhi Mahal Restaurant
Trump was talking literally about directing the military to shoot looters (it's right there in the tweet!), not expressing an abstract right of people to defend their own property.
So no, downvoting you isn't anything to do with the constitution.
> ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
It's true that the president's writing here is characteristically vague. But right here in this one tweet he:
1. Introduces the military
2. Says he will assume control
3. Introduces the idea of shooting looters
Given that context, it's extremely difficult to concoct an interpretation where he's not saying he'll direct the military to shoot looters.
I mean, be serious here. Is your defense really that "The president's grammar was poor, so you can't prove he meant what he seemed to say". How many times are you going to try that trick? Wasn't it played out after he vaguely suggested injecting bleach?
In the interests of precision, Trump didn't suggest that people try injecting bleach, he suggested that researchers look into injecting disinfectant as a means of treating those with the virus.
I see I'm being downvoted. Is my account of things incorrect, or is it because I didn't explicitly spell out that it's silly for a president to give brain-dead research advice to experts?
Yes, that's another thing Trump said that was purposefully "misunderstood".
There are many things to criticize him for. But sadly the media is so incredibly lazy that they constantly make up these "scandals" about things he supposedly "meant".
And: you are downvoted because you are not following groupthink. It doesn't matter how factually correct it is.
The truth of it is still scandalous. Does it absolve Trump of responsibility for idiots drinking disinfectant? At least partially, yes. It's still a ridiculous way for a leader to behave.
It's absurd that Trump thought he was in a position to give technical advice to medical researchers, and it's even more absurd that he thought injecting disinfectant could be the way to go. The hubris and ignorance on display here are shocking.
> Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we [The Military] will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.
Who would he be implying is doing the shooting other than the Military that will assume control?
Shooting could refer to guns use by the looters. It could refer to self defense of police attacked by looters. It could simply be a word to symbolize violence of any kind. And there are many more interpretations.
But discussion about it isn't possible, sorry. I am heavily downvoted for not following groupthink, so I am rate limited when it comes to posting.
Oh well.
Why aren't people over there more upset about those reporters getting arrested by state police on the street? That was pretty f'ed up. But I guess when it can't be blamed on Trump, people over there just don't care.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
A one-word answer to a question that was clearly probing for more details about your opinions is not an appropriate response.
> Black correspondent Omar Jimenez had just shown a protester being arrested when about half a dozen white police officers surrounded him.
Is there any reason to assume racism? it looks like two other people in the camera crew got arrested and they don't look black. It looks to me like CNN is trying to play the race card to stir controversy when there are millions of other more likely explanations
I can't say exactly what the reasoning was, but watching the full video, they hauled off the black reporter alone, then after a substantial delay, arrested the others all at once. Almost as if they had an "oh wait people might notice this" moment.
It looked like they were hauling people off one-by-one, which could reasonably be standard procedure for riot situations. Isolate individuals from the group and handle them separately - that sort of thing.
Moreover, they started with the reporter, since he seemed to be the leader of the group (e.g. he was the one doing the talking).
I mean, there's being a leader of a group involved in a riot and then there's a reporting crew. If one of them is standing in place with a microphone and film equipment and explaining the situation in monotone while calmly asking what they need to do to comply, it's pretty clear which one they are.
The wording there with him seeming to be the leader of the group sounds like an anthropologist finding a completely unknown tribe of people. At any time, the police could've just used their words, instead of being silent, surrounding the entire group, then suddenly arresting one person and waiting a full 2 minutes (precisely two minutes) before simultaneously arresting the others.
So, your defense of these actions is that the cops can't discern the difference between press and rioters, so best just arrest them all "one by one"? What part of that is reasonable? Just because it's "standard procedure" does not mean it's justified.
You may have misread me. I'm not justfying their actions - I'm just saying it's not clear they were targeting solely the reporter. It's possible that the plan was to take everyone in custody, one-by-one. You have to start with someone and the reporter seems like the natural choice.
If it were only the reporter arrested, I could believe it was racism. Since the other two were arrested, not so much. It also helps that they seemed to have been the only camera in the area. I have been unable to find any other video of the arrest.
A Black reporter is more likely to be filming people similar to himself peacefully protesting, rather than focusing on the damages caused by agents provocateurs (there is video of the windows of Autozone being smashed by a dude who is definitely not a protestor).
Heck at this point the police probably have facial recognition cameras that identify a reporter and assign them a score based on how friendly their past coverage has been.
If it was because the reporters here were 'too close' then that does kind of fit the narrative the cops gave, except they should have told them where they should go instead of arresting them of course.
Still, does not make it racism. Plenty of cops make bad decisions, it doesn't make them all racist.
> If it was because the reporters here were 'too close' then that does kind of fit the narrative the cops gave
They were live on TV, so you can tell the cop's explanation was BS. When told they had to move, the reporter asked where was OK, at which point he was arrested. The crew was given no chance to comply with the orders.
Cutting off my post right before I say "except they should have told them where they should go instead of arresting them of course." is incredibly misleading.
Depends on your definition of racism. If you just mean "atomized, individual prejudice," you might be correct.
But this is textbook systemic racism, even if the cops aren't acting on a conscious bias. Even if their chief gave them clear orders explaining why, and the reasons ostensibly had nothing to do with race, it is still systemic racism because it falls into a pattern of systematic, nationwide discrimination which is irrefutable and that disproportionately affects people of color.
Recommend you read "So You Want to Talk about Race" by Ijeoma Oluo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad to learn more about racism as actual experts on the subject understand it.
> doing there job
We have zero context for why they were being detained. We can assume they did nothing wrong, but it's just an assumption. It would be great if CNN released the video that preceded the detainment.
Technological solution: Attach a laser to a gimbal camera. use YOLOv3 or similar to target the eyes of cops or armed persons within 100foot radius. Set up a few gimbal with mutually reinforcing fields of fire. If they can't see, they can't shoot. Everyone is safe with no killing.
What happened to Floyd is horrible and police abuse is a real thing. I never understood why police officers in the US have no common sense. I recall many incidents where they shoot and kill people trying to escape (so no threat to them). I'm happy the public is doing something about it.
However, I'm also annoyed by the stupidity of many people who blindly yell racism. Not so long ago there was a naked black male (Harvard student) walking down the streets of Cambridge, MA. Police came and arrested him. He refused arrest so they have to use force, but it was reasonable force required to arrest someone who is refusing arrest. People filmed the incident and next day many accused the police for racism. WTF!? I watched the film and there was nothing out of the ordinary. We should support good police officers and not assume all are bad and racist. They risk their life to defend us and our communities (white and black and everyone else).
How does nakedness justify escalating the situation to voilence? "The law is the law" is just an excuse.
When people talk about systemic racism they're talking about how the system operates as a whole. As I've commented elsewhere, people need to educate themselves about systemic racism in this country.
"So You Want to Talk about Race" by Ijeoma Oluo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad are good places to start.
> How does nakedness justify escalating the situation to voilence? "The law is the law" is just an excuse.
Are you suggesting every person to decide what's allowed and what's not to the best of their judgment? I agree not all illegal activities are equal. If you use common sense then indeed you should try your best to avoid violence in illegal activities that don't put anyone in danger. But at the end of the day, when all fail and the person in front of you is not cooperating and refusing to put cloths on, then the police has no choice and arrest the person against their will. (If you disagree that nakedness should be illegal that's a different story and has nothing to do with the police)
So who gets to decide what "reasonable force required to arrest someone who is refusing arrest" is? You really think that repeatedly punching someone for being naked and on drugs is reasonable? Why? Why not just detain him and work on getting him to a safe place? Why does the situation warrant violence at all? Just because it's common in this country does not mean it's justified or ethical.
What if they had shot him, or knelt on his neck and killed him? Would that be "reasonable"? Where, then, is the line?
Right now, cops basically have 100% discretion to decide where that line is. Because they are not actually accountable to anyone but themselves, they just act and draw the line after the fact. The only difference between this and the murder of George Floyd is degree. That's what I meant.
> If you use common sense then indeed you should try your best to avoid violence in illegal activities that don't put anyone in danger
I agree in the abstract, but unfortunately there's a racial element to this "common sense." In the US, black people especially must use a different kind of common sense, and must always remember that any kind of transgression - up to and including "looking suspicious" - is grounds for detention, which can escalate arbitrarily to execution on the spot. So there's really no "avoiding violence" when your mere existence is grounds for murder with no consequences.
And again, just because you can have a "reasonable" expectation of violence from the cops does not mean that violence is justified.
> the police has no choice
Well, they had a choice to not become cops in the first place, to not enter a system that lacks accountability. They have a choice to not enforce unjust laws, especially in situations where no one's in danger. They have a choice to challenge their colleagues to justify their actions, whether that's kneeling on someone's neck or punching them in the stomach. They have a choice between violence and deescalation.
But they choose violence and escalation with alarming frequency in this country. And the system protects them.
You make valid points but it's clear you never had to deal with such situations. When you ask why not just detain him and move him to a safe place. Did you ever try to detain someone who is not cooperating? If you're dealing with someone strong, even 3-4 people can have a very hard time. You have to be physical and it can turn to some levels of violence. The key again is using common sense. The police system should educate their people and also change their hiring process so that people who lack good common sense don't become police officers. Saying that police officers had the choice not to join the police is not serious. Don't also forget that many minorities join the police.
You seem to think that violence is the only option. You obviously think it's justified, but you still haven't stated a reason why being naked in public justifies bodily harm, maybe because you think the need to physically subdue this person was self-evident, by whatever means necessary? I disagree with that premise. This is why one of the central demands of the movement for black lives is "counselors not cops."
I'm 100% serious. Your mistake is in thinking it's a few bad apples. Certainly there are varying degrees of prejudice operating on the police force, but that's not the same thing as racism. The more you learn about the police force as it exists in America, the more you come to find that its roots are embedded in systemic racism. Cops may not realize it, but that doesn't mean it's not on them to decide to what degree they support the system. "Common sense" isn't enough because the system doesn't reward common sense, it rewards blind loyalty to the force. This is America's banality of evil.
Well, if a counselor could help resolve such situations quickly I'm all for it. But I'm doubtful based on my previous experience with troubled people. People have many opinions and ideas until one of those people become their own personal problem.
There has been systematic racism everywhere. Did we close academia because of systematic racism? The system will need to change. But there are no alternatives like some people here try to suggest. I think we will need to agree to disagree...
Anecdotal of course, but I was discussing this with someone who told me their cousin, despite being bipolar (although currently treated) and a raging racist online was being recruited by local police offices.
Yes, what a heroic display we're commenting on here. What exactly is your point and how is it relevant to this unsettling video? Just the platitude that not every interaction is necessarily racist?
>The police system as a whole is racist. Anybody who chooses to participate in and support that system everyday of their lives is racist.
What about all the Democrats and Republicans who are ultimately responsible for the laws governing the police system and who have for years tacitly or explicitly supported the war on drugs?
Of course. Anti-racist activists have long been extremely critical of the lawmakers. The dems tend to be better than the republicans, but both participate in and contribute to a system that ultimately is racist at its very core.
It seems like most people (especially mainstream news such as CNN) focus the majority of their criticism on the police, while ignoring the politicians of both parties that are the root cause.
What drugs are you on? What's the alternative you're suggesting then? Are you saying we don't need police and everyone can just own a gun and defend themselves when they need to?
Anytime a police officer tries to fight the system they are a part of, they always cease to become a police officer. They're forced out. The system doesn't allow "good" police to exist.
It would require massive fundamental change to society, but one idea is eventually citizens could "police" themselves. The majority of people could go through training and work together to provide security and protection in their own communities when need be.
So, state police -- on a loudspeaker -- are "ordering" people to "leave the street immediately."
The reporter admits he was told "to clear the area."
The loudspeaker -- again -- explicitly states to "go back in the direction you came from."
The reporter admits on air that they were "requested to move back."
The cameraman also admits on air that "We were just out here reporting the CLOSURE OF THE STREETS."
The dumbasses -- despite all this -- refused to get off the street, instead saying things like "we COULD move back to where you'd like..."
Being a reporter does not give you special permission to violate a direct order by state police in the middle of a riot (with a burning building in the background.)
If you're told to get off the street, get off the street... IMMEDIATELY. If you don't, you'll get arrested.
Additionally, there was another CNN crew within sight of this one that was approached, handled the situation in the same way with the same answers, and was told that they're good to stay where they are. That one was led by a white reporter.
Whether they are charged with a crime is up to the governor, ultimately.
But, the state police -- if they order a street closed -- are well within their rights to CLEAR the street. If the person won't budge, they can forcibly remove them. Which they did. That is being 'arrested.' There are no exceptions for reporters.
In the video linked here -- which you seem to be referring to -- the reporting team is surrounded by police throughout and can't move anywhere.
If there's video from earlier that shows the reporting team doing something arrest-worthy, it would be good for your argument to link to it since there's nothing here that looks like it.
Both the police and the reporters were calm and polite. The police told them they had to clear the street and instead of obeying the order they asked to let them know when they were going to actually walk down the street. Since they refused to obey the order they were detained and escorted out of the way.
Being a reporter does not give you a free pass to disobey orders, specially during situations like that. Being a police offer also does not give you the right to mistreat people of course, but in this video everyone actually behaved very well.
On some level the people involved here were civil, but it seems like a pretty dire problem when the police want to get rid of journalists.
It would be great if the police could figure out how to serve the public in a way where they could be proud of their work and want the journalists to help the world see the good work they're doing.
Of course I agree, but it reminds me of a situation many years back where I live.
There was a big protest and people started throwing rocks at the police, and the media were in the middle of the police at that moment. It actually made the police's response much slower and dangerous because they first protected the media and escorted them out from the protesters range, before charging and arresting people.
I'm sure they have trained some protocol to how to control mobs, and throwing innocent civilians in the mix wrecks the whole thing.
So you're saying if a police officer walks up to you and tells you do to something and you ask 'Why', that's grounds for them arresting you?
Police officers don't have carte blanche to issue orders and force people to comply. We're a nation of laws (supposedly). They were asked to move and they understandably wanted to know where they should move. Then they were arrested.
The grounds to arrest me are me not obeying a direct order, not asking "why".
Police officers have the authority to make quick judgement calls in many situations. Obviously we are all human and I could ask why and try to plead my case, but I should also expect that after some time of non-compliancy I may be detained. The felony is called something like "failure to obey a police officer".
