Not that I can see much from over here, but I'm wondering how the demographics of the protesters are shifting. I know for me, I honestly don't care extremely much about a cop shooting someone wrongly shooting someone. However, the cops running around with AR15's and MRAP's is a very serious concern. Cops acting like they're a soldiers is terrifying in both the straight logic sense (fun fact: the average police officer is so poorly trained as to be a disgrace to the profession of arms, only getting worse as he gets things closer to milspec) and from the threat to my rights.
To be honest, everything I've seen says this is because you aren't a local and you aren't black. And it's exactly what the police want. They want this to become a fight about out of towners versus local police. They want it to be an issue with police militarization. They want a violent crowd and a violent conflict,
because that is not a fight they will lose, and everyone will forget about the guy they are protecting who murdered an unarmed teenager.
But the people of Ferguson are the ones who have to live with the police when this is all over. They are the ones who have to deal with a police force that has no accountability. If it weren't military gear, riot shields and MRAPs and LRADS it would be fire hoses and dogs and and clubs. Only the details have changed, but this is exactly what the people of Ferguson have had to deal with for a century.2
For however bad the details might be, never forget that everything the police are doing, all of this, is to protect one of their own from even the possibility of consequences for breaking the law at all costs. And the people they are out there shooting right now with wooden bullets and teargas want nothing more than to see justice done.
The militarization is bad, but if people forget why this is happening the police win.
If you want to join the fight against the police
tactics join the protest happening right now in New York and elsewhere right now, which are being dispersed in basically the exact same way (although with a bit more proffessionalism and less outright racism, no cops yelling for the animals to bring it on and stuff), but no one cares because that is, sadly, a losing goddamn battle, and there's a reason that is what the SLCPD are trying to make this about.
In other news: Police conference!The police lead with a prayer that demonstrates no concern for anyone but the police. Then they lie about the sequence of events, which everyone can trivially check because it's all on tape. They showed two confiscated pistols and a confiscated "molotov" that never would have lit because it was clearly made by the sort of person who thinks you can make a beer molotov.
We do know at least one molotov was thrown several nights ago and them stamped out by protestors, so it could be real, but even by the things the police have said it still happened
after their response, so it makes no sense to use it as the justification.
They are saying this justified their actions last night, in combination with the horror of the thrown water bottle that has put all the police on edge, and repeating the call for protestors to be in their homes by 4pm. He also claims it was just a coincidence that they rounded up and forced the press out at midnight, reminds people there is no longer a curfew. Says no journalists were arrested last night (that comment doesn't seem to have gone over well with the journalists that were arrested).
Police spokesperson is now in tears. Ignores all questions from crowd where answers might cast the police in a worse light than he's already managing to cast them.
Meanwhile, on twitter..."The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is a prominent American think tank based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses on political, economic and security issues throughout the world, with a specific focus on issues concerning international relations, trade, technology, finance, energy and geostrategy."
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