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Researchers: Police likely provoke protestors — not the other way around

UnpopularBlargh

UnpopularBlargh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,209
Link:
New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that police are often the provocateurs of violence during demonstrations.

The Deciding Force project, who has been studying clashes between law enforcement and protestors in 192 cities during Occupy demonstrations in 2011, said that attacks by police against protesters in Ferguson, Mo., are part of a disturbing trend of law enforcement playing the role of agitator.

"Everything starts to turn bad when you see a police officer come out of an SUV and he's carrying an AR-15," said Nick Adams, a sociologist and fellow at UC Berkeley's Institute for Data Science who has been heading the research at the Deciding Force Project. "It just upsets the crowd."
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The police are not there to keep the peace. They're there to keep the status quo. This is from 2014. But still relavant now.
 

Deleted member 11413

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
22,961
Well yeah the police love instigating violence. Many of them are just itching for an opportunity to commit violent acts. That's a big reason why many people join the police force, the ability to commit legally-sanctioned violence.
 
Wilsongt

Wilsongt

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,545
notsurprisedkirk.jpg
 
Zips

Zips

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,917
The only surprising thing about this would be finding out that people didn't already know this.
 
Pickman

Pickman

Member
Nov 20, 2017
2,266
Huntington, WV
There's something about the way a police officer says "You need to step off that planter curb, that's government property" while letting a counter-protester scream about how great Trump is in your ear with a bullhorn that makes me think they may have some biases they have difficulty ignoring in the line of duty.
 
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UnpopularBlargh

UnpopularBlargh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,209
Zips said:
The only surprising thing about this would be finding out that people didn't already know this.
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Most people are in denial or have a very naive world view of those in positions of authority.

I only remembered this article because I fell into a dumb ass Facebook argument with a relative about police and minorities
 

Deffers

Banned
Mar 4, 2018
2,402
You ever wonder what it's gotta feel like as a scientist who probably already knows this is the answer, to have to make these studies so people will believe the obvious truth?
 
Jokab

Jokab

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
875
I hate it when journalists write about research that isn't even published yet.

Adams' team is still evaluating its findings and is incorporating other factors to determine whether they influence crowd behavior, including city rules for holding protests, an area's political makeup and local demographics. They expect to publish their findings by the end of the year.
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It's not peer-reviewed, it isn't published, hell it hasn't even been thoroughly analyzed yet! Yet we're reading this story. They may turn out to be completely wrong or their fundings not statistically sound enough.
 

Deleted member 6230

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,118
Having been to a few demonstrations that ended in dozens of arrests I can confirm from anecdotally experience that this is certainly the case.
 
Hrodulf

Hrodulf

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,345
Zips said:
The only surprising thing about this would be finding out that people didn't already know this.
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I mean, garbage "movements" like Blue Lives Matter exist, which was founded around the idea that violence against police should be prosecuted as hate crimes, is used to diminish the issues minorities face on a daily basis and to excuse most or all police behavior, so it isn't really surprising that people would either not know about this or consider it "false".
 
ZeoVGM

ZeoVGM

Member
Oct 25, 2017
76,257
Providence, RI
Jokab said:
I hate it when journalists write about research that isn't even published yet.


It's not peer-reviewed, it isn't published, hell it hasn't even been thoroughly analyzed yet! Yet we're reading this story. They may turn out to be completely wrong or their fundings not statistically sound enough.
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We already know this is true. Kind of a weird thing to go after the article for a topic like this. It's a "no shit" conclusion.
 
Powdered Egg

Powdered Egg

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
17,070
People love wasting money on shit Black people could have told you for free LOL.

Most of these puny, lower case r riots in the last 30 years were probably all started by police. They caught that dork in a Cali protest several years back trying to start a riot and when outed as a cop he panicks and pulls a gun on citizens.

Before his death MLK's Memphis protest turned into a riot, which was started by Uncle Tom FBI undercovers.
 
krazen

krazen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,319
Gentrified Brooklyn
While its all jokes, it really is a shame. In NYC in particular there's always a shitload of violence against protests for no real reason. At first I used to think it was just a shitty way for em to end the protest, most of the time the violence is the goal.

Like when the NYPD violently arrested a bunch of Proud Boy protestors after they got fucked up by said Proud Boys...eventually they arrested the assaulters but only because of viral videos got picked up by newsmedia.

What gets scarier is the way they justify it. Cop tackles a protestor, protestor screams out 'What's wrong', 'What are you doing' or just plain 'Ow' and they write it up as arresting them...for resisting arrest.

I was in Paris for the pension strikes earlier this year and it was night and day as far as how professional the cops were. And its funny because there will be incidents of people being disrespectful to cops here (over the summer there was a viral clip of kids dropping buckets of water at cops trying to arrest someone) and the union and right wing press will rail at how far society has fallen but not realize the correlation between their behavior and the contempt many nyers have for them
 
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