
We Reviewed Police Tactics Seen in Nearly 400 Protest Videos - jseliger
https://projects.propublica.org/protest-police-tactics/
======
malechimp
BAU in Greece where a couple of days ago a demonstrator died after being
brutally attacked and tortured by police a month ago. The relevant minister
was quick to deny police had to do anything with it but breaking several ribs
to a previously healthy guy who then dies off lung failure is somewhat
suspicious. Not to mention that for a month now _no state entity_ investigated
this incident despite it being clearly caught on cam.

In general we witness at least one incident of police brutality almost weekly
for months now. The frequency has been increased to almost daily lately not to
mention passing a law that essentially curtails demonstrations and gives even
more authority to police on them. I'm in fact quite surprised that none of
these have been covered to almost no extent in international news.

The irony is that all this is coming at a period when Greeks barely
demonstrate at all. The vast majority just seems to have accepted their fate,
i.e. economic misery ad infinitum, and it's been like that for years now. So,
I'm guessing this has to do with a special agenda of the relatively new right-
wing govt. Who knows. Fact of the matter is that policemen != protectors.

I believe it is a sign of deep rot of western democracies that police is the
most dangerous thing you can happen upon in a number of western "democratic"
countries.

~~~
25mph
Police is the HR of the state: they protect the state from the citizens.

------
throwaway0a5e
Until there are consequences for unnecessarily escalating violence cops will
continue to to do it because the more violent the situation the more the law
favors them.

People who care about this issue have been analyzing police use of force for
decades. You can find people saying basically what I just said above going at
least as far back as the 1990s. The problem is well known.

~~~
milkytron
> The problem is well known.

It might be well known to those who have experienced, witnessed, or study the
subject. But there are still plenty of people who deny these claims or are
unaware.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
They deny the claims because they support the systems US policing has
historically defended. When you confront people with writings from
marginalized communities going back to the 1800s about police, they still
manage to "be unaware". That's intentional.

------
milkytron
Interesting to hear someone from the police respond to the actions of those
officers.

And regarding this quote:

> Law enforcement experts stressed that viral protest videos, while visceral,
> only show a moment in time and may miss what officers were facing outside of
> the frame.

Isn't that what body cameras are for? If we only have one source of video,
then it's hard for police to justify saying, "That wasn't the whole story."

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I believe that policies regarding camera use during protests in many cities
were changed as a direct response of civil liberties complaints from
organizations like the ACLU. People said they didn’t want police to use them
for surveillance.

~~~
vezycash
> People said they didn’t want police to use them for surveillance.

Source?

~~~
pnw_hazor
"The Seattle Police Department said Wednesday that officers will be ordered to
turn on their body-worn cameras during protests in a departure from
longstanding policy.

The new policy comes after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive
order requiring the cameras to be used during demonstrations.

The Seattle Police Department has been outfitted with body-worn cameras since
2017 but a longstanding policy designed to protect the privacy of peaceful
protestors prevented officers from using cameras during the demonstrations of
the past two weeks.

That policy was written in consultation with civil rights groups, like the
ACLU, that worry body cameras could make it easier for police to track and
target protesters, particularly in communities of color that have a history of
over-surveillance."

[https://www.geekwire.com/2020/seattle-police-will-use-
body-c...](https://www.geekwire.com/2020/seattle-police-will-use-body-cameras-
protests-new-policy/)

[https://www.cnet.com/news/police-body-cameras-at-protests-
ra...](https://www.cnet.com/news/police-body-cameras-at-protests-raise-
privacy-concerns/)

~~~
kazagistar
Right. Since the video is private and disappears any time an officer might be
implicated, the only remaining effects are harmful ones.

------
mcguire
" _Straub said that police officers shouldn’t be expected to determine what 's
being thrown at them before responding._

" _“If you 're standing there in that skirmish line, and somebody's throwing
something at you, is it really up to you to be figuring out whether it's
gasoline or whether it's metal, or whether it's water or whether it's acid?”_"

His use of military terminology ("skirmish line") is telling.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Telling of what? That they reuse a term?

~~~
Doxin
It implies that they think of the conflict in military terms.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
So you would be okay with a term like "avant-garde"?

~~~
mcguire
'Avant-garde', as a military term, is obsolete in English; the English word is
now 'vanguard'.

'Skirmish line', to my knowledge, has no accepted non-military uses, but even
if it did the interviewee is clearly referring to the military formation and
therefore considering the protesters to be hostile enemies.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Well, they are throwing unspecified bottles of liquid at them, so they're not
peaceful protesters either.

~~~
Doxin
There's a clear difference between protestors and enemies no matter the amount
of hostility. Thinking of the protestors as enemies is bound to escalate
conflict instead of deescalating it.

------
scblock
This ex Spokane cop Frank Straub guy is a complete asshole and his responses
are uniformly bullshit. In his response to every single video, no matter how
shitty the cops behaved, he starts from a position of trying to make excuses
for their bad behavior. His default position is the same garbage "us versus
them" mentality that people want to change. At best he gives a soft criticism
of truly egregious behavior. He's an apologist for police brutality and has no
integrity. Yet another example of how incredibly far out of touch the police
and anyone associated with them really are.

------
29athrowaway
Police say "stop resisting" as an alternative to something more vulgar. They
do not really mean it, they shout that as a way to release stress.

They are also taught that the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint (LVNR) is the
safest way to restraint someone. The truth is, that it is not. It is stupid to
believe that cutting blood supply to someone's brain is safe. LVNR is a scam
that nobody actually believes in but everyone is silent about it because it is
a plausible excuse to kill people.

[http://www.nletc.com/lateral-vascular-neck-restraint-
lvnr](http://www.nletc.com/lateral-vascular-neck-restraint-lvnr)

> Result: No death, injury or litigation for excessive use of force for 40
> years against agencies using the certified Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint
> (LVNR®) System!

No death, injury or litigation? Bullshit. It only resulted in 1 month of
protests and billions of dollars lost.

~~~
specialist
I really thought "LVNR®" was some The Onion meets RoboCop level sarcasm.

What's wrong with these people?

~~~
29athrowaway
Unfortunately, it is real and highly profitable for people that will never
suffer any consequences.

------
xtiansimon
This webpage has very effective user interaction for examining the video
content.

~~~
vernie
I found the video playback choppy and disorienting.

~~~
xtiansimon
I did find it choppy, also. I think that's an effect of the scrolling
algorithm's acceleration/deceleration, and could be adjusted. There are two
effects with scrolling--advancing the page/narrative, and advancing the video.
That transition benefits with subtle visual signals.

And, I'm not much into video editing, but I've done a little graphic design
practice. I think 'disorientation' is par for the course when you're not
playing a video at constant speed. That's an unsettling thought--the webpage
authors are taking advantage of the UX's disorientation effect to heighten the
emotion of the video content.

I watched all of these videos and they certainly don't need any additional
emotive effects. I had the feeling that I was sharing the privileged insight
of the 'experts' observations with the narrative callouts and graphics to pace
my consumption.

I looked at The NY Times mega page of videos posted earlier. Watching one
video after the other was brutal. And it was my own doing. I just jumped from
one video to the next. click. click. click. and feeling worse and worse and
worse.

------
lathiat
Wendover Productions made great video coverage on "How to Stop a Riot" based
on the research:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT9bit2-1pg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT9bit2-1pg)

Unsurprisingly some of the techniques required are a little counter-intuitive
which is interesting when weighed into public opinion or uninformed
politicians etc. Naturally, the most effective techniques techniques don't
involve violence.

------
alfor
We can be critic to the police, but who is willing to take their place and do
a better job ? What do we find if we look for the opposite in thoses 400
videos ?

~~~
tehwebguy
I think you have misunderstood the purpose. There is no need for a collection
of "the opposite" of this, whatever that would even mean.

Police have arresting power, so if non-police assault them they will simply
arrest or kill them immediately, largely without the possibility of facing any
consequences. Thousands have been arrested at protests in the last couple of
months.

The non-police public have no such powers, and in fact even with video
evidence will almost never see justice for police brutality. There is a huge
violence problem here and it lies almost entirely on one side.

------
pnw_hazor
They forgot to show the video w/audio showing Antifa besieging the Federal
court house in Portland, WA.

Antifa were shining lasers at the cops eyes.

Also, one loud rioter was calling out individual officers promising them that
they would find out where they live and kill them and their families.

Good times.

~~~
non-entity
Turns out that when a heavily armed force carries out extrajudicial execution
and lopsided violence without consequence over many years people will
eventually respond with violence of their own.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Nonsense. Marxists attacking a Federal courthouse in Portland, OR has nothing
to do with George Floyd being murdered by a local police officer in
Minneapolis.

~~~
non-entity
Most antifa are more likely to be anarchists than marxists, in which case
their enemy is the state.

~~~
pnw_hazor
They are doing their part. There are Marxists in their ranks.

21st Century Marxists focus on exacerbating all of the fault lines in society
they can find. Old school techniques that relied on economic disparity didn't
work in the West.

The West doesn't have serfs like Russia and China did so 20th Century
Communism didn't take. Also, most Western countries were rich enough and
democratic so they could implement reforms that answered many of the 20th
century communist charges without requiring a Marxist revolution.

Today, Marxists focus on anything and everything that can divide, including
economic issues.

As soon as Trump leaves office, the mass media will flip to supporting the
President (assuming he or she is not GOP) and all this will die down.

The media already seems to recognize that antifa is not helping their cause so
they do not report honestly on the violence in Portland. As soon as the US has
a Democratic Party President, antifa will be re-branded as rioters or
anarchists. In the mean time they are lionized as defenders of freedom.

Note, I don't think this latest Marxist action will change America, any more
than the earlier attempts.

------
x87678r
Looks mostly fine to me, maybe some are over the top but these are cherry
picked examples. Most of these situations there is riot police trying to clear
an area. Do what you're told. Most people are hanging around waiting for a
fight to start then complain when one happens. And dont say we need more
protesting, there are plenty peaceful protests around. I'm glad I'm not a cop
you couldn't pay me enough to put up with that.

~~~
greatwhitenorth
Exactly. It's mostly people who are looking for trouble that cry police
brutality. There were so many instances of people shoving their camera in a
cop's face and get beaten. Why would you do that? There are a lot of dumb
people who believe everything the media tells them to believe.

~~~
vangelis
If recording is violence, do I have the same rights as a civilian to respond?

~~~
greatwhitenorth
Is shoving a camera in a cop's face same as recording from a distance?

~~~
vangelis
I'd hope an officer of the law would be able to keep their composure even with
a camera in their face.

