University of Minnesota Riot

[Karl Valten]

Dear gods this was less than 3 blocks from my house. Glad I wasn't anywhere near there. Sounds like a complete shit-storm.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S899192.shtml?cat=1

[Hobgoblin]

Dear gods this was less than 3 blocks from my house. Glad I wasn't anywhere near there. Sounds like a complete shit-storm.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S899192.shtml?cat=1

Are you sure you weren't near it? Are you sure you weren't the mastermind of it?

Seriously, good to hear you are okay. That video is some crazy stuff.

[Lykaios]

Saw this on Kare 11.

To think that just a few weeks ago, me and my friends were at the Dinkytowner, just chillin :ohno

[Karl Valten]

Whoa-ha you live in the Cities? Why did I not know that someone else knows of the cesspool of awesome that is Dinkytown.

Dear lord, even the 15-passenger van where I work at got vandalized. I mean I like house-parties and all. But when people start forming mobs and lighting fires IN THE ROAD...what the hell did they think was gonna happen.

If I was a cop I'd have taken part in gasing everyone in sight......and I'd have enjoyed it. But then again I am also a horrible person like that. :angel

[Lykaios]

NE MPLS REPRESENT!

Although it depends on who you ask, to Xcel we're New Brighton, CenterPoint has us as Columbia Heights, Water and Sewage is Saint Anthony and the USPS is Minneapolis, so god only knows here I live.

I know exactly what you mean, not only would I had enjoyed it but I would've prayed for someone to just cross paths with me so I could teach them a lesson.

[Karl Valten]

Okay, I'm going to guess somewhere around Silver Lake area.

[Lykaios]

Yessir, you guessed correct.

Right off Silver Lake Rd and 37th

[Karl Valten]

Whooooooo!

Yeah that's about a 10 minute drive from my place. Heh, go figure.

[Lykaios]

Whereabouts are you?

I'll be SW of Dinkytown tonight at the teflon-roofed stadium to watch the Twinkies.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

People who linger around riots and then get shot with rubber bullets/gassed by the police are just stupid. They have no right to complain that they can't feel safe around the police. :rolleyes Glad to hear you're ok!

[Karl Valten]

People who linger around riots and then get shot with rubber bullets/gassed by the police are just stupid. They have no right to complain that they can't feel safe around the police. :rolleyes Glad to hear you're ok!

Thanks. And I totally agree, -shake fist-. This definitely means that the drinking age won't be lowered here and that Spring Jam is going to suck next year. Buncha idiots says I.

And Lyk, I'm at 5th and 10th in Dinkytown. Pretty much at the end of sorority row and next to the Evan's Scholars house. Don't know if I can really head out anywhere. I'm swamped with projects and fraternity meeting junk.

[Dasquian Belargic]

People who linger around riots and then get shot with rubber bullets/gassed by the police are just stupid. They have no right to complain that they can't feel safe around the police. :rolleyes Glad to hear you're ok!

Oh yeah, riot police are well-known for their fair and just approach to upholding the law! No innocent bystanders are ever injured during riots

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7994630.stm

[Droo]

Wait! What's that!? The police aren't infallable? What? They're mere... humans!?

I'll rephrase what Holly said, we have every right to complain if we are made to feel unsafe around the police, and as is evident above, and in many instances during the recent G20 protests, simply being there is no reason to warrant becoming a victim of police brutality.

[Karl Valten]

Yeah, I'm not going to throw my opinion in here for this.

I see this thread already going downhill, you want to make a thread about riots breaking out at a protest rally for a political/financial summit. Start a different thread.

Just commenting on the nature of drunken college idiots starting fires in a residential neighborhood and the complete idiocy of such happenings.

[Droo]

Oh, for God's sake, this is a general discussion forum and the topics are related in the context of the original post and the replies pertaining to it and I find it quite sad that we can't dare to venture down the path of healthy debate without treading on eggshells for fear of upsetting the applecart. I think we're more mature than that but having said that, I'll respect your wishes as the thread starter and not further pursue this subject of discussion.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Shall I get the obligatory "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about :rolleyes" post out of the way now? There we go.

A sweeping statement was made about the "idiocy" of people who are injured by the police because of their proximity to a protest, therefore the discussion is relevant.

What if you had been near those riots when they were going on? If you look like a college student, and the police have been told college students are rioting, do you deserve to be treated like a criminal as a consequence?

It's narrow-minded and offensive to our personal freedoms / civil liberties to think that in situations like these, anyone who is injured deserves to be injured.

[Hobgoblin]

How exactly are you an innocent bystander if you are lingering at a riot? That's what Holly said, yes? Call me crazy, but if I turn the corner and find a riot, I'm not going to stop and stare, play cards on the stoop, maybe go buy a smoothie, all while checking out the riot like a macabre onlooker at a traffic accident. I do not want to see what happens at the riot like it is a movie. I am going to get the hell away from the riot, especially if there is violence at said riot, because it's a riot.

I mean it's pretty hard to mistake a riot for a tea party, unless we're talking about the Boston tea party.

Now if you're complaining about the inference from her statement (which summed up is basically that all people who are injured at riots are lingering there stupidly and therefore deserve to be lumped in with the rest of the rioters) well. I'm not going to speak to that because Holly didn't say that. If that's what she meant, she can defend that point herself. :)

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'll just post this link again, since apparently you didn't see it before :mneh

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7994630.stm

You don't need to be "lingering" anywhere, or rubber-necking, to be caught up in something like this. You could just be walking down a street, innocently trying to make your way from point A to point B, at the wrong time. There's no reason why you should be tear gassed or whatever because of that.

Also: you've overused your italics quota for the week, please refrain from further italicisation.

[Hobgoblin]

I'll just post this link again, since apparently you didn't see it before :mneh

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7994630.stm

You don't need to be "lingering" anywhere, or rubber-necking, to be caught up in something like this. You could just be walking down a street, innocently trying to make your way from point A to point B, at the wrong time. There's no reason why you should be tear gassed or whatever because of that.

Also: you've overused your italics quota for the week, please refrain from further italicisation.

Good luck with that. :)

I saw your link earlier and while tragic, I really didn't see it as being the type of person Holly was referring to. To me, what she said reads like someone chilling out at the riot like it was a Sunday picnic. Or at least in my mind's eye, I interpret it as someone watching what's going on like it were some show or event who then gets hurt in what is essentially crossfire and complains about it when they themselves failed to take decent precautions. What you're talking about is more or less a deliberate and unprovoked attack that happened during a riot, which is not the same thing.

Again, I'm only dealing with what she said, because what she meant is for her alone to clarify.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I was only commenting on what someone in the video Karl posted said. :eek Someone was complaining because they got arrested 'for taking pictures' and their friend was like "its bad we can't feel safe around the police" but to tell the truth, if I see police in riot gear, fires in the street, and general chaos erupting, the safe and proper thing to do as a law abiding citizen is to go inside.

And then take pictures through a window or something. :p

If you're walking down the street and a riot overtakes you (didn't look at link yet sorry Jenny) and you get tear gassed, that's awful, but not the police's fault. And you can't get killed by tear gas and rubber bullets. The fact is of course that police sometimes go overboard and beat up people who don't deserve it. So do regular people. They're fallible, it comes from being human.

I know a lot of good cops and I hate it when people say "the police are too violent" when they are taught to use appropriate force to save their own lives and those around them. And still they get killed in the line of duty, upholding the peace and making it safe for you to say stuff like "the cops shouldn't injure/kill people they think are a threat to everyone around them." What, we should just let the bad guys shoot the cops instead? AWESOME.

Ok that was a bit of a tangent. And if you look like a college student, hanging around a riot of college students, and you're not dispersing when the cops in riot gear show up, then yeah, you probably deserve to get gassed and hit with some rubber bullets. It only takes a few crazies throwing stuff at the police to get everyone in a lot of trouble. I'd blame the crazies, not the police who are just doing their jobs and trying to put food on the table for their familes.

That being said, I have no idea what your cops do over in the UK. Maybe they're all homicidal maniacs.

[J'ktal Anajii]

UK Police.

http://images.tomshardware.com/2007/04/25/hotfuzz3.bmp

<img src=http://www.rarefm.co.uk/reviews/images/hotfuzz2.jpg>

And, dang, that looked like a crazy riot! Glad you're okay.

[Morgan Evanar]

~Fuck da Police~

[Dasquian Belargic]

That being said, I have no idea what your cops do over in the UK. Maybe they're all homicidal maniacs.

I have a lot of family members in the British police. Whilst I assume that they act appropriately when in uniform, I couldn't comment on what their behaviour is like when they're "on the job" because I don't see that side of them. What people say they do, and their own perceptions on their work ethic, can easily differ from the reality.

That aside... the majority of our Police officers don't carry firearms, so I'd guess they are far less dangerous than yours :mneh

I certainly don't mean to suggest that all members of the Police are violent thugs, but some of the methods they use are unacceptable in my eyes. Yes, they are putting themselves on the line - but that is a risk they were aware of when they went into the job. Maybe you have some romanticised version of the Police as action heroes, but I don't. Ever since 9/11, the Police have just been given more leeway to infringe upon our personal freedom under the catch-all, emotionally charged banner of "Oh, we're protecting you against terrorists and paedophiles and all the other bad guys who might be lurking on every street corner! Trust no one!"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

No one should be asked to let someone kill them as part of their job when they have the means and training to stop them.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Right, because that's obviously what I was suggesting.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I didn't say it was? Sometimes it seems that that is what people expect the police to do though. If we make them so afraid of lawsuits and getting fired that they can't even keep themselves safe, they can't keep us safe. That being said, here every time a police person discharges their weapon there is an investigation done to make sure that the cop was in the right when they did so.

You said "they were aware of the risk when they accepted the job," which is true. I just know that there are people here that don't want police to hurt anyone for any reason, and I think that's crap. If the police don't have a reasonable assumption of personal safety/self defense in the line of duty (not to mention defending everyone else), soon there will be no police left.

Anyway this has gone pretty far afield from the original topic, into general police stuff.