Normally I don't like nitpicking. But, I need to ask, would you be moving because you as a police officer understand that something "harmful may happen to you" because you're in an area that an officer told you to leave, or because that officers of the law have the ability to deem a region of the town/city/state/nation off-limits to normal civilians? I'm actually asking, I don't really feel like going through the law/blue books of my state to try and figure out which you mean.

why not both? An officer isn't telling you to GTFO because he thinks its funny, he's doing it for one of a million legal reasons and you're committing anywhere from a misdemeanor to a felony for not complying.

Really? So, just because a cop says "You can't be here" is legal grounds enough for not being allowed to be there?

In my state, the vast majority of that crowd could probably technically have been arrested. NH RSA 644:1.



I would be moving because I was given a lawful order to move - at that point, the reason why the order was given is irrelevant. The above link has some useful info as well - I'm not familiar with Cali's law, but I imagine there would be some similarity.

Yes.



http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/lxii/644/644-mrg.htm

Riot and/or disorderly conduct could fit many people involved in this.

Yep, I can chase someone all the way out of the county line if I want to and its commonly done during hurricane season to non-residents who have no reason to be here.
It all depends on what kind of authority the state gives you which is at the very least the authority to restrict access to your jurisdiction if not the WHOLE STATE.

Ok, that's fair enough. I don't agree with it, but that's me not agreeing with law, and not law enforcement. However, those marchers had loud-speakers and "cow-tongues", the order to move from the police equivalents may not have been heard from the entire crowd. The decision to fire rounds into the crowd because they "didn't comply" with "lawful orders" seem really really grey to me.

LAPD IS OBVIOUSLY UNDER THE CONTROL OF

A) JEWS
B) LIBERALS
C) ISLAMISTS/TERRORISTS
D) SATANISTS
E) ALL OF THE ABOVE

Pick your choice.

Satan-worshipping Jews?

I also need to ask both Lee and Duo what classifies as a "lawful order" in their training.

If thats what the ACLU is made of, then yes.
Eventually the LAPD is going to get water guns since they aren't even allowed flashlights that can be used a self-defense weapon. I think the ACLU would rather an officer be killed in a hand to hand conflict and the fight "fair" than the officer have the ability to get the upper hand with a D-cell flashlight.

*EDIT*
To answer Roach, anything that allows me to control the situation I'm in and isn't breaking the law. First and foremost is officer safety and civilian safety.

I obviously can't justify shooting a reporter because they aren't an active threat. I CAN tell them to move so I can do my job and once they don't they're now passively resisting and I can use up to a certain amount of force to gain their compliance.
Its a HUGE misconception by the media and people who have cellphone cameras that because they have freedom of the press that they can go anywhere they want, this gets them in trouble VERY easily and the only reason the media isn't charged more often with disrupting police activities is because it would make them do what FOX is doing now and make everyone hate the police even more.

Small man syndrome. Unfortunately, every cop has it. The difference is just that LAPD forms an entire battalion of these stormtroopers. It's been a while since the town had a riot, right? They're just keeping 'em loose.

/sarcasm

So let me guess, you're the one cop with a tazer that tazes people because no one is going to respect a spineless pastey nobody?

See, that's where my problem lays. You put officer safety above civilian. What makes police safety so special? And how is telling a civilian to leave an area that is perfectly legal for them to be in suddenly grounds to shoot them? (Shooting innocents is breaking the law, yes? So, by saying "you can't be here" it suddenly makes that a perfectly legal action? Is that what I am to understand?)

(btw, Roach, I wasn't trying to say earlier that the police were entirely in the (moral) right, and I'm willing to concede that it's entirely possible that they over-reacted to some degree. I'm only saying that it's unfair for you to make a judgement based on a report filed by a well-known to be liberal, anti-police, media system (FOX news) who had their pride hurt.)

Also, personally, I'd rather the police err on the side of excessive force and get the job done, then not use enough force and be ineffective.

This actually reminds me of a story sometime back that was posted here and argued about. I don't remember the details exactly (sorry, it was a couple years ago), but a man was raving at a group of 7 or 8 police officers and pulled a pocketknife (or similar small blade) and the police shot him dead with something like 15 bullets. On the one hand it sounds brutal. The guy just had a small knife and they turned him to swiss cheese. But on the other hand, what if the police had not fired and the guy managed to get past them and stick that blade into a kid or something? (Also it was pointed out then, that the police are trained to fire two shots to the chest when someone draws a weapon on them, and thus the 15 or so bullets spread out amongst 7 or 8 officers is not in fact excessive. It's just the police doing what they're trained to do.) So on that note, I like how JLee broke down the numbers of how many people and officers were involved. A lot of times we hear statistics and such like that, and decide they're really bad before we bother to fully consider the situation (this can be attributed to the fact that the numbers are usually layed out in such a way as to make said statistic "interesting" or "shocking".)

We have a 23 page chapter in the manual that says when I can use each weapon. I can use the ERD "when deadly force is not justified, but when empty-hand control techniques are not perceived as sufficient in affecting an arrest."

Which means if I can't control the situation without a weapon then the next step COULD be the taser, baton, OC, flashlight, ect...ect...


Roach, you don't understand what I mean by civilians. I'll once again say I won't dispute that LAPD did WRONG by using beanbag bullets against random people.
In a perfect situation everyone in the parks/streets would have heard the officers say "Move". Everyone who did move or tried is now a civilian and those who didn't are resistant suspects.

Obviously its not a perfect world there are blind/deaf/dumb people who aren't complying as well as the people trying to start trouble. Thats where officer discretion comes in determining who is a civilian and who isn't.


Training will tell you the WORST situation (besides a life or death struggle) is a crowd because they can be unpredictable and not every situation works and its a VERY dangerous situation for an officer cut off from the others. A line of officers dressed in riot gear, banging their shields with a baton might disperse a crowd in some situations (awsome). While in another situation it might cause the crowd to form a line of their own and move on to the offensive (VERY BAD).
I think Roach (Correct me if I'm wrong) mentioned plainclothes officers in mini-sting operations inside a crowd. I've seen videos of I believe the New Orleans PD doing it during Mardi gras and I've seen what happens when it goes right and when it goes wrong.
When it goes right the people around the offender/officer are in a "wtf" state and don't do anything and the Uniformed Officers QUICKLY get in there and nobody tries to interfere. When it goes wrong its either because the crowd thinks that someone just got jumped by a random person or when they see the uniformed officers more people than can be handled start to get aggressive.

Crowds are just a very dangerous situation and are as non-cookie cutter as you can get when it comes to trying to handle them.


*EDIT*
Aww dang you edited while I was typing. Theoretically I could be in a situation that would justify shooting into an "unarmed" crowd (think Resident Evil zombie attack except they aren't zombies). Say a group of 5 officers in the middle of a VERY aggressive crowd of say 100 people with sticks and rocks (this is why I put unarmed in quotes because the media will say unarmed but we all know sticks and rocks can kill). Worst case scenario we might have to kill some people in order to get everyone to run away and we're going to pray to God that nobody shot was a true-honest to God innocent running the other way. If we survive, all 5 of us will end up mentally torn apart, 1-2 will commit suicide, and the others will become alcoholics or worse because while we did what he had to, shooting these gray area combatants is our worst nightmare.
Using less-than-lethal force is an attempt to get this to NOT happen. If I have to use beanbag bullets against people who are moving towards me in order to get the rest of the crowd to move away then while I'd rather not do that, my overall intention is to prevent the worse-case scenario I described, and I'll do my best to avoid hitting the people running away.
But once you end up in my safety bubble I have to use my discretion to either pull you behind me (old woman, children), beanbag shot (person who looks like they can take it) or billy club (media...thats a joke, its not department policy or mine, we love the media).




Actually, I would love to talk with people about policy and clear up misconceptions and why we do what we do. I think the majority of bad blood between people and the police comes from either misconception or the bad apples in the groups.
Like Sarn is mentioning the double-tap policy which some departments MAY have. MY training is shoot until they aren't a threat which might mean reloading until they aren't moving if that knife doesn't come out of their hand.
It might seem harsh but an innocent cell phone in your hand with turn you into a deadly force situation if you struggle because I don't know if its a normal cell phone or if you're struggling because you're a cop killer and theres a .22 in that "phone".

The thing is, Sarn, I saw reports from Fox and CNN. Not only are they upset by what happened, but the mayor of L.A. is upset by what happened. This tends to tell me that:
1) The police over-reacted.
2) The police should have handled the situation in a different way.
3) The LAPD needs to rethink how they deal with crowd situations.

The police handling a situation with lethal force when there's a lethal weapon involved against the parties who wielded the lethal weapons isn't something I'm going to argue against. A police force who's shooting into a crowd of people with ammunition that has horrible accuracy, high-probability of trauma, and at the discretion of a force that isn't voted into position by the population they are intended to protect is something I'll argue against. Once more, the LAPD needs to learn from other police departments.

(Duo, I feel I need to say I'm not attacking police forces in general, just the actions that took place here. I realize the police serve a very necessary role, and I'm not going to argue against what they are intended to do. My beef lays in this situation, and situations like it.)

Fox news is liberal?:psyduck: What now?

Oh yes, the *Hispanic* Mayor is upset about a Pro-Immigration march being broken up...
(since you're fond of lists, Roach)

1) He's HISPANIC! Perhaps there could be a bit of racial bais there?
2) He wants to get RELECTED, so he's going to take the position of sympathizing with the "citizens" of LA because they're the ones that do the voting.
3) The CNN report does provide a much less biased report of the incident, however, we still don't really hear both sides, since the Officers' union didn't provide a comment (probably due to the impending investigations), so it should still likely be read carefully.

Ok, let's throw racial bias into the mix. How many of the police officers are racist? How many of them would love to shoot a hispanic? Do you really want to bring that into this argument?

No I wouldn't. Because *I* don't like to build arguments based on partial information, and I don't know the ethnic backgrounds of the officers or civilians involved.

Aren't the cops and the mayor on the same team?

You just said the hispanic mayor might have a bias. You can't bring that up and then take the high-and-mighty route of "I would never argue the bias of someone." The people of L.A. voted him into office to represent the population. If they can trust him in the office of mayor, then they should be able to trust him to say "my police forces didn't act the proper way."

Now you guys are throwing politics into the mix and ruining the batter.

I hate politics, I've grown up believing that 99% of politicians are in it for their own good and once their in office they do what they do because of votes.

I'll give you instance that applies to me. The Sheriff is an elected position, nobody really cares who they vote for so the incumbent usually wins because he's doing a good job in law enforcement (thats just how Sheriff here works, its not a heated race like mayor). Now say a white officer tasered a black woman, she rolled off a roof, and hit a fruit stand killing her. The ACLU will scream racism even if it wasn't involved and now the Sheriff might lose his position because the usual non-voting blacks will vote this year and try to oust him. To keep his position (either for the greater good of the department or more likely himself) he'll ban taser use and fire the deputy.

Obviously nobody here is to blame, nobody expected a tasered woman to roll 20 feet before the officer could react and go off the roof, but because the ACLU made a fuss it turned into a political agenda.

It *COULD* go the opposite direction however with Sheriff saying they didn't do anything wrong and it was a horrible accident (unlikely the Sheriff would do that in some places). He'll either lose his job for doing the right thing or if he's lucky the usual non-voting cop supporters will outnumber the cop haters.

...that's...how it's supposed to work...:psyduck:

Stop. Please. You're bringing up hypothetical situations that may or may not happen. I'm worried about people trying to form peacefully in a public park, and at some point, be it because provoked or be it because (lawl, mob mentality) 3 or 4 officers were trigger happy and shot into a crowd and the rest of the force followed suit, but that a police force fired 240 rounds of "less-than-lethal" rounds into a crowd. I don't care about race, I don't care about political elections, I don't care about "potential racism." I'm worried about 240 rounds of un-accurate, damaging ammunition being fired into a crowd that to this point was (for the most part) peaceful. As soon as any of the *4* internal investigations say something along the lines of "the majority of the crowd became hostile and was endangering the safety of the general public around them" I will be more than happy to take back everything I've said in this thread.

If the IA reports clear the officers you'll probably have to find them online since the news won't report good news.
Oh I'm going to tell you something thats top secret too. The media thinks its something special when we do an "investigation" when an officer uses force and they think we do it because of the public outcry.

:shifteyes:

Its already mandatory The shooting board does investigations into weapon discharges and the IA board will look into other uses of force.
Don't tell though...we like to entertain the media.





Oh and heres a funny animation I made for that tazer incident.

Ok, your case wasn't hypothetical, I apologize. If you'd like to supply me with sources of info on that situation, I'd be more than happy to look through it, form my own opinion, and, if you'd like, argue as to why I feel the way I do. But for now, I feel I've made it pretty clear that I'm not attacking police actions in general, just those that might be excessive displays of force.

A small point:

There is a difference between a crowd of angry teenagers who listen to punk rock and Rage Against the Machine, and a crowd that has

-masks and flowers and whatnot
-musicians
-a large number of children

I'd like to think this is taken into account, but they were shooting at people who were too far away to possibly be throwing things :\

yeah! and if the secret police tell you to stop being jewish, then stop being jewish and you don't have to worry


Edit: Here's a hint because I know Duo, at least, is genetically incapable of comprehending my point:

Riot gear, SWAT teams, government provisional plans to use the national guard/army as a police force... when the government has entire plans in place to suppress large crowds of people there is something wrong. If tens of thousands of people felt the need to rally and protest then the government should be doing something to make those people feel represented, not sending in stormtroopers with CS gas and grapeshot cannons. I don't care what kind of mentally deficient obsession you have with becoming a traffic cop, this is not okay.

And start sending the illegal immigrants home. Wusses.

Do you have a credible link to back that up, or are you making assumptions?

Nice insult, btw. Maybe if I stick along long enough, you'll violate the AUP.

If tens of thousands of people start riots and destroy personal property like in France they need to be dealt with very harshly.

In America (like any other country I assume), we always have protesters, usually in Washington D.C. and L.A. (in this case the latter). The Government simply cannot appease to all people (unless we have political geniuses in offices, which we don't), and if the government decides to support one group, another will rise for the opposite extremity. The thing is, people take the first amendment from high school and say "hay guyz, you have ten fingers, I have ten fingers, lets' go start a riot against those hwo dontz lol!". They do, police show up, and because of a few RATM listening teenagers, they aggravate the police, police gets riot gear, and it goes on.

The thing about this protest? It was supposed to be peaceful, where the cops don't care and the guys march around in circles with signs and chants. Unfortunately, as others have said, it got out of hand by a spark of teenagers and incompetent cops who believe everyone was this way. And the same thing happened except the majority of the people wanted a protest, not a riot; the police were looking at a riot, not a protest.

Protest can either be taken down quickly or be sparked up with random people on the streets joining and then it forms into a mob. Police were trying to prevent this, but they handled it poorly, and now the mayor is trying to save face.

Simple point: We'll always have protest of any sort; no government will accept mobs, and protest can easily turn into one. The police handled it poorly. The mayor is saving face. People got injured but non killed.

Zavarshev.

Going into a crowd that's starting to get rowdy is stupid and puts the officers' lives if far greater danger. They try to arrest one person, they could be jumped by a mob. Their personal always safety comes first, and the safest thing to do is crowd control tactics as they did.

For the "innocent" people who get hurt, that's just a risk they take when they show up to a public demonstration like that. There are always going to be a couple of bad apples that ruin it for everyone else.

That's not what I said. I said I *know* that the Mayor's hispanic. I *don't* know the ethnicities of the police officers or the civilians. For all I know, 60% of the police force may have *also been hispanic. Or maybe they were all germans or italians. I *don't know.* And neither do you, so how can you come in and claim racial bias on them. However, we do know that the Mayor's hispanic, and we do know that the event was a pro-immigration event.

This is called making hypothesis based on the facts you *DO* have, as opposed to throwing out blind statements because it makes you sound good.

So instead of taking a position when you don't have all the facts, why don't you wait and see what the investigations bring to the table before you make an *** of yourself?

Ok, Mr. Anarchist. This is seriously one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. What about the Green Bay riots? Thousands of people looting and rioting because a football team lost a game. Should we have sat with the Packers fans and discussed how to "make them feel represented"? NO. They were rioting for a stupid, pointless reason, and most riots are the same way. The fact is, we don't live in HappyLand where we can put government institutions in place based on ideals rather than need.

Can't argue with you there...

Man, I hate being an ***.

Ok, 140 rounds fired, 40 or 50 people deserving of being put down, police line moves through and shoots at people and roughs them up with batons. Please, Sarn, explain to me how this is a good thing? You act like I saw one news report and suddenly my "down with the man!" instincts kicked in, not that I've read plenty of reports from retiring LAPD training instructors and street cops complaining about the incompetency of the recruits that have been making their way into the LAPD ranks for the last 25 years. You act like I can't see for my own eyes in that video that there are clearly cops hitting people with batons who aren't doing anything aggressive to the police. But no, I like acting on no evidence at all and will jump to any conclusion, right?

Avenger, the cops did go into the crowd, and they dealt with more than just the people they needed to. A line of cops decked out in riot gear is more than capable of handling people, the reason they move in the line is so that one officer can[/c] deal with one person without being mobbed.

Here's another point of view on the matter.

...you get that Roach's argument has nothing to do with illegal immigrants, right?

He's talking about legitimate protest against the government.

Looting and rioting is one thing, I don't think we can say that this was anything near that level.

JLee - my problem with your article is that while every article you read is going to have a bais, that article was so biased it didn't bother to include any facts, and the only fact that it did include, 50 - 100 agitators, was proven fase in the report.