Jebbie,

Glad to hear you weathered the storm safely.

The ride alongs serve a very important function. Civilians and cops tend view each as "the other". This helps to break down those barriers and persons tend to see each other as persons and members of the same community. And you miss the whole point of this area of academics. It is a homeostatic view of the entire criminal justice system and its development in historical context. This is not something one gets from 20 years on any PD. You need a four year degree and beyond. You can't make professionals out of kids with high school diplomas, badges and guns. By the time they have put in their 20, and trained a shitload of rookies as FTOs, they still lack the analytical tools and perspective one gets by serious study of themselves as actors in the system in its larger historical context and development in and of the fabric of society itself.

Honestly, I haven't seen or read any comments here actually defending the behavior of those vandals. Whether they acted with the affirmative intent of provoking the police is equally debateable; we just had the West Indian Day Parade here in New York, which can be riotous all on its own yet doesn't provoke the sorts of overreaction seen in St. Paul.

No, but you see many comments condemning the police action, which was SOP riot control, and by the book and non-lethal. And it is most certainly not a question of debate what their intent was. It was to shut down the RNC. How many times do they have to say that so you will believe it? Read their damn website. Are you blind?

That's the difference between a party and a demonstration or peaceful protest and a direct subversive action designed to... are you ready for this? - disrupt the democratic process.

I spent ten years doing community/police liaison at the biggest yearly party on the west coast. The Castro Street Fair. They stopped doing that, recently. It just got out of control. I think I might know a little more about this than all of you put together, and even more than some cops.

Perhaps I'm comparing apples to pears, but I find it hard to believe the St. Paul PD were prompted to behave as they have expressly because of a few (reportedly) isolated incidents.

Has anyone constructed a timeline of events/altercations thus far? That might be helpful to see who provoked what and when.

None of us were there and being there in and of itself is hardly informative. Unless you have a birds-eye view and can monitor comm links of both sides, what can you know? There are two sides to this story, two frames. From my perspective, sitting back here in my armchair - when it came right down to it - the minute a few of these kids started acting squirrely, the hammer came down and they have the power to do that at their discretion. And it was a non-lethal hammer, but completely in line with SOP for riot control. It could have gone off peacefully like it did in Denver, which is a more conservative, GOP friendly city. This is nothing new. Just the tools have changed. The tactics have been pretty standard since before most of you were born. And as far as I'm concerned, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

But he [GlennGreenwald] has repeatedly said Obama needs to be elected. In those words, not 'McCain needs to be defeated.'

-- Mike NYWI

Begging your pardon, NYWI, but while it might be possible to be a Bozo and misconstrue Glenn's meaning in that statement, if you have paid any attention, just the least tiny bit of attention, you would know that Glenn is simply saying that Obama needs to get elected because Obama is the only person on the face of the earth at the moment who is in a position to defeat McCain. His comment is about defeating McCain.

I would rather have put that into a simple answers to simple questions file but I didn't think you'd get it. Maybe you still don't get it, I don't know.

While there will always be young hotheads, from what I've heard there's been a trend away from violent confrontation in anarchist circles. The numbers of hotheads out there are clearly not large. Are 50 people enough to keep the cops' batons swinging? What does a good cop do when his quarry turns peaceful?

When the WTO was protested in Philly about 10 years ago, an ex-Greenpeace guy I vaguely know was arrested and held on $10000 bond. For what? For being the leader of a small group of people---I forget their name---who specialize in nonviolent disruption, and he was later released without charges. These people don't throw or break anything, supposedly. So how do you arrest them? Pretend you thought they were dangerous.

I'm guessing it's far easier to put on masks and throw benches than to infiltrate anarchist groups. Not that that's hard either.

Who is my friend and I bear no grudge against for thinking my position on this is "pathetic". I've seen the video, also still photos of the incident, and have commented on it.

This is where you have daylight:

Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher have been documenting the searches and seizures on peace groups.

This is where you probably don't:

And the Minnesota Independent documents a 17 year old peace protester and community organizer who was beaten and pepper sprayed by the St. Paul police.

Unless that "peace protester" was actually a peace protester. In that case it may be an isolated case of police brutality or excessive use of force but I'd need to know more. I'm not too sure I would lend too much cred to the Minnesota Independent but I don't know.

Look, Chris Rock says it all. I hope he paid the ACLU royalties.

Chris Rock - How not to get your ass kicked by the police!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8&feature=related

As an alternate, watch Cops a few times. Some of you sound like the denizens of the trailer park: "Why do I have to listen to the police?"

And until you all come to your senses, I think I'll defrost my refrigerator or something. Shoot. It's a frost free. Maybe I'll go watch paint dry or fill some more balloons with my own urine.