• @gAlienLifeformOP
    link
    1521 days ago

    Surprised to see police acting reasonable.

    Yeah, same, after all the other heinous shit we’ve seen cops do to protesters at other times over the years this has been incredibly refreshing.

    Along with 68, I think a big part of it is not wanting to repeat 2020. It took an insane number of wrongful arrests and incidents of brutality being caught on video but it might have finally temporarily sunk in for police leadership in one city that getting aggressive with protesters just makes them get aggressive back, but if you keep force to an absolute minimum people will usually just get their frustrations out of their system verbally and connect with some like minded people and everyone gets to go home without any black eyes or broken bones or shit.

    • @givesomefucks
      link
      English
      421 days ago

      Yeah. Having that captain or whatever there (no idea what the acronym meant) does a lot to hold police accountable.

      But I think the only reason he’s out there on the streets is pressure from Chicago politicians.

      I dont think he’d do it on his own, or that police would be as nonviolent as we saw yesterday without that pressure from Dem politicians to not turn this into a giant shit show.

      Most protests are nonviolent and would stay that way without incitement and outright violence from police through things like kettling.

      • @Carrolade
        link
        English
        421 days ago

        It’s important to remember that of the hundreds of BLM protests, only the ones where something newsworthy actually happened got reported by the media.

        If something never makes the news when everyone behaves, then your brain only ever receives the negative signals, reinforcing the human brain’s natural bias for remembering negative outcomes over positive ones. This leads to an inaccurate picture of what the world is actually like.

        This is why statistical analysis is so important. Numbers are harder to fudge than memories.

        • @gAlienLifeformOP
          link
          221 days ago

          Yeah, there was a ton of news reporting on allegations made by police against protesters, very little news coverage of the numerous times police brutalized protesters, and almost no coverage of the majority of protests where it was just people saying chants and waving signs while cops got paid time and a half to sit around and watch them.