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[Kevin Bacon Wept] American Youth Maced for Dancing
The Green Eyed Monster
i blame hip hopRegistered User regular
i blame hip hopRegistered User regular
The only question that needs to be asked -- is the cop fired? If not yet, then when?
Here's a roundup of a few different articles, including video of the "incident." And I even found a discussion on a Ron Paul message board about it when googling, and I decided to link to that as well.
Shameful shit, fuck the police, fuzz apologists please report and help me understand why this cop isn't in jail right now.
Here's a roundup of a few different articles, including video of the "incident." And I even found a discussion on a Ron Paul message board about it when googling, and I decided to link to that as well.
Shameful shit, fuck the police, fuzz apologists please report and help me understand why this cop isn't in jail right now.
Pepper spray used to disperse dancers after Union, Uintah game
BY ROXANA ORELLANA
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Oct 21 2011 06:54PM
Updated Oct 22, 2011 12:08AM
Roosevelt police are investigating an incident that left several people covered in pepper spray.
On Thursday after a football game between Union and Uintah high schools, police said a group of people began to perform a ceremonial Polynesian dance to honor players from the Union team.
The people began performing, but were blocking an exit as team players and game officials attempted to leave, police said.
Two Roosevelt officers and some school officials tried to provide an exit but failed. Then officers used the pepper spray, according to a news release from the police department.
Several people were reported to have been affected by the spray. Police said many people in the crowd knew the group was going to dance but others, including the two officers, didn’t.
Zack Aguiniga, who was at the game to watch one of his younger brothers play, said people were standing by the field entrance and as the players got closer, the group began to sing and dance. "As we’re there watching, we could hear the cops say, ‘make a hole,’ " Aguiniga said. "But they were in the middle of their dance, and if anyone knows the Haka dance, they’re loud and talking in unison."
All of a sudden, Aguiniga said, the cops started pushing, and out came the pepper spray. "They [the dancers] were confused as to what was going on, and so was everybody else," Aguiniga said.
Some people reported being hit with police batons.
Jessica Rasmussen went to the game to support a friend in the team. That friend, who is a senior at Union, had about 20 family members attend the game. Rasmussen said about 10 or so of his male relatives were the ones who decided to perform the dance for him and the rest of the players.
Rasmussen said that the crowd, coaches and players told police that everything was fine and they should let the men do their traditional dance.
"Five seconds into it, the police officers started coming at them with their clubs, telling them to make room . . . They started spraying Mace," Rasmussen added.
Aside from those doing the dance, Rasmussen said she and others watching also got spray in their eyes, ears and mouth.
Police are asking anyone with information on what happened and those wanting to file a complaint to contact Chief Rick Harrison or Detective Pete Butcher at the Roosevelt Police Department on 255 S. State St.
The Green Eyed Monster on
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That could have something to do with it. Miscommunication and/or failing to get the memo causes all sorts of fun.
Certainly doesn't excuse their actions though.
next morning i was in like 5 minutes early to claim that fucker
aww yeee
What exactly do you think the cops should have done. They asked the dancers to cease blocking the exit. The dancers refused. You can hear on the video itself the police asking them to make a hole 4 times. Once before they started dancing and three times after.
And that's why I don't stop when a cop blocks traffic.
However, if the cop who deployed his mace isn't going to lose his job (and he isn't), he should at least be mocked mercilessly for using mace on a bunch of kids who were not threatening him or anyone else. This could have easily been handled without fucking mace.
Cops never have good reason to do anything, they are a romanticized concept of peace keeping. Now, on this specific incident, why would you resort to the mace at all? If there was a hazerd of some kind inside and you needed that exit NOW, I can see it being a last resort; this cop? He did it because he got offended they ignored him, that. Was. It.
He could have arrested them.
Failure to obey the lawful instructions of a police officer is a crime in most places.
If a cop says, "you need to move," and you don't move, don't be surprised if you end up in cuffs.
You try to move them. You do not spray them with an incredibly painful chemical.
The scale of escalation does not go make request-->chemical irritants. And especially not if you're going to be spraying the people you're trying to move and bystanders alike.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's generally a rule that a person has to be exposed to a less than lethal chemical irritant before they're allowed to use it on others. At least in the military. Police policies are less uniform across the government.
Same thing for cops, and even security guards.
I had to be pepper sprayed and TASERed before I could carry either of them. I also got whacked with a padded baton during expandable baton training.
None of it was fun.
Actually most police academies, afaik, DO shoot mace in the face of trainees when they're being trained about it.
And yeah, this isn't like, your neighbor asking you to move your car and then punching you in the face when you're not fast enough for him. This is repeatedly disobeying the direct, lawful request of a police officer to stop blocking an exit.
And if you're a police officer are you SERIOUSLY gonna try to get into a pushing match with a bunch of football players? Hells no. And honestly if you didn't know what a haka was, and you saw a bunch of guys from one team doing what is, after all, an organized challenge to their opponents while blocking the exits, wouldn't you have a lot of interest in breaking it up fast?
(also, who the hell does a haka at the END of the game?)
It's possible to have bad judgment in one situation without being a Bad Cop.
They were doing it at the end of the game because they had all come to watch a family member play, his team lost, and they were trying to raise the team's spirits.
Nope. They weren't a danger to nor threatening anyone. Justification for use needs to go beyond "They were ignoring me". It doesn't require a pushing match with not a football player to try to physically move someone, something looking at the video one cop was just starting to try and do when the guy behind him decided to just start spraying.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Sure. But one was dumb to a significantly more painful and dangerous degree.
Yup, I do know. Trust me.
Cop should lose their job.
So what were the cops to do? Have a dance-off?
Call me crazy, but isn't this exactly why the police have things like pepper spray? Used to be that if you ignored an officer's direction, blocked exit from a facility, and then started screaming in his face you risked injury and death. Non-lethal ordinance was invented for this purpose.
The policeman had no idea why they were blocking the exit, demanded they "make a hole", and they started screaming in his face defiantly as part of their dance. Pepper spray hurts, no doubt, but does not injure. And it "made a hole", which granted access to the exit, at the end of the game, where people would've been shortly attempting to leave.
And yes, sometimes people get irate when forced to stay somewhere against their will. Sometimes they're irate enough to push and shove.
Of course the proper course of action would have been to not allow that crowd to congregate at all, instead of handling it as late as they did. That makes their actions less than ideal, not inappropriate. Those police deserve to be chewed out and sent to some remedial "How to handle crowds without being an idiot" training. But that's the extent of it.
Wait until after the dance is done and then take them to the side. Arrest or fine as needed. Mace them, the crowd, and fellow officers was not the correct or needed solution.
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Umm, yes?
If there wasn't an emergency, the cops could have done what any rational person would have done - get a school official or just wait the situation out. Only crazy people take things to the level of physical altercation as first choice.
Cops going to get a school official seems incredibly backwards.
I'm guessing you either didn't watch the video or have a poor understanding of the concept of "first". The cop clearly said "Make a hole" and gestured to get the fuck out of the way several times. The kids continued to shout and block the exit and disregarded the officer.
Those kids were effectively "kettling" the crowd, lol.
What the kids were doing was illegal.
The cops asked them to stop blocking the exits. They refused.
this too, is illegal, and is also being a dick. They could have continued dancing ANYWHERE but the exit, but did not. After apparently four attempts to get them to move.
Do you want your law authority to be completely toothless and have zero power to enforce the laws? Do you accept the consequences of what that could mean? If a fire or other crowd-scaring event started while the kids were doing their dance, many lives could have been lost by the fucking trample that would have occurred because of these dumbass kids.
Would you have preferred the cops physically tackling the kids, cuffing them and dragging them off? Maybe hitting them with the baton to break up the blockade they essentially set up?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
People who decide to block an exit to perform some dance then refuse to move when police give a lawful order should be arrested.
Rigorous Scholarship
You know how to make that situation even worse? Start spraying an aerosol that causes extreme pain and blindness. Pepper spray is not a laser beam, and it will effect everyone in a closed environment.
That's how you take an annoying situation and turn it into a riot.
That's how the school resource officer at my high school handled things. That's how they are trained to respond in disciplinary situations. The teachers and principals know the kids, have experience disciplining them and can get the situation under control without violence.
The cop shouldn't have used pepper spray. He should be punished for that.
But those kids needed to be arrested. They stood wide enough to block the whole fucking exit, multiple rows deep, and refused to move. I wonder this this would have gotten the same play if the cops dragged a couple of the dancers to the ground and cuffed them.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
However, a group of people blocking an exit after a sports match, refusing to disperse, shouting loudly in a foreign language and making aggressive gestures (along with facial expressions) looks very much like a group of drunk, pissed off fans about to beat the crap out of someone for losing the match, if you have no idea what a "haka" is. Depending on where you've pulled duty for sports matches, fan brawls could be something you see fairly frequently.
Given that you may have a window of 5-10 seconds between the first taunt and a full-scale brawl erupting, there are a lot of ways for this to go wrong - both if you decide to hold back and misjudge the aggression, or if you decide to stop it before it escalates and misjudge the aggression.
Yes, but force isn't a replacement for arrest. It is only supposed to be used to prevent injuries.
Granted, pepper-spray is not the smartest move in such a situation.
Rigorous Scholarship