>>>Should I infer that you approve of unidentified and unidentifiable riot police controlling protest demonstrations?
This seems to be the typical response to the idea of police controlling unruly crowds this week.
I do not expect the cops are able to predetermine the instant when an excited crowd of protestors will become an angry mob. I think the past week, if nothing, has shown such crowds are volatile.
As a result, I do think it is sometimes necessary to control unruly mobs even though some will call it protesting, which I agree is a fundamental right. It is not, however, a fundamental right that protestors be allowed to destroy property and loot stores, etc., as they spin out of control. Like shouting fire in a crowded theater, such rights are subservient to commonsense regulation (which, of course, comes without codification and hence has some variability about it).
In the case of Lafayette Park, the people involved may have had good intentions the day after the fire, but they were told to disperse by authorities and refused to do it. This, by any rational analysis, is not a decision the crowd gets to make: If authorities say, "We need you out of here" and you refuse to respond, then you might find yourself coughing and choking a little on standard crowd control agents used to force a dispersal.
It isn't cops getting out of hand. It isn't contrary to one's constitutional protections. It is just something that needed to happen. The crowd was positioned close enough to the White House that a small crowd is manageable, but a larger crowd, as this was, could pose a threat. So, it was entirely appropriate to clear the people out of that park.
I think it is a falsely predicated argument. They had no permit to protest in that park, an effort was made to accommodate them the previous night and it resulted in a couple of structure fires of a 200 year old historic structure, so it was reasonable in the circumstances to protect the space.
If you are talking about a different area then I can give my view on it instead. But in the last week, cops should have had extremely broad authority to intervene in behavior that might be protesting or might be criminal, if it is difficult to discern. |
