“when Humvees with snipers on their roofs rolled into camp, a helicopter buzzing above them.”<p>“Officers wearing military fatigues walked through the camp with assault rifles and knives, ”<p>There were helicopters, but no snipers. Those were officers with machine guns on the Humber. And those aren’t assualt rifles but rather machine guns. Actually more powerful than assault rifles that are only semi-automatic.<p>So the author both over inflated and under inflated their description of the response. Which was way more overpowered than required for the eviction.
Here in Bloomington, IN, we are dealing with militarization of our own police department.<p>The story: 2015, Chief of Police and Mayor went in private talks about armored vehicle. Over course of time, decided on a Lenco BearCat (<a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2017/09/10/us-backed-kurdish-fighters-get-lenco-bearcat-armored-vehicles/" rel="nofollow">https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2017/09/10/us-back...</a>) . Everything was hidden from public view. No discussion was made or attempted. 2 week ago in our newspaper, announced the purchase of it.<p>After that announcement, the Police department scrambled for a Tuesday @ Noon for an "informational meeting". Chief had no information about it, options purchased, considerations of other non-military vehicles - nothing.<p>This Thursday @ 7p was the State of the City address. BLM organized and started actively protesting <i>after</i> the Mayor made remarks that this is happening and meetings can be made to explain how it's used. Protest then commenced causing the State of the City to be forcefully cancelled.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/bloomington/comments/7xvie2/bloomington_state_of_the_city_meeting_forced_to/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/bloomington/comments/7xvie2/bloomin...</a><p><a href="https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/protesters-shut-hamiltons-state-city-address-141151/" rel="nofollow">https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/protesters-shut-hamilton...</a><p>Edit: We all can talk about Standing Rock, which is a national disgrace. But the militarization of police is a front that's happening everywhere, including little towns in flyover parts of the country, and at liberal college campuses. This is our effort of trying to stem this tide - and so far the fruitlessness of trying so.
You're not living in a developed country when the police are dressed like this: <a href="https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TW_Feed-The-Flame-1_LEAD-IMAGE_WEB.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TW_Feed...</a><p>I expect combat-ready troops in places where "laws" only matter as much as the guns behind them, but I expect the US to be better than this. "SHERIFF?" A sheriff is "an elected officer in a county who is responsible for keeping the peace." I see no peace being kept here.
It’s an inflammatory title and it’s clearly purposely blown out of context. I’m not familiar with the site, but it looks to be pushing an agenda very hard, which is a shame since it appears that the article has a lot of potential otherwise.<p>Apparently bills in a dozen states that protect drivers who unintentionally (only that word is in scare quotes) hit protesters count as laws restricting protests. Other laws counted include laws for tampering with power equipment and laws that merely raised the fines for trespassing on restricted grounds.
And there's something wrong with laws that make tampering with the equipment a serious crime??? Protest, fine, but don't mess with the equipment, especially since the people messing with it are unlikely to know how to do it safely.
The façade is coming down. It took less than expected to prove the thesis that an open society would ever only be tolerated when everybody already agreed with each other.
In this case, there was a significant possibility of danger to the authorities. The protesters refused to leave voluntarily, so force had to be used. They had no way of knowing what kind of resistance they could expect, or if there were armed elements among the resistors. If you defy the lawful authority of the state, don’t complain when the state has to resort to brute force. It must be that way if we are to have the rule of law. And don’t be surprised when they choose overwhelming force over putting themselves at risk.<p>There is a right to protest, not to obstruct the lawful functioning of society. We’ve had plenty of debate, we’ve had elections, we legally decided to build this pipeline. If you want to protest, find another place, one that doesn’t physically block other people from doing what they are legally entitled to do.