Police are going to ridiculous extremes in attempts to justify using violence against protesters
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday June 09, 2020 · 10:25 AM CDT
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/9/1951744/-Police-are-going-to-ridiculous-extremes-in-attempts-to-justify-using-violence-against-protesters
On Monday evening, the commissioner of the New York Police Department, Dermot Shea, put out a call urging New Yorkers to be vigilant against a dire threat. Warning that the NYPD had found “concrete disguised as ice cream at George Floyd protests,” Shea urged the public to report to detectives if they knew anything about this dire plot. This followed an earlier police alert saying that police had found cups “filled with cement and made to look like chocolate chip ice cream” in the area of protests.
The only thing wrong with this story is … everything. First, the cups are not ice cream cups. They’re clearly small espresso cups. Second, there’s no attempt to disguise the contents as anything other than concrete that looks like concrete. Third, the side of each cup is marked with the percentage of different materials used in making the concrete. Because these cups were clearly created by construction workers testing out concrete mixes for use in a building or pavement, quite likely at the building where they were found.
But this attempt to convince the public that protesters are—secretly, secretly—threatening violence is far from the most ridiculous example of police attempts to justify treating peaceful protesters like a deadly threat.
If you’re going to justify all those tanks, body armor, and storm trooper helmets, it certainly helps to have a threat—even a make believe threat. And lots of make-believe crimes. Crimes like the one in this other NY Post story where a broken window was reported as: “Looters broke into a Soho Rolex store during rioting and stole $2.4 million worth of watches, police sources said Monday.” A statement that is backed up by a repeat: “’The Rolex store is empty,’ a police source said. ‘They stole like $2.4 million in Rolexes.’”
What was actually stolen? Nothing. A couple of windows were broken. That was it. But why should the Post report that boring truth when the NYPD was happy to join them in a much more exciting story of million-dollar looters?
Keeping the public on edge and convinced that protesters are violent and threatening is a demanding task, but police on both coasts have shown that they’re up for the challenge. In Seattle, there was the dastardly case of the “improvised explosives” reported by the police department there. Explosives that were clearly … smashed candles.
At about 7:30 p.m. demonstrators outside the East Precinct began moving barricades at 11th and Pine despite multiple requests from police to stop. Individuals began throwing rocks/bottles/and explosives at officers. Several officers injured due to improvised explosives. pic.twitter.com/cbW6hWhIvy
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) June 7, 2020
Still, there might really have been injuries involved. After all, anyone tearing a candle from protesters at a vigil risks getting a burn. And across the state in Spokane, there was the case of the nefarious flower pot.
#SeeSomethingSaySomething Thanks to alert citizens, this bucket of rocks staged downtown was secured so it could not be used for violence. pic.twitter.com/oVWrVxKTgg
— Spokane Police (@SpokanePD) June 7, 2020
This “bucket of rocks staged downtown” was clearly a handful of pea gravel providing drainage in the bottom of a flower pot. But it’s good to know that no one is going to be tempted to pull out one of these thumbnail-sized bits of stone and fling it. You could put an eye out with that. If you threw one really hard. Maybe.
Flower pots. Candles. Concrete samples. These are genuinely items that merited alerts from major police departments to convince the public that protesters were planning violence. And even where there might be some cause for concern, these same departments are definitely trying to inflate the threat into something that justifies their helicopters and tanks.
Here’s Shea again with a set of items from last Friday:
These are not the tools of peaceful demonstrators.
Conversely, these ARE the tools of criminals bent on causing mayhem & hijacking what we all know is a worthwhile cause.
These items were seized from individuals arrested in the Bronx last night. pic.twitter.com/tM39bKHkjq
— Commissioner Shea (@NYPDShea) June 6, 2020
Note that Shea doesn’t say how many different people these items come from. But even setting aside the idea that someone in the Bronx might actually carry tools for use as tools, take a second to look at these four photos. This isn’t a massive collection of items—it’s the same small collection, rearranged and photographed at different angles to make it appear like a bigger collection.
All of this is so over the top that it’s almost impossible to take it seriously. Except that it is serious. This is the police repeatedly not seeking to protect the public, but inflating the threat in a manner intended to justify use of extreme violence against the public.
These over-the-top examples of fearmongering are, in their own way, as clear an illustration as any video of police violence that the current system cannot be reformed. So long as the system excuses the use of violence when police claim there is a threat, the police will make up that threat.
Even if it’s just flower pots and candles.
