I live near Portland and have many friends and coworkers who live in the city and this isn’t true. There have been mostly peaceful protests, yes, but not nightly riots.
I’m also not clear on how that would make this acceptable or justified even if it were true.
I'm just not tremendously sympathetic to people who contribute to such an atmosphere of lawlessness and then report that their arrest wasn't entirely by the book.
Why are you so dead set on downplaying this incident? How do you even know the people in the video are actually feds if they're not announcing who they are and going through proper procedures to arrest someone? What's stopping some jackass in cosplay from pulling the same stunt?
The ultimate answer to this is; potentially being prosecuted for kidnap and impersonating police.
Most police powers boil down to exclusive legal defences that non-police can't use.
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I realize that as social and political conditions become more polarized, it gets harder to practice the intended spirit of the site, but if HN is to survive, we all have to pitch in. That's one reason the guidelines say "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "More divisive" is the trend of the world these days, and there's no way HN can expect to be immune from that.
Being that the parent comment is dead I'd assume that this comment won't be publicly visible but I'd like to give a deeper commentary that could be misconstrued by some here, as well take some thought to put together so I'll send that to your HN email.
Regardless of the above, I'm chagrinned and remorseful to generate non-positive dialog here.
Then again, if the past 2 months of police brutality against protestors and journalists haven’t convinced you of this, then this comment probably won’t either
They kidnapped people - this guy recorded his “arrest”, unlike the people who did the kidnapping.
At no point did these people identify themselves or their agency - no names, no badge numbers.
At no point did they say what they were arresting people for.
I am genuinely curious: what is your “doubt” here? What part of this seems legal, let alone ethical?
Here's a resource on your rights if you're confronted by the police (or any agent of the government, one supposes):
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police/#ive...
I think this is practice for a national program.
Police badges have the name of the police department, and the badge number. These are clearly toys.
And if you were to say "this is reasonably interpreted as police" then you have federal agents committing a felony - pretending to be police officers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085485BKV
That's sufficient for you?
Wearing what the officers in the video are wearing - uniform with a prominent POLICE label - is sufficient to be identifying yourself as police, and would be impersonating a police officer if a member of the public did it.
US Police forces are out of control and unaccountable for their actions. We've seen reporters arrested live on the air for simply reporting on the scene.
There's plenty of evidence linking lots of police to the white nationalist movement, so lets stop pretending like they're all impartial enforcers of justice.
There's also the issue of agents provocateur. It's definitely happening and in fact having "riots" is exactly what the police want, because it gives them literal license to shut down any protest.
So just stop with the "but the riots!"
A quick search brings up the following but I'm sure there's plenty more info if one were to dig deeper: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-officials-investigate-p...
Here is a clip of a notable instance (CNN reporter and crew arrested, live): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClA57jWmQ
If this doesn't bother you, then you are beyond reasoning with.
It frustrates me to no end that things that I think should be incontrovertible are not.
The division between "left" and "right" is destroying our country and I'm desperate to try to find some way of some dialog to find common ground. I've failed consistently so far.
Edit: "political" discourse comes in different flavors -- there's the tribal/theater/personality side (where most of the ugliness lives), and there's the policy side which is entirely germane to our lives. It is the policy issue that I'm interested in.
Could we try this again with an explicit goal of finding common ground?
For example, I'm not a supporter of rioting (but there's some compelling thoughts that in some cases it effectively becomes necessary because the system has failed those involved). I throw that last part in to acknowledge that the topic of "civil unrest" is complicated and can't be reduced demonizing every instance and participant (e.g., the Boston Tea Party is celebrated in our annals of American History).
Likewise, I'm not for eliminating all policing, but I do think the current structure we have does not serve society well. You can't fix what ain't broke, and it ain't broke until it's noticed.
Thoughts?
My email is in my profile. If you'd like to explore this directly I would be thrilled. If not, I understand as well.