Comment by oisdk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oisdk | Hacker News Reader

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So what's undetermined in the snopes article is whether specifically those police that detained people in portland identified themselves or not.

When I spoke about officers not identifying themselves I was talking generally, about the other cases from outside of portland, of officers obscuring their badges and not identifying themselves.

But no, that's not really what I would count as secret police. I mean I think the distinction is a little arbitrary and before long you basically get to arguing definitions which is almost always a waste of time, but I think the actions of the police in the snopes article constitute an overstep that I think qualifies as authoritarian. Especially when those agencies were sent in specifically by the executive.

Also, I should point out that the line you quoted is the one I have a problem with:

> we have no verifiable evidence to prove or disprove whether agents in those cases explained for what federal agency they worked during the arrests.

That's a very strange sentence to me: like how could you even prove such a thing? Have a video of the entirety of the person's interaction with the police?

I think if we're being reasonable here that it's overwhelmingly likely the police didn't identify themselves in this case. But of course it's not feasible to have "evidence" for that kind of thing, so I suppose I can't go ahead and say I'm sure on the point.

I think the "secret police" part is a red herring. My opinion is that the federal police were justified defending the courthouse, but were not justified hunting around for suspects in vans, unmarked or not(this is the state police's job!), but I don't think too many would agree that the federal vs state divide is what's important, which is why I didn't bring it up initially. I feel the anger against the federal agents is not rooted in principle, but the principles are used as a rationalization for removing an opposing force to the protests.

Hopefully we can agree that it's well within police prerogative to prevent rioting, serious property damage(like trying set fire to buildings), possible violence. I am definitely willing to concede that Trump is a tactless brute, and sending the federal agents in like this was far from the best strategy. We could even perhaps tentatively agree that his actual goal is to disperse the protests under the guise of preventing rioting, but again, we'd have to agree first that the rioting is there.

Which brings me back to the original post - is there protesting or violent rioting? Both. Is there secret police or not? Not really - there should be police to monitor the protests and prevent the rioting. If the state police is unwilling to do it, then the federal police may have to step in, although I'd have preferred to exhaust B through Y instead of going straight from A-Z.

> Hopefully we can agree that it's well within police prerogative to prevent rioting, serious property damage(like trying set fire to buildings), possible violence.

No, as it happens.

I mean I get I'm probably outside the Overton window for hacker news, but I think we could probably find common ground on the principle that whatever else, the police should not use deadly force to prevent vandalism. This should include rubber bullets and batons, and I believe that tear gas also is not justified to prevent vandalism.

I mean you have to understand that there are countries which don't experience the horrific brutality the US is going through right now. The police in these place isn't better because the government paid out millions to consultancy firms run by former cops, but because the role of the police is dramatically different, and almost always much smaller.

> I am definitely willing to concede that Trump is a tactless brute, and sending the federal agents in like this was far from the best strategy.

I don't like talking about Trump much in this context: the problem is far larger than him, and I think people talking about him alone are missing the point.

The problem is overly-powerful police departments and unions which have massive political power in the cities they operate. Violence is used to increase this power, which in turn increases their funding and capacity for violence.

We see this all the time with (for instance) the NYPD: their union directly threatened de Blasio's daughter, for instance. They also stopped patrolling in protest of the prosecution of their officers (famously crime dropped during this time).

The only way to stop the cycle is to cut the power.

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