Occupy Wallstreet

[ap bikini team]

Don't know what happened at the campus. I know the head of security was removed because of it. That was overreach for sure. And it was pepper spray, not mace. Ask anyone that's been maced, and they'll tell you there's a difference (i.e. bleeding, chemical burns, etc). Again, I believe it's a case of where protesters are pushing police over and over and over, harassing, and only turn on the cameras to catch the retaliation.

Have you ever worked entirely too long? Too many days in a row? Too many hours? Not enough sleep? You're probably pretty damn irritable too.

I usually agree with you paul, but not really on this. You're trying to justify unlawfull actions because the cops were getting irritated and they're patience was running thin? I would love it if anytime somebody got on my nerves or pissed me off i could just whoop ass. Somebody cuts me in line, takes my parking spot? BOnG! Society doesn't work that way bro. The rules are the rules. Just cause you're a dude that can't handle his emotions and act like a proffesional doesn't justify getting out of line.
I think what you guys are missing here is, i don't give a fuck about what these people are protesting, but more about the disregaurd of basic constitutional rights

I'm not excusing their actions. I think it's wrong that they're pepper spraying assholes too. However, I can see it happening. When you get pissed off, you can go away, or walk off, or find another way to fix things. Here, they HAVE to be there, work much longer hours, stay away from families. At some point, some people will snap! Do they need to be reprimanded, suspended, or fired? Yes. But at some point, I could get that pissed off too and go off, if I wasn't allowed to leave the situation. You're only seeing one side.

Now to your 2nd point, you're seeing very isolated cases (maybe a dozen so far), all over the country, to a protest that has been going on for months, in well over a dozen cities. I think that's a pretty good rate. I believe in the right to peaceably assemble and protest. I can argue that some of these protests have been anything other than peaceful. In NYC, there are people walking around half naked, confronting police, destroying private and public property, shitting in the streets, on police cars, and the list goes on. In other cities there have been prostitution arrests, rapes and assaults within the "camps". In Oakland and SD, "Peaceful protesters" have been arrested for building Molotov cocktails, have ransacked stores, sprawled grafitti on lowly street vendor carts all in the name of the "99%". To me, that isn't peaceful. And if you are evoking your constitutional right to assemble, you also have to follow that rule. The second you aren't following the law, you lose the right to be protected by it.

This UC David case, might be a case of police brutality. They might have been peacefully sitting there, and were attacked by police. However, they might have also been forcibly blocking main arteries into buildings, causing fire hazards, threatening college students ability to get an education, or workers ability to keep their job. They were told to move several times, but still decided to link arms so people couldn't even walk by them, and stay in the way of everyone else, when they could have easily "peacefully protested" on the grass. Was it wrong to pepper spray? Possibly. However, again, you see a video of someone being sprayed, but you don't know the whole story. Neither do I.