> So they sought out a way to prevent him from doing that.

And settled on an illegal way of doing so. When they are law enforcement officers. It's hard to understand that anyone signing up to "protect and serve" would think that they are given the right to do whatever it takes as long as they think they are doing right by the greater good.

If you cannot conduct yourself in a law-abiding manner as a LEO, you deserve to go to jail.

>If you cannot conduct yourself in a law-abiding manner as a LEO, you deserve to go to jail.

And you deserve to go to jail for longer than a regular citizen should if you do it in the performance of your job. I never agreed to follow any laws, let alone enforce them -- they did.

Exactly, LEO need to be held to a higher standard not a lower one than the general populace. Yes, this might require higher pay / more training etc, but law enforcement is one of the most important government functions to get right.

"It's hard to understand that anyone signing up to "protect and serve" would think that they are given the right to do whatever it takes as long as they think they are doing right by the greater good."

You obviously do not watch American TV. This is EXACTLY what is popularized.

I do agree with your opinion, unfortunately Andy Griffith is not the norm any more.

Very true, culture is a type of information system and it depends on distribution,

so at some point the cause of alot of problems lies at corporate media production creating a positive feedback loop of shitty culture (low quality information).

The longterm solution is clear, its a waste of effort to try and put the tubepaste back into the tube.

> This guy was preventing cops from doing their jobs effectively.

Is that true? The story doesn't say that. He was standing out of the way and holding a sign, legally. How that does amount to impeding the officers? How often does seeing a random protestor on the street make you suddenly belligerent with officers, and what evidence did you read that makes you think that happened here? It seems like you're making big assumptions.

If he's impeding police, what is YouTube doing with its thousands of checkpoint videos?

> I'm not saying what they did was OK.

Good? Because it was illegal what they did. Against the law. It was not only not OK, it was bad and wrong. Doubly so because the protestor was being peaceful and legal, and also because the police are charged with representing the law and upholding it's values, and they have a responsibility to not seize property, to not escalate a situation to violence, and to tell the truth about what happened.

It's a shame if this is easy to understand and commonplace, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this.

"Easy to understand" != "Approval"

It is easy for me to understand that if I have a heart attack then my chances of dying in the next hour go way up. That does not mean I want to have a heart attack.

Understanding why problems happen is the first step in preventing them. Professing ignorance at why a problem could happen is not laudable.

Yeah, I see your point. But I would emphasise dahart's argument that we, and especially law enforcement in a democratic society, should have higher standards. Well trained and educated members of the police force shouldn't act like bullies in a high school - no matter if they think their job is important or not. Like everyone else at their job, they need to be professional. Probably more professional than most of us sitting in front of a computer.

Sure of course.

I'm just staying that if you start with "I don't understand why our law enforcement standards are currently so low!" then you're probably not going to be helpful in fixing the problem.

Gotta diagnose first. Diagnoses comes with empathy and understanding.

> Diagnoses comes with empathy and understanding.

Yes! Agreed, and the good news is we can do both, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. We can have empathy and high standards at the same time.

I would go further and say that we have to do both. Without empathy high standards are impossible.

The fact that it's easy to understand why it happens ... makes it hard to understand why police departments don't work harder to prevent it.

Not sure why the downvotes here - I'm pretty sure this mentality is spot-on among those who are willing to look the other way when things like this happen.

It's just much easier to rationalize it away than it is to stand up against injustice.

People downvote because they think that "understanding a bad thing" is the same thing as "approving of a bad thing."

It's dumb....but also an understandable facet of human nature. ;-)

No, it's because a comment like yours doesn't add anything. For one, you're factually wrong. The article called out their lack of actual success and it wasn't because of the guy watching them.

But even if that was it, it'd be like going into an article about a rape and saying "Well, he was horny. Not justifying, just explaining..." Of course the rapist was horny, and of course the police were annoyed at having their authority questioned. But offering these explanations when they aren't needed is explaining-away their crimes.

There are a lot of cultural reasons that some people commit rape and very few of them have anything to do with being horny. Those things are definitely a problem! Choosing to try to understand those reasons as a first step to fixing the problem is, I think, a pretty good idea.

Certainly it's better than throwing up your hands and saying "I don't understand how anyone could ever commit rape!"

> It's easy to see him as a trouble maker that is enabling other people to more easily break the law without punishment. So they sought out a way to prevent him from doing that.

The way they sought to prevent his protest was by breaking the law without punishment.

Running a DUI checkpoint and getting on average one minor traffic citation every two hours is what these officers consider "effective".