Also, if you're going to pick a fight with a crew in full riot gear it's best to not get cornered by them.
More to the point, the protesters seeing this video will know that surrendering to the police will probably get their arms and feet broken so next time they protest they'll do almost anything in order to not let that happen, i.e. they'll become even more violent or/and they'll come better prepared for physical confrontations (better body-gear, actual weapons).
The ones getting their limbs smashed weren't protesting, they had destroyed and broken in to property with the probable intent of causing more damage.
All of this in a setting where police is massively outnumbered while being pelted with 10 pound rocks, bottles, fire crackers and tear gas.
Giving someone a beating to incapacitate them (no time for arrest & paperwork) is fair game in my eyes.
This is a very wrong view to hold, imho. Modern political concepts like the German Rechtsstaat or the English "Rule of law" depend on the police not doing what they're seen doing in videos like this one. If the general populace feels (or even starts to feel) that the police and the powers that be play by no rules then we'll be in a world of hurt and anarchy.
Macron's body guard getting filmed (out of context) beating a protestor led to him being arrested, suspended and then demoted and profuse apologies from France's head of state.
So I think police is still being held accountable the way they should.
Of course they would say that.
You can clearly see the restaurant wasn't open by the way the sliding doors were being pushed open (0:06), and a "fermé" sign on the door (meaning "closed") at 0:16. No employees visible anywhere.
To get away from the gas, why not run down the road the camera man was chased down by the cop? No gas there, no resistance from police and much easier than breaking & entering a restaurant.
In fact if you look on a map, the location of that BK is on a roundabout with no less than 10 roads branching off it.
But yes, those are my guesses based on the information available and I may be wrong.
Here is one of the many articles that have been published, I am linking this testimony by two journalists since liberation is a reputable publication, but you'll find more articles and more witness interviews if you look around.
https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2018/12/05/la-video-des-...
Everybody present has told that the riot police just waltzed inside and starting beating people up, then let people leave but only going through a tunnel of cops beating them up some more. There are also more videos from different angles.
Assumptions are dangerous, and so are these stormtroopers.
It's still not clear why they would enter a BK (full of tear gas, according to the journalist) while at least some of the surrounding roads were free.
If they really were beating innocent bystanders then they should be punished to the full extent of the law, while at the same time I understand the violent reaction of the police after having been pelted with rocks for hours just for wearing a uniform.
I've been in these kind of protests before, you can tell well in advance that things are going to get ugly. When you have police being attacked from all sides and you intend no harm, you know it's time to gtfo because you will get caught up in the violence.
There were highschool protests today. Just look at the videos from this feed, and even with great sympathy for the police, even keeping in mind that context can be missing, I believe you'll see that we are beyond maintaining the civil peace :
https://twitter.com/Obs_Violences
I would argue that the protesters' violence (and i'm not denying there is) is a response to the state's own violence. I was still living in Paris about 2 years, when the protests were peaceful gatherings and the cops were unleashed without provocation, just to prevent people from being together. Repression and disdain form the people have grown the peaceful protests into violent protests, and now the protests are growing into an insurrection.
That's not blind rage, or an appetite for destruction : that is a democracy self-correcting when its government has consistently been too far over the line. That is standing up to the bully.
There's plenty of violence from the other side https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx8CjZv8-HA
It's actually you who is hiding behing the fact that there is a riseup email address, as if that allows you to ignore anything, and just "guess".
> There's plenty of violence from the other side
Yeah, collective punishment goes great with police brutality. Anything else?
It's also not clear why you're excusing police brutality, but you're still doing it.
> I've been in these kind of protests before, you can tell well in advance that things are going to get ugly.
That's all true, but doesn't excuse the police brutality.
> When you have police being attacked from all sides and you intend no harm, you know it's time to gtfo because you will get caught up in the violence.
Oh, so they didn't means you can deduce they "meant to cause harm", and that in turn excuses the harm we see?
No.
The comment you are replying to clearly says that unjustified police brutality should be punished at the full extent of the law.
Violence toward police, bystanders and property is never criticised. Burn down Paris! But as soon as they raise their batons everyone starts crying. If you're going to fight the state at least do it like a man.
If you're convinced France is a totalitarian state your ability to reason is probably quite limited.
Yeah, and you still leave it open whether it might be "justified", it goes on to say "When you have police being attacked from all sides and you intend no harm". Which prompted the following question you seem to avoided:
> Oh, so they didn't means you can deduce they "meant to cause harm", and that in turn excuses the harm we see?
So you think "unjustified police brutality" should be punished, (by the full extent of the law no less, how very generous and princpliped!), but you still leave this on the table:
> People getting their ass beat for trying to set fire to a McDonalds while protesting the high cost of living deserve no tears, I'm sorry.
> If you're convinced France is a totalitarian state your ability to reason is probably quite limited.
That's a total non-sequitur. Right now, you're not even up to speed on the meaning of your own comments heh, no need to insult me to distract from that. I'm not talking to France as a nation, I'm talking to you. If you think you can just handwave a bit and play sophistry games and call me stupid you're mistaken.
Or is it because "the other side" also rioted in other instances and/or previously in that scene, and you think collective punishment is a thing -- while talking about the "full extent of the law" at the same time no less?
Just by all the stuff you brought up to excuse and distract from it, by how bankrupt it is to just go "France is not a totalitarian nation, if you think that you're stupid bai" -- I would guess you know what this is.
When I saw this a few months ago
https://twitter.com/SeinUndSeid/status/1045656778342629376
which is so cute and harmless in contrast, I was called all sorts of names for saying this is totally uncalled for, unaccetable. Everybody else in that thread was super righteous about protecting the upstanding police blah blah blah. (When in fact the opposite is true, being spineless and excusing this stuff is supporting thugs, and stabbing ALL professional police in the back.)
They called it riot control, too. Self-defense, even, someone understandably snapping at their poor colleagues being so horribly mistreated by the crowd, so kicking at a guy who is already held down by 500 guys is obviously normal. Just like you, they mentioned what "the other side" was doing. NO TEARS for someone resisting arrest near an angry crowd! How principled they were, what upstanding, well educated, democratic, intelligent citizens they were, and what a little hoodlum I was for talking back.
The most hilarious plot twist there was it turned out it was civilians that stopped other civilians from throwing bottles, the police with their liberal use of pepper spray, and kicking that guy, achieved jack shit in that regard.
Anyway, the Berliner Polizei saw it more like me rather than the people who had defended the abuse. Their press release actually was amended with something about an officer "arriving and kicking at the fixated person", and started an investigation about that. It sounded serious too, they didn't use any euphemisms at all. They made no effort to call police brutality anything but that, in total contrast to the posts that had defended it.
I don't know how good or bad the French police is, but I know potential for denazification when I see it. Which has nothing to do with whole nations, but by definition with individuals and individual actions. Cops like that need to be punished period, if the law shields them, then the law needs to be changed.
The same thing is happening in the French protests: https://observers.france24.com/en/20181129-debunked-videos-y...
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/10/photos-from-catalo...
I took a look at the Atlantic link you included, and I'm not seeing any photos of bloodied protesters like the fake ones had. I don't doubt that with rubber bullets and batons flying there were some injuries, but the "fake" photos still aren't accurate depictions of them if they're from previous incidents.
This video of senseless police brutality looks in fact to be pretty real and from the latest events: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK8b4plAlJQ&feature=youtu.be . Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's lots of fake news related to the recent events but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater by saying that everything that gets shared on social networks is fake news.