{"id":176286,"date":"2020-07-20T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/20\/least-surprising-news-of-the-day-2\/"},"modified":"2020-07-20T18:39:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T23:39:00","slug":"least-surprising-news-of-the-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/20\/least-surprising-news-of-the-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Least Surprising News of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><i>Pro Publica<\/i> has reviewed hundreds of videos from protests, and has spotted the obvious, that <a href=\"https:\/\/projects.propublica.org\/protest-police-tactics\/\">it&#8217;s the police who are rioting, not the protesters<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">As protests denouncing police brutality against unarmed Black people spread to thousands of cities, it was videos of police violence \u2014 this time, directed at protesters \u2014 that went viral. Clips showed officers launching <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/tear-gas-is-way-more-dangerous-than-police-let-on-especially-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic\">tear gas<\/a> canisters at protesters\u2019 heads, shooting pepper spray from moving vehicles and firing foam bullets into crowds.<\/p>\n<p>ProPublica looked at nearly 400 social media posts showing police responses to protesters and found troubling conduct by officers in at least 184 of them. In 59 videos, pepper spray and tear gas were used improperly; in a dozen others, officers used batons to strike noncombative demonstrators; and in 87 videos, officers punched, pushed and kicked retreating protesters, including a few instances in which they used an arm or knee to exert pressure on a protester\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n<p>While the weapons, tactics and circumstances varied from city to city, what we saw in one instance after another was a willingness by police to escalate confrontations.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/id4g6pm.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/id4g6pm.gif\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"150\" \/><\/a>The goal of police in protests about the police is most often to escalate so that they can respond even more violently.<\/p>\n<p>They are showing the maturity of Eric Cartman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pro Publica has reviewed hundreds of videos from protests, and has spotted the obvious, that it&#8217;s the police who are rioting, not the protesters: As protests denouncing police brutality against unarmed Black people spread to thousands of cities, it was videos of police violence \u2014 this time, directed at protesters \u2014 that went viral. Clips &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,526,590,582],"class_list":["post-176286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-evil","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-protests","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}