Rantlets

We have turned into a world cry babies.  Some dumb kids were protesting shit they know nothing about in any real sense of the issues.  They are repeatedly told to move as they are blocking an exit to something.  Then, one of the school police officers walks over with his huge can of pepper spray and holds it out so everyone can see what’s coming.  The kids refuse to move.  They have been given  a legal order to disperse and they failed to do so.  They got peppered sprayed.  That’s it.  No one was beaten, baton’d or otherwise abused.

It doesn’t matter what the kids were protesting.  It doesn’t matter if they right or wrong in their ideology.  It doesn’t matter if I think they are just dumb college kids.  It doesn’t matter if I am wrong about them.  The only thing that matters in this case is did the cop, Lieutenant John Pike or one of the other officers give a lawful order to  disperse.  If so, then the police were completely justified in their use of pepper spray.  End of story.

I will be the first to agree that it looks bad.  I don’t see that it looks violent in any way but I agree it really doesn’t look good at all.  But, cops have the unfortunate job of having to do ugly things every day.  Cops are a like nature.  People want to see them as some cosmic force of just and good.  They are not, they can not be and never will be. They have to uphold stupid laws written stupid moronic liberals and just flat out borderline retarded conservatives.

It is impossible to enforce any law in a peaceful and beautiful way if someone wants to resist it.  It’s always going to get ugly.  Hence they are like nature.  People have this unreal of view nature. People will look at a lioness and her cubs playing in a majestic looking all natural field and find it beautiful.  Nature at it’s best.  But, the same hypicrate will turn their head in disgust when said lioness and her cute cubs are covered in blood as they rip apart eat beautiful gazelle alive.

Do you remember the 60′s?  I was only alive for the last year of them.  So I don’t actually remember them but I do know a little about them.  I remember seeing kids protesting in college and being beaten brutally because they failed to disperse.  And, at that time, cops didn’t have much in the way of crowd control.  Things like this just weren’t expected on a school campus.  They didn’t have mace, hell I don’t even think it was invented until 1965.  I am sure it wasn’t used on the force until the very late 60′s and even though I would imagine it was only used by the larger agencies, LA, NY but most smaller city and sheriff’s departments I am sure couldn’t afford it until the mid to late 70′s.  But, my point here is.  Mace and Pepper Spray are used now as a non-lethal and non-violent solution to crowd control.

Another thing to remember is that resisting arrest in the most peaceful Gandhi of ways, is still resisting arrest.  Cops are trained in use of force tactics.  And at what level to use them.  It all starts with the cops presence and words.  Their presence and a verbal order is the first level.  Some agencies will consider putting hands those resisting and the next step.  This is considered to be grabbing, wrist locks and other simple ways to gain compliance.  The next step would be pepper spray.  If that doesn’t work now we’re talking an actual fight, fist punching, kicking, throws and so on.  If that doesn’t work than, they move on to non-lethal weapons, batons, rubber bullets, things of that nature.  When that fails, out come the guns and the problem is solved. However, the the order doesn’t have to go like that.  Cops, can skip levels if they feel the need.  And, crowd control is one of those times it’s best to skip a level.

But wait?!  Those kids were just sitting down damn it!  They were threatening anyone’s safety!  How can you justify a jump in use of force like that?

Well it’s easy actually.   There’s this thing called mob mentality.  You can take the most calm people on earth and stick them in a crowd and the vast majority of them will follow the crowd no matter what.  All it takes is for one idiot to jump off and start throwing punches and panic can and usually does ensue.  Had those cops started to grab those kids and dragged them outta there first, it’s quite possible one of them would have overreacted and started throwing punches.  If I am bent over grabbing some kid and trying to remove him.  I am now left vulnerable to the rest of the kids.  It just takes one of them to jump up and hit me.  As much as those cops have a responsibility to protecting those kids, their own personal safety is going to come first.  It’s not just the way they are trained, it’s human nature.  Pepper spray was the next logical step.  It’s non-lethal, it doesn’t leave scaring and it keeps the cops from beating the kids and the kids from beating the cops.

Can you just imagine if they had pepper spray in the 60′s?  Instead of kids that refused to follow lawful commands getting the crap beat out of them, a few shots of pepper spray and problem solved.  The world would never have had to seen photos like this…

John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, kneeling in anguish over the body of Jeffrey Miller minutes after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard.