Why did the Berkeley police hold back? — 29 Comments
As they say, no plan survives contact with the “enemy” and the “enemy” gets a vote. So the Black Bloc or Antifa knew the rules of engagement. How to respond effectively to criminal behaviour? Standing down and ceding the ground to criminals won’t work even in the name of “safety.”
“As if they knew” no one would stop them. The question of course is whether they did, in fact, actually know, or just made a really good guess, given the situation.
Well, I cannot think of a more effective way of guaranteeing more of this mob lawlessness. I am also confident that as this escalates there will, in fact, be injuries. I never heard of the Black Bloc, I assume that it is a relatively small organization–at the moment; although I wonder if some monster may lurk behind them. I feel certain that other Anarchists, and Provocateurs are watching and learning.
There used to be a joke that the primary function of the Police was to string the crime scene tape. Who knew that it wasn’t a joke at all?
And by the way, one prevailing rumor circulating in the netherworld (possibly soon to be popping up in memes on your lefty friends’ FB pages, as I have seen this operate as a lefty-thought conveyor belt in recent times) is that the violent, masked rioters were right-wingers seeking to make lefties look bad and/or to trigger a “fascist” response (ie, something that involves actual enforcement of the law, particularly by non-local LEOs).
On that topic, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve noticed a troubling trend in recent times, while monitoring the online cauldrons where these ideas seem to develop and grow legs. I have started seeing increasing declarations that injury inflicted to people and damage done to property are defensible when done “protesting” for what the declarant deems to be the right reasons. In the case of the hallucinatory left, this does translate to riots against the “fascist” Trump and anyone not against him*. Saner voices are still countering, but it simmers. At a certain point, as one side becomes dangerous, a lot of voices fall silent – no one wants to get hurt.
* As we have seen, people holding non-approved opinions, even years ago, can be targets of the left, as can be people who are simply not loud enough in their support of lefty thought. We have truly passed the Rubicon, folks.
When I heard about the Berkeley riot, and its aftermath and follow up, I immediately thought of one thing.
This…THIS is the reason why we have the 2nd amendment.
KRB
KRB…. Bingo. Hunting and Sport Shooting are just a vehicle to keep you proficient. “When seconds count, the Police are minutes away”
Kyndyll G,
It’s not just a rumor passing through the internet; Robert Reich said as much during a CNN interview.
KRB
John Dough,
There police were there, at Berkeley, during the riot; and that says a lot right there.
KRB
These Socialists are using the same methods the German National Socialists did in the early 1930’s. The police did nothing then either.
IIRC that did not end well.
This was a professional riot.
This anarchy was bought and paid for by George Soros… using fresh cut-outs.
Background on the professional “antifascist” ANTIFA and Black Block anarchists.
I’m in Portland, Oregon, where we’ve long had anarchists and Occupy sorts under one name or another as a permanent feature of urban life. Many even in the music or rave scenes dislike them but at the same time there’s a very strong desire here not to be “out-hipped.”
See Adbusters Magazine to get some idea of the level of discourse at play. (I subscribed for a couple of years. The graphic design is consistently fantastic.)
Among the hardcore anarchist/occupy sorts there you can achieve instant dominance by alleging that you are ex-Special Forces or a former Navy SEAL, something along those lines, and this claim can be hard to disprove. If you’re in good physical condition you don’t even have to recite your service history, as you might if you were talking to another vet.
It seems like we’re headed, as a nation, inevitably, towards 1970s-style urban terrorism, with bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, bank robberies for the cause and so on. Think Weatherman or SLA, or Europe’s Baader-Meinhof Gang and Red Army Faction. Updated with computer hacking and attempts to shut down the “evils” of ordinary life.
Get ready.
And this isn’t new in American life. It seems to flare up at intervals of about 40 years. The 1840s had their utopian settlements; the 1880s had their anarchists, culminating in Haymarket; the 1920s had Joe Hill, Sacco & Vanzetti; the 1960s and early 70s had Weatherman and the Black Panthers, many others; now we’re ready for the latest manifestation of this tendency — religious, utopian, revolutionary, however you want to define it.
It’s like the ghost or zombie version of former NYC mayor John V. Lindsay came back from the dead to take over the Berkley police.
Not long ago, but before Trump, a couple of rich, white, liberal, well dressed women of a certain age and batsh*t environmentalists here in NY, told me they what believe.
They said they have ‘learned’ (from terrorism?) that only way to get their urgent message across is to cause disruption and be willing to be arrested. Their justification is that people are too complacent and must be forced to change to ‘save the planet.’
So, I guess I agree with miklos, feels like the nation is heading for troubled times.
Well, I cannot think of a more effective way of guaranteeing more of this mob lawlessness.
Oldflyer has it right.
KRB, 100% right. Not surprisingly, here in Massachusetts they conveniently forget April 19, 1775 and its significance including the militia in the 2nd Amendment. Patriots Day is just a day to see men in 18th century costumes fire off muskets and then watch very skiny joggers run a marathon later in the day.
” I have started seeing increasing declarations that injury inflicted to people and damage done to property are defensible when done “protesting” for what the declarant deems to be the right reasons.”
For the record, “black bloc” (note lowercase) is not a group but a technique.
In the lead-up to the Nazi election triumph, Nazi (Brown Shirts) mobs fought communist mobs regularly and often.
I can see this happening here, though there are few non-conservatives willing to mob up in Berkeley and other places full of communists and “anarchists”. But here in flyover country we contemplate putting these “anarchists” down, very violently.
As to the so-called masked “anarchists”, how do we know these were not simply thugs paid to riot? Required were organization, transportation, and a dress code, maybe even the jackets themselves. That takes money.
Leftists or thugs? Probably no significant difference, actually. We have verbal Democratic thugs in the Congress, after all. They are very like rats, who get more and more aggressive the tighter the corner they are in.
Yes, the unhinged are back again. This will escalate until the unhinged pay a heavy price for their actions. Rubber bullets would be a good place to start.
parker,
How about some drones distributing skunk spray over the rioters? They will never get the smell out of their clothes and they may have to shave their heads. Starbucks won’t let them in, nor will any other store.
expat,
Nah, being shot with rubber bullets is very painful. They should experience pain and find out what its like to be in a holding cell. Let Soros pay their bail and legal fees.
Rubber bullets would be a good place to start.
Rubber bullets are not soft things that hurt a bit. They are past painful and into breaking bones territory (plenty of people have been killed by them). They have their place, but it’s not where you start.
If the Police come out hard, then the cries of “fascist” will be believed by some people. It’s what the Anarchists want, to show that the Right is taking over in a violent fashion.
If the Police let them riot until it is clear who is doing the escalating, and only pick on those that commit things that are normal crimes (arson, vandalism, theft) then it is clear who are the criminals.
I know it is easy to tell the Police their job from a safe distance, but I imagine most of them would actually love to be bludgeoning the shit out of the protesters. That they don’t do it is sometimes to their credit.
Chester Draws knows guns and their loads, does he?
It is not enough to aver that “plenty of people have been killed by them”, Chester. You gotta tell us where: in the USA? Or in Europe? No, on both counts. China? They tend to use lead. Latin America? Maduro uses rubber bullets? That’s a weak joke.
The Brits invented rubber bullets to deal with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
Actually there is a decent 2009 report on 100 rubber bullet injuries in Kashmir. A few bones were broken (cracked but not displaced (skull, patella, metacarpal), 7 in all. Abdominal wounds were not generally viscera- penetrating. Facial wounds were remarkably superficial.There were no deaths.
Most injuries were superficial, abrasions, etc. No loss of eye. http://print.ispub.com/api/0/ispub-article/10340
In other words, let’s use rubber bullets!. The punishment fits the crimes.
And Chester, the cries of “fascist” are heard from non-assaulted rioters and thousands of Leftist demonstrators. It’s what they do. Also from Leftist politicians sitting in high places. It is not a stigma anymore. Kinda like being called “deplorable”, or “fag”.
The UC police not acting was a political statement: “we won’t help people who do not have left wing political views, you have been warned”.
Only now that they’ve been scared shitless over the backlash do they have to come up with a somewhat plausible “we were just following procedures to avoid injury to innocent bystanders” excuse (hearing Milo speak about what happened, not a finger was lifted to protect of evacuate him, his own protection squad did that, and nearly failed).
“Ve vere chust following orders.”
The thing to understand about the mayhem which occured in Berkeley is that it only could have happened with the willful collaboration of the school and city authorities. When bullies get their way is is always because they serve some interest of the powers that be.
More than 25 years ago I witnessed how this worked at Harvard. Back then the most hated group was not Bretbart columnists but the leaders of the armed resistance against the communist government in Nicaragua, namely the “Contras.” This is what happened when one of them was invited to speak at the Law School. I remember standing outside Austin Hall (I think) along with an excited and evenly divided overflow crowd since the turnout had been severly underestimated. What happened inside was this: Adolfo Calero (I believe) stepped out from a backroom and to the front of the lecture hall and, before he could utter a word, a screaming demonstrator (I don’t remember if he was armed) flew down an aisle and the security guards dragged Calero out of the hall. When the demonstrator was hauled off Calero naturally wanted to return and speak but was not allowed to because of “security” reasons. How did that would-be assailant find himself in the hall when I could not get in? Someone had given him a press pass. The students who organized the event, knowing that press passes were abused by “outside” agitators, had wanted to set up their own security clearance system only to have it nixed by the school at the last moment. Thus the Law School got to suppress speech on campus without having to take the heat for doing so.
Now only some weeks later, on the other side of Harvard Square, some Contra types came to speak at the Kennedy School. There was a heavy police presence. No nonsense was permitted. There were plently of protesters but they were not allowed to disrupt the event. In every so-called “revolution” the barbarians rarely have to storm the walls. Some bigshot on the inside slips them a key to the gate.
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As they say, no plan survives contact with the “enemy” and the “enemy” gets a vote. So the Black Bloc or Antifa knew the rules of engagement. How to respond effectively to criminal behaviour? Standing down and ceding the ground to criminals won’t work even in the name of “safety.”
“As if they knew” no one would stop them. The question of course is whether they did, in fact, actually know, or just made a really good guess, given the situation.
Well, I cannot think of a more effective way of guaranteeing more of this mob lawlessness. I am also confident that as this escalates there will, in fact, be injuries. I never heard of the Black Bloc, I assume that it is a relatively small organization–at the moment; although I wonder if some monster may lurk behind them. I feel certain that other Anarchists, and Provocateurs are watching and learning.
There used to be a joke that the primary function of the Police was to string the crime scene tape. Who knew that it wasn’t a joke at all?
And by the way, one prevailing rumor circulating in the netherworld (possibly soon to be popping up in memes on your lefty friends’ FB pages, as I have seen this operate as a lefty-thought conveyor belt in recent times) is that the violent, masked rioters were right-wingers seeking to make lefties look bad and/or to trigger a “fascist” response (ie, something that involves actual enforcement of the law, particularly by non-local LEOs).
On that topic, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve noticed a troubling trend in recent times, while monitoring the online cauldrons where these ideas seem to develop and grow legs. I have started seeing increasing declarations that injury inflicted to people and damage done to property are defensible when done “protesting” for what the declarant deems to be the right reasons. In the case of the hallucinatory left, this does translate to riots against the “fascist” Trump and anyone not against him*. Saner voices are still countering, but it simmers. At a certain point, as one side becomes dangerous, a lot of voices fall silent – no one wants to get hurt.
* As we have seen, people holding non-approved opinions, even years ago, can be targets of the left, as can be people who are simply not loud enough in their support of lefty thought. We have truly passed the Rubicon, folks.
When I heard about the Berkeley riot, and its aftermath and follow up, I immediately thought of one thing.
This…THIS is the reason why we have the 2nd amendment.
KRB
KRB…. Bingo. Hunting and Sport Shooting are just a vehicle to keep you proficient. “When seconds count, the Police are minutes away”
Kyndyll G,
It’s not just a rumor passing through the internet; Robert Reich said as much during a CNN interview.
KRB
John Dough,
There police were there, at Berkeley, during the riot; and that says a lot right there.
KRB
These Socialists are using the same methods the German National Socialists did in the early 1930’s. The police did nothing then either.
IIRC that did not end well.
This was a professional riot.
This anarchy was bought and paid for by George Soros… using fresh cut-outs.
Of course they knew the rules of engagement.
And, on the evidence, they drilled in advance.
https://www.oathkeepers.org/navyjack-operation-hypo-action-report/
Background on the professional “antifascist” ANTIFA and Black Block anarchists.
I’m in Portland, Oregon, where we’ve long had anarchists and Occupy sorts under one name or another as a permanent feature of urban life. Many even in the music or rave scenes dislike them but at the same time there’s a very strong desire here not to be “out-hipped.”
See Adbusters Magazine to get some idea of the level of discourse at play. (I subscribed for a couple of years. The graphic design is consistently fantastic.)
Among the hardcore anarchist/occupy sorts there you can achieve instant dominance by alleging that you are ex-Special Forces or a former Navy SEAL, something along those lines, and this claim can be hard to disprove. If you’re in good physical condition you don’t even have to recite your service history, as you might if you were talking to another vet.
It seems like we’re headed, as a nation, inevitably, towards 1970s-style urban terrorism, with bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, bank robberies for the cause and so on. Think Weatherman or SLA, or Europe’s Baader-Meinhof Gang and Red Army Faction. Updated with computer hacking and attempts to shut down the “evils” of ordinary life.
Get ready.
And this isn’t new in American life. It seems to flare up at intervals of about 40 years. The 1840s had their utopian settlements; the 1880s had their anarchists, culminating in Haymarket; the 1920s had Joe Hill, Sacco & Vanzetti; the 1960s and early 70s had Weatherman and the Black Panthers, many others; now we’re ready for the latest manifestation of this tendency — religious, utopian, revolutionary, however you want to define it.
It’s like the ghost or zombie version of former NYC mayor John V. Lindsay came back from the dead to take over the Berkley police.
Not long ago, but before Trump, a couple of rich, white, liberal, well dressed women of a certain age and batsh*t environmentalists here in NY, told me they what believe.
They said they have ‘learned’ (from terrorism?) that only way to get their urgent message across is to cause disruption and be willing to be arrested. Their justification is that people are too complacent and must be forced to change to ‘save the planet.’
So, I guess I agree with miklos, feels like the nation is heading for troubled times.
Well, I cannot think of a more effective way of guaranteeing more of this mob lawlessness.
Oldflyer has it right.
KRB, 100% right. Not surprisingly, here in Massachusetts they conveniently forget April 19, 1775 and its significance including the militia in the 2nd Amendment. Patriots Day is just a day to see men in 18th century costumes fire off muskets and then watch very skiny joggers run a marathon later in the day.
” I have started seeing increasing declarations that injury inflicted to people and damage done to property are defensible when done “protesting” for what the declarant deems to be the right reasons.”
Yup…and right here from the center of it all:
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8757
For the record, “black bloc” (note lowercase) is not a group but a technique.
In the lead-up to the Nazi election triumph, Nazi (Brown Shirts) mobs fought communist mobs regularly and often.
I can see this happening here, though there are few non-conservatives willing to mob up in Berkeley and other places full of communists and “anarchists”. But here in flyover country we contemplate putting these “anarchists” down, very violently.
As to the so-called masked “anarchists”, how do we know these were not simply thugs paid to riot? Required were organization, transportation, and a dress code, maybe even the jackets themselves. That takes money.
Leftists or thugs? Probably no significant difference, actually. We have verbal Democratic thugs in the Congress, after all. They are very like rats, who get more and more aggressive the tighter the corner they are in.
Yes, the unhinged are back again. This will escalate until the unhinged pay a heavy price for their actions. Rubber bullets would be a good place to start.
parker,
How about some drones distributing skunk spray over the rioters? They will never get the smell out of their clothes and they may have to shave their heads. Starbucks won’t let them in, nor will any other store.
expat,
Nah, being shot with rubber bullets is very painful. They should experience pain and find out what its like to be in a holding cell. Let Soros pay their bail and legal fees.
Rubber bullets would be a good place to start.
Rubber bullets are not soft things that hurt a bit. They are past painful and into breaking bones territory (plenty of people have been killed by them). They have their place, but it’s not where you start.
If the Police come out hard, then the cries of “fascist” will be believed by some people. It’s what the Anarchists want, to show that the Right is taking over in a violent fashion.
If the Police let them riot until it is clear who is doing the escalating, and only pick on those that commit things that are normal crimes (arson, vandalism, theft) then it is clear who are the criminals.
I know it is easy to tell the Police their job from a safe distance, but I imagine most of them would actually love to be bludgeoning the shit out of the protesters. That they don’t do it is sometimes to their credit.
Chester Draws knows guns and their loads, does he?
It is not enough to aver that “plenty of people have been killed by them”, Chester. You gotta tell us where: in the USA? Or in Europe? No, on both counts. China? They tend to use lead. Latin America? Maduro uses rubber bullets? That’s a weak joke.
The Brits invented rubber bullets to deal with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
Actually there is a decent 2009 report on 100 rubber bullet injuries in Kashmir. A few bones were broken (cracked but not displaced (skull, patella, metacarpal), 7 in all. Abdominal wounds were not generally viscera- penetrating. Facial wounds were remarkably superficial.There were no deaths.
Most injuries were superficial, abrasions, etc. No loss of eye.
http://print.ispub.com/api/0/ispub-article/10340
In other words, let’s use rubber bullets!. The punishment fits the crimes.
And Chester, the cries of “fascist” are heard from non-assaulted rioters and thousands of Leftist demonstrators. It’s what they do. Also from Leftist politicians sitting in high places. It is not a stigma anymore. Kinda like being called “deplorable”, or “fag”.
The UC police not acting was a political statement: “we won’t help people who do not have left wing political views, you have been warned”.
Only now that they’ve been scared shitless over the backlash do they have to come up with a somewhat plausible “we were just following procedures to avoid injury to innocent bystanders” excuse (hearing Milo speak about what happened, not a finger was lifted to protect of evacuate him, his own protection squad did that, and nearly failed).
“Ve vere chust following orders.”
The thing to understand about the mayhem which occured in Berkeley is that it only could have happened with the willful collaboration of the school and city authorities. When bullies get their way is is always because they serve some interest of the powers that be.
More than 25 years ago I witnessed how this worked at Harvard. Back then the most hated group was not Bretbart columnists but the leaders of the armed resistance against the communist government in Nicaragua, namely the “Contras.” This is what happened when one of them was invited to speak at the Law School. I remember standing outside Austin Hall (I think) along with an excited and evenly divided overflow crowd since the turnout had been severly underestimated. What happened inside was this: Adolfo Calero (I believe) stepped out from a backroom and to the front of the lecture hall and, before he could utter a word, a screaming demonstrator (I don’t remember if he was armed) flew down an aisle and the security guards dragged Calero out of the hall. When the demonstrator was hauled off Calero naturally wanted to return and speak but was not allowed to because of “security” reasons. How did that would-be assailant find himself in the hall when I could not get in? Someone had given him a press pass. The students who organized the event, knowing that press passes were abused by “outside” agitators, had wanted to set up their own security clearance system only to have it nixed by the school at the last moment. Thus the Law School got to suppress speech on campus without having to take the heat for doing so.
Now only some weeks later, on the other side of Harvard Square, some Contra types came to speak at the Kennedy School. There was a heavy police presence. No nonsense was permitted. There were plently of protesters but they were not allowed to disrupt the event. In every so-called “revolution” the barbarians rarely have to storm the walls. Some bigshot on the inside slips them a key to the gate.