City sanitation workers yesterday were forced to pick through a filthy pile of property seized from Zuccotti Park including dirty hypodermic needles, moldy food and glass-littered, broken gadgets.
“I pick up garbage [for a living], and these were some of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced,’’ one worker grumbled to The Post.

As 10 unlucky Sanitation workers sorted the trash from reclaimable goods, they steered clear of a sealed pickle bucket which they suspected was filled with human waste.

majorspark;976025 wrote:I am seeing a pattern here with a certain segment of our population. Many of whom feign to care about the environment. Are they just too lazy to clean up after themselves? Or do they just expect someone else to clean up for them?

majorspark;976034 wrote:This movement is a massive fail.

majorspark;976025 wrote:I am seeing a pattern here with a certain segment of our population. Many of whom feign to care about the environment. Are they just too lazy to clean up after themselves? Or do they just expect someone else to clean up for them?

I Wear Pants;976781 wrote:It's simply young people vs old people dude.

So here's a thought experiment of sorts.
Let's say you're pulled over by the police for speeding or something, and when the officer asks to see your license, you politely say "No." He asks again, and again you refuse. So he pepper sprays you right in the eyes. Then the officer gets back into his patrol car and drives away. No ticket, no arrest, no nothing.

So what do you think: A proper use of nonlethal force? Because that's pretty much what's happening to Occupy protesters like Dorli Rainey.

No doubt it is illegal to block an intersection, and when the police issue a verbal order to disperse, that is arguably a lawful order. Failure to obey that order could result in a citation or arrest, just like refusing to show your drivers license during a traffic stop. But as long as you remain peaceful and make no effort to resist arrest, what this refusal does not justify is a physical assault.

Citizens who engage in civil disobedience do so knowing that they risk arrest; in some cases they actually welcome it. And if police and prosecutors choose to accommodate by filling our jails and our courts with peaceful protesters, that's up to them. But physically assaulting protesters for refusing to obey an order, lawful or otherwise, should not be an option for officers of the peace.

I'm not suggesting the officers' job is easy. It's not. And I freely admit that a small minority of Occupy protesters have occasionally attempted to intentionally provoke a violent response. But just because a force is "nonlethal" does not give the police the right to use it indiscriminately, as they have on several occasions against 84-year-old Rainey and many other peaceful protesters and observers.

Officers and their commanders need to remind themselves that by the SPD's own policy (.pdf), "less lethal" weapons like pepper spray are intended as "alternatives to the use of deadly force." They are not meant to be used as a convenient means of crowd dispersal. They are not intended as some sort of righteous street justice against disruptive protesters. Essentially, if the officer wouldn't otherwise shoot the person in the face, he has no business pepper spraying him.

(For anyone seeking to dismiss pepper spray as much ado about nothing, you should read Brendan's personal account of his own excruciating, ball-burning dousing outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Pepper spray, as Brendan points out, is banned for wartime use by Article I.5 of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which was ratified by the United States in 1993. And according to the ACLU, it is documented to sometimes cause permanent injuries, and even death.)

If protesters are breaking the law and refuse to desist in response to a lawful order, the police have the right to arrest them. Yes, mass arrests can be time consuming and labor intensive. And yes, calmly surrounding the protesters, cuffing them, and hauling them off one by one sure does take a long time to clear out a blocked intersection. But, you know, it's their job.

Civil disobedience can be awfully inconvenient to authorities. In fact, that's kinda the point.

But unless the police believe they have no other choice but to open fire on the crowd, then they have no right to viciously, remorselessly, and lazily resort to the use of chemical weapons against unarmed civilians.

I Wear Pants;977121 wrote:Not of the people who identify with the causes. Show me surveys filled out by the people at the events. The Tea Party gatherings are filled with old people, OWS is filled with young.

majorspark;977199 wrote:You tell me. You are the one making this age claim. And I am not just talking Tea Party and OWS. The Obama inaguration, One Nation protests, Wisconsin protests, etc. I would say that the people camping out are likely younger and have no jobs. I can tell you this if Tea Party youth had decided to Occupy the mall in DC and trashed it, brought disease, crime, and brought a bad rapport to the movement there would have been no need for the DC police push them out. I and many others would have personally thrown the punks out.

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

I Wear Pants;977124 wrote:http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/mobile/2011/11/17/spd-should-do-their-job-and-arrest-occupy-protesters-not-assault-them

I Wear Pants;977612 wrote:That response should not be "lets use a weapon that the military isn't allowed to use" first. Don't be lazy, attempt to cuff them.

Glory Days;977614 wrote:the military doesnt use them? every single soldier in the military is exposed to CS gas atleast once in their career. and the only reason it is banned in war is because its easier to ban everything instead of leaving loopholes.

and what does cuffing have to do with anything? like i said, the goal isnt too arrest several hundred people, that is not practical. its to get them out of there and restore order. arresting people is not the only solution.

Glory Days;977615 wrote:i actually get it now, i think these people are pissed they arent being arrested. they are trying to create a burden on the system by being arrested and the police arent doing that.

I Wear Pants;977224 wrote:Not only is it funny but it shows how easy it is to make a group of people all seem like crazies.

I Wear Pants;977616 wrote:That last part reads "we don't want to deal with the paper work, instead we'll just attack people with clubs, or chemical weapons, until they do what we want".

That's the only reason it's banned in war eh? Do you feel the same way about mines, cluster bombs, etc? Which by the way, we use cluster bombs because we're morons that think collateral damage doesn't generate enemies or something. Because everyone else should not use cluster bombs, not have nukes, etc. But it's cool if we do, because you know, USA USA USA.

Has the police beating and tasing and pepper spraying people ever worked to stop a protest? Or does it always just make it worse and make people think the police are assholes? (Which isn't true, although they are pawns)

I Wear Pants;977617 wrote:I mean seriously in NYC citizens who pay taxes are being asked for paperwork to walk on a sidewalk that is connected to a subway.

majorspark;977618 wrote:Then keep them coming. Be sure to include those that want the government to provide them with something.

Glory Days;977622 wrote:huh?

I Wear Pants;977626 wrote:If the only thing I said about the Tea Party was "lol rednecks"/"racists"/"lol get off my lawn" then I would be a moron, not them. Same goes for the OWS. Make arguments for corporatism, for lobbying, for endless wars, for bailouts, for unheard of inequities in income growth (not income, growth) in the last 30 or so years. If you don't believe those are good things then simply say you agree with why the people are protesting but think they do themselves a disservice by appearing dirty, doing silly "human microphone" bullshit, etc. That's where I'm at. Only thing that makes me upset about as much as the wars, bailouts, and lobbying is retarded fucking things like the "human microphone". STFU and let someone speak if they're speaking.