‘They’re sending a message’: harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns
‘They’re sending a message’: harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns
More than 1,400 people have been arrested as police dismantle campus encampments – but are the tactics used too brutal?
There have been 970 US student protests related to the Israel-Gaza conflict between 7 October and 26 April, the vast majority of them peaceful, according to the latest available statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled), which tracks political violence and political demonstrations across the US and around the world.
The number of student protests related to the Israel-Gaza conflict surged in April, Acled found – as did the rate of police “interventions”, which Acled defines as police actions including arrests and physical dispersions of crowds with physical force or chemical agents. At student protests where there were no counter-demonstrators, the analysis found, “police have intervened against pro-Palestine demonstrations more than four times as often as pro-Israel demonstrations”.
The system is working as expected, want it to stop, demilitarize the police.
We should demilitarize the police, but that on its own won’t change the system. At Kent State it was the National Guard that shot and killed students.
De-police the military then, I guess?
These protests are essentially pro-humanitarian. The over all philosophy of treating innocent people with respect, dignity and empathy no matter your race, ethnicity, gender, religion, color etc should be an expectation without threat of violence and/or death. At no time is it acceptable to kill or injure innocent people/civilians. Particularly children. Maybe these protests need a rebranding to pro-humanitarian protests.
You know if they were protesting Russia's war in Ukraine, police wouldn't be deployed, and no one would have been accused of racism/antisemitism.