Police say officers were pelted with missiles and acid by demonstrators at an anti-war rally, with 24 officers requiring medical attention. Follow live.
Yep. The whole thing stinks. Cops have a nasty habit of either intentionally escalating, or at the very least, not trying to de-escalate protests and similar large scale events
The only thing that was really sad to see about this was the horses
Cops bringing animals to protests they plan to start violence in is fucked. I feel the same about the attack dogs they sometimes use too. It seems like they bring them solely as some kind of power projection, and in the case of dogs, so they can inflict serious injury without any kind of investigation stemming from it, and with the moral quandary that most people can't or won't hurt an animal
I don't condone anybody harming animals, but it seems like police have animals mainly so they can provoke people into injuring the animals and then yelling about how unfair it is the animals get injured. Also, we aren't in 17th century Britain, don't bring a fucking horse to a protest you archaic savages.
The British police still love nothing more than a mounted charge on football rioters. Or at a peaceful candlelit vigil if the protestors unhelpfully refuse to become rioters.
a liquid irritant, some of which has been identified as acid
'Acid' hardly narrows it down... Often the cops will say it's 'acid' when people throw rancid butter bottles, which obviously are designed to stink, not maim. They're trying to bullshit the public into believing that protestors are trying to give cops chemical burns. Meanwhile, the cops are using capsicum spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.
Meh, the cops kind of had it coming. Objectively poor behaviour, but maybe if the cops went in with respect and tried to de-escalate, things would've been less violent
It wasn't a peace march, the organisers called for attendees to carry out citizen's arrests on anyone they believed to be attending the convention. In 7:30's footage you can see random people who have no connection to anything happening trying to walk past and being assaulted by protestors because of how they dress. The language used by the protestors was not "we are here to protest" but instead "we are here to disrupt" so their intentions yesterday were clearly never to be peaceful. In the footage you can also see some of them deliberately and repeatedly running into the police while filming for TikTok so they can be pushed away and scream about police brutality to their viewers.
EDIT: I should make clear that I'm referring to the organisers of the event and those protestors involved in violence. From what I understand there were like 2000 - 3000 people there and clearly not all of them were causing problems.