6 ms·

Unidentified Federal Law Enforcement Detaining Protestors Without Explanation

77 points by growlix 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago
This is the agency that "saved" Elián González, subtlety has never been their specialty. Good to see border patrol performing their job...
ideals 6y ago
The video of this is crazy. It looks like a Hollywood movie.
- Misker 6y ago
  Do you have a link?
  - gav 6y ago
    Here's one such encounter: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 What rights do you have resisting being grabbed from the street by somebody who isn't identifying themselves as law enforcement? They just have a "police" patch, they could be cosplayers.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mindslight 6y ago
      You most certainly have the right to defend yourself with lethal force, but good luck practically asserting that right. About the only hope for that would be citizen militias organizing to defend society against these lawless criminals. This here should be a call for the libertarian-oriented red tribe to fight back against government tyranny. Either much of the red tribe needs to break free of their propaganda bubble misleading them into thinking this totalitarian behavior is in any way American, or things are going to continue to get uglier and uglier.
      - cinquemb 6y ago
        One can be against the lockdowns in response to a public health emergency and against incidences like these… Reminds me of my response to my wife in reaction to the State Dept "pleading" for americans to come back "home"… I'm strongly in the camp of things getting worse and worse because none of the underlying issues in modern american society have been adequately addressed for a long time.
        mindslight 6y ago
        I edited that bit out because it was invoking a generalized "other" that didn't need to be. Just by sheer numbers, surely some who were protesting at state capitols are also protesting unaccountable police and institutionalized racism. More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Meanwhile this is actual tyranny that must be resisted if we are to retain our remaining freedoms. For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.
        cinquemb 6y ago
        > More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Yeah, I don't get that, but I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree. However in response to that, lockdowns (stupidly expensive) seem to just bring on more unintended negative effects while still no guarantee at all against future death from covid. Luckily for me, I moved to place where the government isn't strong enough to enforce such a lockdown (or a bunch of other things USG and individual state govs routinely get away with the relative apathy of the public) and people already have a culture of wearing masks in public. > For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism. This is nothing yet, if history is any lesson. I've long abandoned any sense of hope.
  - growlix 6y ago
    Only one I've been able to find so far: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618?s=19 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618...
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Here’s a video with 2.9M views at my time of posting.[1] It is the source video of the video linked at the @greg_doucette page.[2] Oddly, I am blocked by this user, though I have no idea who they are. How or why, I couldn’t say. I only mention the block because it prevented click-through while signed-in. [1] https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072 https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072 [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/128345258594...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Find the videos of Tianamen Square protests. Similarly plain clothed agents would swoop in and whisk away students protesting in the street.
darksaints 6y ago
This sort of thing is terrifying to me. I've read a little bit about the Stasi, and back then the whole idea behind it seemed too absurd to believe. Now we're living it. If you question or protest the status quo, you are literally putting your life in danger.
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  These people are not protestors. There were rioters who would mix in with the protestors and then start violence. Protestors don't show up dressed in all black with a helmet and baseball bat. They have also been allowed to throw bricks, molotovs, bats etc on law enforcement and people. They are destroying the peaceful protests to turn them into violence. Local law enforcement hasn't been doing anything to stop it because the mayors have been useless. That's where the feds intervene - especially because most of these people who are getting arrested are crossing state lines and therefore federal.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Local law enforcement have been arresting violent and non-violent protestors alike throughout the last few months, I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that they haven’t been.
    - blisseyGo 6y ago
      No. Local law enforcement is being handicapped by mayors and DAs who are letting go of the violent rioters free without any charges.
      - WalterGR 6y ago
        Could you provide some examples for this claim as well as your others?
blisseyGo 6y ago
What's really happening is that these rioters (not the protestors) are watched trying to instigate violence at the protests and when they leave the area, they get arrested. This is because the local government has been absolutely useless at doing their job at stopping the rioting. Start at 9:30 timestamp: https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570 https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570 People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests. https://youtu.be/ha-7SETmJD4 https://youtu.be/ha-7SETmJD4 Also they are not unidentified. They have Police on their chest. There's also a theory (can't confirm this) that these are undercover operatives being extracted as they have been infiltrated Antifa.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Fta: “interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.“
  - blisseyGo 6y ago
    > who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity That's misleading. They are being recorded while they are being violent within the peaceful protests. They are being arrested when they leave because Feds don't want to disrupt the peaceful protests - so they arrest them when they leave the area. I have watched a few videos of this happening and all of them have the person in not just all black but also with a helmet, tools to break windows and baseball bats. Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618
staplers 6y ago
As a Portland resident, I can confirm the PPB has been escalating peaceful protests in neighborhoods. A few days ago protesters (including a mother of a protester who was horrifically maimed by an impact munition to the face by feds) were attacked and teargassed outside the police union hall in a very residential neighborhood. The border patrol, DHS, and Portland Police Bureau are purposely terrorizing the citizens of Portland for political motives every single night. Portland is a lightning rod for right-wing animosity. A lot of previously passive citizens are becoming radicalized by these events (similar to wartorn countries) and it kind of feels like a foreign occupation at this point. I don't think I can ever go back to trusting police or the federal government the same way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dfraser992 6y ago
Reddit was all over that video the other day. The general consensus was that it looked more like an extraction of an undercover operative (dressed all in black! with only the eyes visible!). That seems plausible to me because of how cooperative the guy in black is, the efficiency of the whole thing, the fact that none of the other people in the area/video seemed to know who the guy was (they had to ask him his name, etc). And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing. I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists... But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I hasn’t heard of Sir Robert Peel before, thanks. Though I was aware of the general concept of policing by consent. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Peelian principales of policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
fzeroracer 6y ago
This is straight up fascistic. Regardless of your opinions of the protesters or if they committed a crime, the feds should never do this, full stop. The feds making a proper arrest should announce who they are, who they're with and why they're making the arrest. The reason being that you have no clue if they actually are the feds or not. They could just be some jackoffs wearing cosplay looking to cause trouble and this gives them explicit cover in addition to being overt violations of someone's rights. If you're one of the pro-freedom people here on HN, how could you ever rationalize this sort of thing? In what world is it ever OK for the feds to do this sort of thing? This is something both the left and the right should be able to fully agree on! I'm incredibly disappointed this got flagged, but not surprised. It is somewhat ironic though, since on HN any threads about perceived censorship gets massive amounts of votes such as when Twitter added the disclaimer to Trump's tweets. But then you have someone quite literally being abducted without cause and here come the flags and the 'it's too political' signs coming out.
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  Spot on. Another sign of the rot of America, not sure if there is any coming back.
mdoms 6y ago
This is utterly disturbing, and just as disturbing is the apparent reaction (or lack thereof) in this comment section. I know you guys have a lot to think about right now but, Americans, please understand that this is horrifying and unacceptable.
- 6nf 6y ago
  It’s horrifying that the state police keep releasing rioters without charge. It’s about time the offenders face the music.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - 6nf 6y ago
      I'm sorry I will stop
haseeb6979 6y ago
Good
matthberg 6y ago
Why was this flagged? There's another thread of this exact same article on the front page at the moment, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926
- 6nf 6y ago
  Because the headline is nonsense. The cops are not 'unidentified', they are clearly identified as federal law enforcement and they are arresting people who they believe have broken the law. They are not kidnapping random people off the street.
  - op00to 6y ago
    I didn’t see the men identify themselves in the video. Did you? Seems pretty clear cut definition of “unidentified” to not say who you are or what organization you’re with.
    - 6nf 6y ago
      It's on their uniforms
  - femiagbabiaka 6y ago
    Where is the clear identification?
    - 6nf 6y ago
      On the uniforms
  - hobs 6y ago
    The article says multiple times "They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them."
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  Because this is a forum made up of primarily right wing users.

77 points by growlix 6y ago

This is the agency that "saved" Elián González, subtlety has never been their specialty. Good to see border patrol performing their job...

ideals 6y ago

The video of this is crazy. It looks like a Hollywood movie.

Misker 6y ago
Do you have a link?
- gav 6y ago
  Here's one such encounter: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 What rights do you have resisting being grabbed from the street by somebody who isn't identifying themselves as law enforcement? They just have a "police" patch, they could be cosplayers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindslight 6y ago
    You most certainly have the right to defend yourself with lethal force, but good luck practically asserting that right. About the only hope for that would be citizen militias organizing to defend society against these lawless criminals. This here should be a call for the libertarian-oriented red tribe to fight back against government tyranny. Either much of the red tribe needs to break free of their propaganda bubble misleading them into thinking this totalitarian behavior is in any way American, or things are going to continue to get uglier and uglier.
    - cinquemb 6y ago
      One can be against the lockdowns in response to a public health emergency and against incidences like these… Reminds me of my response to my wife in reaction to the State Dept "pleading" for americans to come back "home"… I'm strongly in the camp of things getting worse and worse because none of the underlying issues in modern american society have been adequately addressed for a long time.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        I edited that bit out because it was invoking a generalized "other" that didn't need to be. Just by sheer numbers, surely some who were protesting at state capitols are also protesting unaccountable police and institutionalized racism. More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Meanwhile this is actual tyranny that must be resisted if we are to retain our remaining freedoms. For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.
        cinquemb 6y ago
        > More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Yeah, I don't get that, but I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree. However in response to that, lockdowns (stupidly expensive) seem to just bring on more unintended negative effects while still no guarantee at all against future death from covid. Luckily for me, I moved to place where the government isn't strong enough to enforce such a lockdown (or a bunch of other things USG and individual state govs routinely get away with the relative apathy of the public) and people already have a culture of wearing masks in public. > For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism. This is nothing yet, if history is any lesson. I've long abandoned any sense of hope.
- growlix 6y ago
  Only one I've been able to find so far: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618?s=19 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618...
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Here’s a video with 2.9M views at my time of posting.[1] It is the source video of the video linked at the @greg_doucette page.[2] Oddly, I am blocked by this user, though I have no idea who they are. How or why, I couldn’t say. I only mention the block because it prevented click-through while signed-in. [1] https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072 https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072 [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/128345258594...
heavyset_go 6y ago
Find the videos of Tianamen Square protests. Similarly plain clothed agents would swoop in and whisk away students protesting in the street.

darksaints 6y ago

This sort of thing is terrifying to me. I've read a little bit about the Stasi, and back then the whole idea behind it seemed too absurd to believe. Now we're living it. If you question or protest the status quo, you are literally putting your life in danger.

blisseyGo 6y ago
These people are not protestors. There were rioters who would mix in with the protestors and then start violence. Protestors don't show up dressed in all black with a helmet and baseball bat. They have also been allowed to throw bricks, molotovs, bats etc on law enforcement and people. They are destroying the peaceful protests to turn them into violence. Local law enforcement hasn't been doing anything to stop it because the mayors have been useless. That's where the feds intervene - especially because most of these people who are getting arrested are crossing state lines and therefore federal.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Local law enforcement have been arresting violent and non-violent protestors alike throughout the last few months, I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that they haven’t been.
  - blisseyGo 6y ago
    No. Local law enforcement is being handicapped by mayors and DAs who are letting go of the violent rioters free without any charges.
    - WalterGR 6y ago
      Could you provide some examples for this claim as well as your others?

blisseyGo 6y ago

What's really happening is that these rioters (not the protestors) are watched trying to instigate violence at the protests and when they leave the area, they get arrested. This is because the local government has been absolutely useless at doing their job at stopping the rioting. Start at 9:30 timestamp: https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570 https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570 People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests. https://youtu.be/ha-7SETmJD4 https://youtu.be/ha-7SETmJD4 Also they are not unidentified. They have Police on their chest. There's also a theory (can't confirm this) that these are undercover operatives being extracted as they have been infiltrated Antifa.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ModernMech 6y ago
Fta: “interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.“
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  > who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity That's misleading. They are being recorded while they are being violent within the peaceful protests. They are being arrested when they leave because Feds don't want to disrupt the peaceful protests - so they arrest them when they leave the area. I have watched a few videos of this happening and all of them have the person in not just all black but also with a helmet, tools to break windows and baseball bats. Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618

staplers 6y ago

As a Portland resident, I can confirm the PPB has been escalating peaceful protests in neighborhoods. A few days ago protesters (including a mother of a protester who was horrifically maimed by an impact munition to the face by feds) were attacked and teargassed outside the police union hall in a very residential neighborhood. The border patrol, DHS, and Portland Police Bureau are purposely terrorizing the citizens of Portland for political motives every single night. Portland is a lightning rod for right-wing animosity. A lot of previously passive citizens are becoming radicalized by these events (similar to wartorn countries) and it kind of feels like a foreign occupation at this point. I don't think I can ever go back to trusting police or the federal government the same way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dfraser992 6y ago

Reddit was all over that video the other day. The general consensus was that it looked more like an extraction of an undercover operative (dressed all in black! with only the eyes visible!). That seems plausible to me because of how cooperative the guy in black is, the efficiency of the whole thing, the fact that none of the other people in the area/video seemed to know who the guy was (they had to ask him his name, etc). And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing. I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists... But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I hasn’t heard of Sir Robert Peel before, thanks. Though I was aware of the general concept of policing by consent. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Peelian principales of policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.

fzeroracer 6y ago

This is straight up fascistic. Regardless of your opinions of the protesters or if they committed a crime, the feds should never do this, full stop. The feds making a proper arrest should announce who they are, who they're with and why they're making the arrest. The reason being that you have no clue if they actually are the feds or not. They could just be some jackoffs wearing cosplay looking to cause trouble and this gives them explicit cover in addition to being overt violations of someone's rights. If you're one of the pro-freedom people here on HN, how could you ever rationalize this sort of thing? In what world is it ever OK for the feds to do this sort of thing? This is something both the left and the right should be able to fully agree on! I'm incredibly disappointed this got flagged, but not surprised. It is somewhat ironic though, since on HN any threads about perceived censorship gets massive amounts of votes such as when Twitter added the disclaimer to Trump's tweets. But then you have someone quite literally being abducted without cause and here come the flags and the 'it's too political' signs coming out.

femiagbabiaka 6y ago
Spot on. Another sign of the rot of America, not sure if there is any coming back.

mdoms 6y ago

This is utterly disturbing, and just as disturbing is the apparent reaction (or lack thereof) in this comment section. I know you guys have a lot to think about right now but, Americans, please understand that this is horrifying and unacceptable.

6nf 6y ago
It’s horrifying that the state police keep releasing rioters without charge. It’s about time the offenders face the music.
- dang 6y ago
  Please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 6nf 6y ago
    I'm sorry I will stop

haseeb6979 6y ago

Good

matthberg 6y ago

Why was this flagged? There's another thread of this exact same article on the front page at the moment, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926

6nf 6y ago
Because the headline is nonsense. The cops are not 'unidentified', they are clearly identified as federal law enforcement and they are arresting people who they believe have broken the law. They are not kidnapping random people off the street.
- op00to 6y ago
  I didn’t see the men identify themselves in the video. Did you? Seems pretty clear cut definition of “unidentified” to not say who you are or what organization you’re with.
  - 6nf 6y ago
    It's on their uniforms
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  Where is the clear identification?
  - 6nf 6y ago
    On the uniforms
- hobs 6y ago
  The article says multiple times "They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them."
femiagbabiaka 6y ago
Because this is a forum made up of primarily right wing users.