The imagery on this one isn’t great for law enforcement officials in St. Paul:
The first burst of pepper spray doesn’t make the police look very good, but the flower-bearing girl was at least not giving way to the police. It’s the *second* burst of pepper spray that’s gratuitous. Her back was turned, she was walking away, and someone decided to douse her again.
Given the opportunity, I would have doused her a third time. When you are told to evacuate an area for the safety of others because a crowd is becoming out of control, you should do just that.
Protesting peaceably is one thing, this is quite another.
Except that governments, more recently, have used “safety” as a reason to limit what would have previously been lawful assembly with more and more frequency. Look, there’s a line of officers in full riot gear there, and a person who, once sprayed, was moving in the desired direction. Compliance shouldn’t be met with a second spray. What would have been the trouble with walking around her and getting on with dispersing whatever crowd was causing trouble? She would probably still be standing there, holding her flower, and not bothering a soul. Instead, she got a punitive (not threat-reducing) spray.
Municipalities tend to lose bucks bigtime when they overact like this.
First off, I agree that the second spray seems entirely gratuitous. However, it appears to me that from the very start of the video the woman is holding her left hand over her nose and mouth from which I would intuit that the pepper spray had already been… uh… sprayed and so was a known issue. Have to say – if you continue on a course, knowing the consequences, then that is a decision you make and no one should be surprised or offended when the consequences pan out.
I’m assuming there is a legal difference between peaceful protest and civil disobedience? With 284 people being arrested on the first day of the RNC, it sounds like things may have gotten out of hand (property damage was mentioned in one report).
Speaking of getting out of hand, 8 people were charged with “conspiracy to commit riot in the second-degree in furtherance of terrorism.” Uh…
This article from Minneapolis TV reporter Rick Kupchella is interesting.