The Berkeley Community should have had a chance to discuss their concerns about police tactics, and everyone should have had an opportunity for a group hug afterward because the Berkeley PD isn't so bad.
While we shouldn't tolerate police abuses of power, we wouldn't have rights without being able to call on the police to help defend them.
Constantly provoking the polices in hoping to create photo ops is uncool.
I'm sure it must be very stressful to think your every little mistake might be caught on camera. I wouldn't want to be in that position.
The City Council Meeting was where those concerns could have been mutually expressed.
In the meantime, though, the police can't just disperse the press - even the "people's press" through brute force. That's just the nature of this situation, and the police themselves set it up that way on Saturday. Now they should deal with the consequences by just doing their jobs in an upright, honest, and community-friendly manner. Just keep doing your job.
Read this article for a political rationale of looting that the police have to deal with:
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/in-defense-of-looting/
The sad thing is the poverty aspect of that article sort of has a point in Oakland. There you can only get welfare for 3 months out of the year if you are able to work, whether you have a job or not - and that welfare is a $366/month loan (where rents are far higher and skyrocketing because of gentrification), and people are expected to pay back that loan on their minimum wage sporadic jobs when they are already in a toxic stress vortex of debt, appointments, and possibly court dates. I've been to an Oakland Supervisor's Committee meeting on General Assistance welfare, and the only "reform" they talked about is for small programs that help around 16 people, when caseworkers handle caseloads of 900!!! Of course people are falling through the cracks by the hundreds, if not the thousands - and this system does extend out to Berkeley, which is in the same county. This layer of poverty has been covered up by the press in recent years as they have preferred to focus on positive job growth and statistics. So if looting can bring attention back to certain realities, here, I can see why a few windows are being smashed - especially if they are focusing on chains that hire people for minimum wage and keep people working under full time hours so they can't earn benefits.
But, ultimately, we still need the police. We still want a society where there is someone to call when roving bands of vicious criminals are out to rape and pillage. We don't want civilization to be reduced to a smoking heap of rubble.
That's why we should have held the Berkeley City Council meeting - to find a way to bring the Berkeley Police back INTO the community.
= new reply since forum marked as read