[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by greeneyedgrrl

ok... so obviously OWS is a hot topic. i posted a link on another page about the davis pepper spray incident. and my cousin who is a cop responded, along with her mom, they fully back wall street and the cops, not a surprise, but she gave me a penal code to justify the police action: PC 407

CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE

· 407 PC Unlawful assembly defined.
Whenever two or more persons assemble
together to do an unlawful act, or do a lawful
act in a violent, boisterous or tumultuous
manner, such assembly is an unlawful assembly.


the link below explains the criteria for conviction of this offense:

http://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/...2600/2686.html

after reading it... my thinking is that it still wasn't justified from what i saw because it didn't appear to be a riot, and there didn't appear to be malicious intent or intent to break the law. because my cousin is so adamantly defending the action, (i really don't know the motivation, because she refused to answer any of my questions, so i can only speculate) i'm wondering if the cops are perceiving the demonstrations as riots, illegal activity, or if it's her more conservative (and privileged) viewpoint that she's perceiving it this way, or an attempt to stick together? it sounds like other people on this thread have had similar experiences... thoughts?

I think the cops clearly mistake peaceful protestors with rioters. How they make that connection in their minds is just baffling to me. Someone staging a sit in, someone standing on a side walk or in a park with a sign, someone banging a drum and chanting is not a threat to anyone. Pepper spray is one of many non-lethal weapons that are supposed to be an alternative to using lethal force (guns for instance). But instead of using pepper spray as an alternative to using lethal force, the cops use it as a way to use force in situations that don't call for any type of force - which is totally inappropriate imho.