wild–mountain–thyme:

hellyeahincorrecthazbinquotes:

This is a terrible idea for a few reasons.

• Riot shields are super heavy and if you try to grab one without wearing anything to protect your hands, your fingers are gonna get crushed.
• The cops aren’t just going to let you grab their shit. Unless you have a physique like Brock Lesnar and you know how to fight somebody dressed up in full riot gear, if you try this, you are absolutely going to get your ass kicked.
• Even if you are able to knock the cop to the ground, chances are you’ll be flanked by at least two of their comrades. 

I get that the person who made this post had good intentions, and all they wanted to do was find ways to help the protesters fight back against cops, but that doesn’t make this okay. There are probably a bunch of people who have read this post and are planning on pulling this stunt at the next protest they go to. Every single one of those people will at best get beaten within an inch of their lives and thrown in jail, and at worst get beaten to death. To quote @sam_kriss on twitter: “Don’t give advice that will kill people.”

One of my worst uncles is an ex-Marine, ex-police, ex-prison guard, who since his back went out and forced him to retire sits around all day watching Hoarders and trying to terrorise the people around him into giving him “enough respect”. When I was about 14, and he thought he was detecting the signs of a “future protest attendee” in me, he got out the riot shield he still kept in the garage, stood behind it and braced himself, then challenged myself, my two brothers, and two of my cousins to try to shift him even a little bit. All five of us did our best to turn it over, break it, or kick it hard enough (three of us regularly broke boards at our taekwondo classes, which we foolishly thought might help) to budge him even a little bit. None of it worked. We failed to even get a grip on it without him immediately turning the shield into a blunt weapon to shove us off, hard enough for us to be left on our backs in the dirt. The intended lesson was “even in a group, you will never be stronger or better defended than even a very restrained riot cop, so don’t even bother going to protests”.

Of course, there are other factors in why he laid all 5 of us on the floor using only a riot shield, the biggest one (besides being a grown man and all 5 us all being teenagers or preteens) being real combat experience. You get good at fighting by getting into real fights. The cops may be ex-military or involved in prison security. If you do not regularly, seriously, physically fight people, you will not beat someone who has been in a whole bunch of real fights, especially not someone with a riot shield. Especially not with a tactic like “just lift from the bottom”. “Five cool hacks to get good at fighting cops” do not exist. What does exist is plenty of resources for recognising cop tactics, things like “earliest warning signs police are forming a kettle”, that do help you to make the best tactical retreats you can when the time comes. There are further resources - look up the most local ones possible - for supplies to have on hand and contacts to make, to survive being kettled and/or arrested, and resources for helping provide first aid in the field. They are not as sexy and cool as the idea of ending up in a viral video of someone decking a cop, but as a general rule, the less “sexy” the tactic the more likely it is to be something people are saying because it’s actually useful. Real protest advice is not likely to make you look cool! If something seems like it will bring you personal glory in a protest, it’s 99% likely just a stupid idea that will get you and others hurt, and probably being deliberately spread for that reason.

5 June 2020 + 57,196 notes