> Portland has had nightly riots for over a month.
I live near Portland and have many friends and coworkers who live in the city and this isn’t true. There have been mostly peaceful protests, yes, but not nightly riots.
I’m also not clear on how that would make this acceptable or justified even if it were true.
I'm not saying the entire city is up in flames, but I've seen pretty scary pictures every night I checked of the area these two were protesting in. If a crowd of people dressed in all black is tossing stuff at police officers, I'd call that a riot.
I'm just not tremendously sympathetic to people who contribute to such an atmosphere of lawlessness and then report that their arrest wasn't entirely by the book.
What the fuck? The point is that the police officers and the feds are supposed to do things by the book. They're the law. Their job is to uphold the law, and that includes how they police things. Regardless of who is contributing to an 'atmosphere of lawlessness', that does not give them carte blanche to violate the rights of citizens. Especially not when it comes to pulling people off the streets into unmarked cars and then driving away.
Why are you so dead set on downplaying this incident? How do you even know the people in the video are actually feds if they're not announcing who they are and going through proper procedures to arrest someone? What's stopping some jackass in cosplay from pulling the same stunt?
Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately. That's not ok. Would you please fix it? Posting in the flamewar style is not cool, regardless of wrong someone else is. Personal attacks are not cool. Religious flamewar is right out.
I've deleted it for you. Please don't miss that the issue wasn't just that one comment, though. It's the pattern with your account, unfortunately.
I realize that as social and political conditions become more polarized, it gets harder to practice the intended spirit of the site, but if HN is to survive, we all have to pitch in. That's one reason the guidelines say "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "More divisive" is the trend of the world these days, and there's no way HN can expect to be immune from that.
I acknowledge my mistake, likewise your graciousness in dealing with me.
Being that the parent comment is dead I'd assume that this comment won't be publicly visible but I'd like to give a deeper commentary that could be misconstrued by some here, as well take some thought to put together so I'll send that to your HN email.
Regardless of the above, I'm chagrinned and remorseful to generate non-positive dialog here.
I live near Portland and have many friends and coworkers who live in the city and this isn’t true. There have been mostly peaceful protests, yes, but not nightly riots.
I’m also not clear on how that would make this acceptable or justified even if it were true.