June 12, 2020
What If Police Officers Go on Strike?
By Christopher Skeet
There is an incident, recorded on video, involving two Buffalo police officers. The video shows several officers from an Emergency Response team clearing a street. As they advance, protestor Matin Gugino approaches officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski and blocks their path. He appears to get argumentative and almost immediately makes some sort of motion toward one of the officers' duty belt and gun holster. At that point, both officers push him back and away from them.
Gugino cuts a tall, lanky figure. He stumbles backward, losing his balance, hitting his head on the pavement, where he begins to bleed. Contrary to MSNBC reports that he was "left unattended," one of the two officers immediately bends down to offer aid. His supervisor behind him taps him to keep moving forward and stays behind himself, using his radio to call for medical aid. It should be noted that from the limited footage we're allowed to see, we can garner neither the hostility nor the size of the crowd, nor what was happening immediately before or after the incident.
The video immediately went viral and led to the inevitable calls for the officers involved to be fired, imprisoned, drawn, quartered, and erased from all public record.
The video of this incident, as well as so many other videos of police responding to rioters, appears violent because it is violent. Pushing somebody is an act of violence. Arresting somebody is an act of violence. Deploying tear gas is an act of violence. The distinction that we cannot lose sight of is that these are calculated, limited acts of controlled violence deployed by professionals who have been trained to do so.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/what_if_police_officers_go_on_strike.html
