looks like an updated version of that scene from Dr. Zhivago where the Tsars Dragoons charge the workers protest.

Or maybe the William Pettus bridge

It is an army bred for one purpose, to destroy the race of men!

No, they eat and drink, Sam. The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures.

(source: Tony Webster's photostream)

This is what we get in a post-9/11 America. How we change it, I have no idea.

It ramped up after 9/11 yes, but it's also that a lot of people are paying more attention generally now.

I was at a peace rally against the first Gulf War in Chicago -- it was some small peace group that a friend and I only knew about because her father was a member. About 100, maybe 125 people tops, with a plan to march down one small sidestreet and then up Michigan Ave on the sidewalks. Really, this was the tamest crowd -- people who wouldn't even litter, for pete's sake.

The cops were out in full riot gear, facemasks down (plus mounted cops), and there were well over 50 of them. As we moved down Mich. Ave, they'd formed a sort of side-by-side cordon that kept moving with us so they'd always be between us and the plate glass window displays of Field's and Carson Pirie Scott's.

Whoops, just realized this was an awfully long comment to make a short point, but this overreaction to protest has been building a long time.

On the other hand, one thing that interested me about the DNC -- I was mostly following PUMA and 18 Million Voices but some other protest groups too -- and they seemed to just bypass the protester cage and Nazgul gauntlets there by doing their own thing elsewhere, with permits (for parades, park space), and really revving up the media contacts to get them some press.

Which seemed to work really well, since a big part of the point of protests is to get attention anyway. The photos I saw of the protest cage made it look pretty deserted.

The cages were an end-run around the 1st Amendment, if the new media-focused protests are the end-run around the end-run, then I'm all for it.

I've got me some scary, end of the world photos from the 2002-2003 protests. Here's the thing, the cops are pretty scared themselves. Many of them are sympathetic to our cause. And part of the work is protecting the protesters from anti-protesters--believe me, I ran into a fair number of them myself.

My view of this softened after I talked to some of the police folk. Some were genuinely frightened of me and it probably has to do with their [lack of] training. I remember vividly one officer who cordoned me off. I reached for something in my bag (forget what) and their eyes got big and they clenched their baton. As I started talking to this person, we both calmed down.

Another time, I was singled out by a group of cops because I "fit a description" and they searched me pretty thoroughly. I was angry and very confrontational at first, but after a little chit-chat I found out that there were some people vandalizing and harassing people. I used to remember their names, and they even let me take pictures with them. Not at all the horrible people I wanted to make them out to be.

There really are some crazy people who like to take advantage of protest situations, I've seen some throwing stuff and harassing people with my own eyes. One burly counter-demonstrator accosted an elderly woman and screamed in her ear with a megaphone.

I have mixed feelings about this "police state" and the attempts to make it seem like the worse thing ever. Yeah, it sucks. But I do find that as demonstrators we often make ourselves more adversarial and confrontational than we have to, that most of the police are just as scared of us, and there are some people who would probably cause demonstrators harm if there were no police. And also, the police could probably use more training.

this oversimplification of reality seldom helps.

Who becomes a police officer, and why? What are their lives like, on and off the job? As a professor's daughter and erstwhile professor myself, I have virtually no idea. The only contact I've had has been with a guy who went back to school for a computer science degree (full-time student and full-time cop simultaneously, how's that for a motivated student). His comment, when I asked him about his work - "I'm tired of ruining people's lives for a living."

At the Washington D.C. anti-war demonstration in 2003 (? late 2002?) the cops seemed to be about halfway on our side, in a quiet way. Yes, they looked intimidating, especially on horseback. That's what "state monopoly of violence" is about. The more intimidating you look, the less likely you'll actually have to hit someone.

Supposedly that's the origin of the Scottish bagpipes, one of my favorite (outdoor) instruments.

Policy not party!

You can volunteer throughout the country to be a trained obsever of the police by going to a local chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild. Just being there can help curb police excesses.

From my own limited experience, it seems that regardless of who they are or why they joined the force, police need reminding of law and of civil rights. You put on riot gear and it's all too easy to see anyone as a potential threat.

I think a lot of police forces were affected by what happened in Seattle for the WTO, a lot of which was chalked up to poor police training and a lack of preparedness. So now everyone probably overtrains and prepares because they don't want to be the Department accused of losing control of their city. A lot of this really is just old-fashioned ass covering by the police.

But politicians, IMO, use this to their advantage in quelling dissent. Look at what Bush has been able to do in terms of getting the USSS to police his crowds for him. If the USSS had their way, the President would be wrapped in bubble wrap, locked away in the safest room in the WH and never leave. Not because they care about protestors or politics, but because they don't want to have to testify at Congressional hearings about how they let the President get murdered. The brakes on this kind of thing usually come from the politicians who need access to crowds, et al, as politicians. The problem is that politicians seem less and less interested in applying those brakes. They've become so obsessed with media appearances and the absence of any apparent dissent that they're only too happy to have people hauled off for wearing a t-shirt (this is no longer, IMO, just a Republican phenomenon, I fully expect Obama to do the same thing). And the police are happy to do the hauling because that's one less person who might make them look bad by pulling something.

This gets back to the media. If the media reported these incidents not as "crazy nut interrupts President" but as "President is so weak he can't have even one person in the room who disagrees with him", the politicians would change on this real quick. And when they changed, the police would change.

While individual police abuses should absolutely be pointed out and dealt with, focusing on the police as the cause of the problem takes accountability away from those who are really the cause - our political leaders. Which, of course, is exactly what they want. Don't focus your attention on the CEO, focus it on the worker next to you.

That they are showing concern for the safety of the horses?

The comments here are condescending and offensive in their ignorance. The "tired of ruining people's lives" sentiment seems to be ingrained in everyone's mentality.

Where do you go when you don't have any political home anymore?

if this were a question of supporting the FOP or salary and benefits it would be one thing, but this is really bad, just like those pictures from Abu Ghraib were bad.

Who becomes a police officer, and why? What are their lives like, on and off the job?

Somebody looking for a good job.
Somebody looking for a job with security and benefits -- when was the last time you heard of thousands of cops being laid off? And even if today's cops aren't mostly union members, a lot still are -- and the union benefit that created the 'cop shop' is still a part of the life.
Yeah, it's a life; you don't have to let it become a lifestyle. It's a job. You have to have a certain attitude to survive the first year.
If you're so inclined anyway it'll make you the mother of all cynics. If not ... you can hold up to anything, after you make it through that first year.
Somebody looking for a job that helps fellow citizens.

Most of the people who apply don't expect the job to involve some of the things it does.

Burning bodies in mangled wrecked automobiles are a hard thing to see; you don't forget them. You don't forget having to help remove them -- they fall apart in your hands, sometimes. I've known it to turn people into vegetarians, because the aerosolized grease is a smell that never quite leaves you, and a barbecue can remind you of it when you least expect it. You'll throw up, sometimes.

Stopping speeders isn't the fun and games Spike TV makes it look like. You never know what else might be on the driver's mind, or in the driver's lap. Maybe they're trying to get somebody to the hospital. Maybe they're trying to get away from somebody they're scared will kill them. Maybe they're high. Maybe they're just rabid. Maybe they just robbed a liquor store or a bank and they're running. You just never know.

It does things to how you look at the world. You have a hard time trusting people -- and an easy time reacting without thinking, because you spend your academy time and your rookie year learning to do that. If you make it through.

You'll get spat on, peed on, barfed on. You'll get called to help some little old lady get her cat out of a tree, or try to make her neighbor's garage-apartment renter turn the music down at 4 a.m. You'll get cussed, you'll get swung at, you might get shot or knifed or have some nimrod try to run you down with a truck, on any given day.
Out on the street you'll freeze or roast; people will sneer at you, call you names, spit at you, swear at you, slam their doors in your face, slam their doors on your hands, throw up all over you; your supervisor will gig you if a button's undone on your shirt when you finish cleaning up a five-car wreck. You will meet every single too-high-to-walk-home doper, every drunk driver, every smart-aleck big-mouth you can imagine, and that'll just be the first week. You'll run into prostitutes who are 15 and look 40. You'll get called to kick in the doors because hourly-rented hotel room 'guests' neither answered the phone nor paid the next hour's rent -- and you'll find 'em OD'd on the bed or under it, if you don't find 'em beaten or knifed or shot to doll rags. People will want to try to take you just 'cause you're in the uniform.

Little kids' parents will point at you and say, "That cop'll get you if you don't behave."

Yeah. You gotta have some ego, to do the job.

And that's all on the days when the air conditioner in the car isn't busted and your vehicle doesn't need maintenance the department can't afford, and the computers aren't down and the coffee in the communal drip-maker isn't nine days old and thicker than oatmeal; you know why cops eat donuts? Burritos take too long, and drip on your clothes.

Cops are people too. At least these guys are looking out for their horses' eyes as well as their own. That's some progress.

Oh, and you know, I don't see a single cop in any of those photos tasering anybody, or macing anybody, or shooting anybody, or using teargas or busting heads with a baton. I don't see any K-9s, either. No firehoses.

So you know, it can look scary.

Or it can look like a show.

Or they can all be like those three guys in the picture where the middle guy's got on the bandolier: all dressed up, wishing to hell they were home watching this stupid mess on TV, or better yet the ballgame -- cause when they got tired of it then, they could change the channel, or go to bed. Now they gotta get back to the station and put up all the gear, once the crowd's finished trickling away.

... which I didn't do when I posted -- I reacted to the extremely powerful image.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

and I watched NOW tonight, with the woman from "Democracy NOW" who got busted.

I do not think the reporters, photogs and videographers were being picked up accidentally. I don't.

But as somebody upthread pointed out, once the politicos change their stance on suppressing dissent (when the hell did this country have a referendum approving a free speech cage, by the by? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over?) because enough voices -- and my friends, we don't have a main$tream media we can trust, so we must be the agents of change and become a media that cannot be ignored -- shouted "What are you afraid of? Come out, coward!" at enough 'closed venues' (it took a long damn time in the sixties to make the demand for voting rights heard), the cops'll quit seeing every citizen as a target / potential terrorist too.

We gotta get the damn fearmongers out of the way.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

I think we're in agreement, just thought I'd paste a few links I saw today as the media reports are making their way out.

MinnPost -- AP reporter

You probably saw this (Goodman's producer arrest) youtube

(I see you there with your credentials and camera)