This is a clip from Timcast's live stream which was up from about 8pm to 12:00am yesterday. Diane posted the live stream on Occupy America last night, but there's one particular highlight I want to point out as evidence that there will be no peace in Anaheim anytime soon. I've marked it at 31:25 through 32:25. It's short, but a fine example of attitudes that have no business in police uniforms.
These protests were sparked from neighborhood anger over police actions which have killed two people in just a few days, and five people since the beginning of the year. Anaheim PD has a problem, and that clip right there should tell you everything you need to know about what that problem is.
The sprinklers went on in the park/greenbelt, whatever it was. I don't know if they were on a timer or the police requested that they be turned on. As you might imagine, the people jumped out of the sprinklers and into the street with some shouts of surprise.
The officers, all of them, laughed. Belly laughed. Pointed their fingers, high-fived and laughed at the people being doused by sprinklers, humiliating them and treating them as though they were simply a side show to be ridiculed.
Those are the same people those officers are sworn to protect. They're the ones signing their damned paychecks. And not one of them had the common decency to look at them as though they were human. Not one. They laughed.
Now some people might say that laughing at them isn't as bad as shooting beanbags, pepper balls and badass rubber bullets. That may be so, but I know of nothing worse than public humiliation by those in authority. Nothing. And that is what those officers did.
As long as unrepentant cops point their fingers and laugh at citizens they've sworn to protect, there will be no truce, no peace, and those people, mostly Latino, will continue to feel marginalized, disrespected, and angry.
That's no way to protect citizens. I don't care if you think you're above them. If it's your job, you protect them, you don't laugh at them.
Shame on them. Every last one of them.
