And to think that you guys pay to be there. Imagine loading yourself with massive student debt for a place that stocks up on weapons as if its at war with you.
They are right. I can't wrap my head around it.
I am glad my biggest worries as a student were if I wasn't failing any classes and not how many weapons the university was buying to control the student body.
Hey Jones! If you fail one more test, I'll have you taken out the back and shot!
I'm an Indiana University alum and my dad was a professor there. During the protests there, they had a fucking sniper on the roof. The protests were in a park next to the student union which had been used for protests since the Vietnam War. I was there in middle school in a shanty that was protesting the 1990s Gulf War. Now the new semester has started and there's a chain link fence around the whole thing.
The president just got a raise.
Makes me fucking sick.
Here's the sniper:
I used to climb up to that roof where that sniper is with friends when I was in high school to smoke weed, so that was a trip to see.
I agree it's insane what they do, but the sniper is needed with the direction we've gone. The sniper is there in case someone with a gun comes to kill protesters, not to kill protesters or they would have done it by now. They really are there for everyone's safety. Now the guys on the ground who attack people or the guys firing pepper rounds/spray at protesters, they're the ones we should be complaining about. The ones who are actually applying violence to protesters. The sniper may appear worse if you aren't paying attention, but they've yet to actually shoot anyone, while protesters have been assaulted.
Nonsense. The sniper is part of the same police force as the one attacking protesters.
Which side did the cops take when protesters in New York were attacked?
They are a part of the same police force. I'm not saying they're good people. I'm saying this role is not one doing harm, and is actually useful until we get our shooting issue under control. You'll see the same snipers at sporting events and anywhere else with a large gathering. They're obviously not there for the protesters, but in case someone decides to do something to start killing others.
Why has there never been a sniper there before then? There's a huge festival every year in that park with a huge number of students and non-students, including a lot of teenagers, with live bands playing on more than one stage. Never a sniper.
European here. "Pepper munitions" aren't military weaponry as they're banned for use in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention. This all reads like riot control stuff. The only weird thing is that american universities have their own police departments.
Private railroad companies also have their own police departments.
Does that actually count as a police department or is that more like a private security company and they have to call the real police if anything happens?
It's a real police department, The United States postal service also has their own police department.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Police_Department
Weird.
Yeah, the idea of "train police" is actually perfectly sensible since it's specialized and both the criminals and victims will be constantly transiting between jurisdictions. The fact that they're actually owned by the railroads is a creepy legacy of the original gilded age plutocracy. I first learned about this when I saw the BNSF cops driving around Fort Worth with "Police" on the door instead of "Security" like I would have expected.
Neither are the bean back rounds and launchers
But yeah, this was a shock for me a few years after I graduated. My school made a big deal of “Campus Security” becoming spcertified as a police force “University Police”, but the only reason they ever gave was so they could carry guns.
I’m not denying there may be a gun threat occasionally, but this was in a small university town, not near any cities. This was as safe a place as you could expect, and I’m sure almost all their calls were kids binging on new intoxicants, and kids fumbling through dating and relationships
"to escalate its warfare on its students"
Yep, my mind doesn't understand this phrase at all.
The french gendarmerie recently received a new vehicle, it's a tank equipped with a machine gun and 40mm grenade launcher. They're deployed in our colony, Caledonia, to enforce an apartheid. They were also used against ecology protesters recently. Last year, a racist cop murdering a kip sparked revolts, anti-terorism units were deployed and shot kids with 12 gauge shotguns. It's not just america, the rich and powerful are at war with the people everywhere.
It’s not just america, the rich and powerful are at war with the people everywhere.
The timing is so weird to me. Like they've been amassing riches and power for decades...why did they decide to escalate the conflict now? Do they really believe that a revolution is coming or something? They are continually winning a bloodless propaganda battle to keep accumulating wealth and let everyone else starve, yet they keep escalating things. It's bizarre to behold.
The inequality is worse than it has been in over a century, people are living closer to the edge than ever, employers are taking the piss at this point, and climate change is beginning to sting. All this is to say that it's not just the workers feeling the pinch - it's the petite bourgeoisie too. That scares capital enough to arm themselves more, but not enough to start making concessions.
"American universities turn into concentration camps" was not on my bingo card for 2024.
Not American so not up to speed on what’s going on…
Are these students that are protesting doing it with tanks, machine guns, grenades, planes? Are they being at all non-peaceful? Has anyone been killed?
Aren’t they protesting about the arms supplied to Israel and being used against Gazans?
You don't understand, they have signs. Signs. And they shout. Better buy some bear spray.
Oh my fucking god, are they impeding someone’s income? The monsters!
Insanity
PR rules the world. Can’t allow free speech and protest if it might draw attention.
Better to show overwhelming military force on domestic college students at the first sign of protest. Keep it from spreading.
UC Merced annual training required only 7 rounds, while UC San Francisco used 7000 and UC Santa Barbara used 9000 🤔
Shoutout to UC Davis for having the only police department on the list who "did not use any military equipment during this timeframe".
For some reason the linked PDF varies from the screenshot in several ways, though most of the numbers are the same. (UC Riverside's number of rounds of .556-range ammunition used in training is 3000 in the screenshot but 6000 in the PDF now.)
I was curious how much this launcher costs:
... over here I see this glorified paintball gun is normally $2400 but currently on sale for just $1850.
Fucking excuse me?
Do we think part of why this is happening is because Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are in bed with academia
When the university buys an f35 we can talk about it, this is small arms.
9 what????
All protests should be armed protests.
LRAD is some fucked up shit, btw. (Part of the large family of sonic weapons)
An LRAD can thus emit a targeted "beam" of sound at very high volume, up to 160 dB at one meter from the device. This is louder than standing behind a jet engine taking off, or a nearby gunshot.[2]
Guess campus protests require AR-15s now. If the cops don't like it they're free to cut the shit.
What do they need grenade launchers for???
With a weird mind you could excuse single target weapons, but grenades? Do you want want to free some seats early?
Grenade launcher make excellent multi-purpose payload delivery systems. You can put bean bags in them for direct firing, and pepper "spray" or tear-gas canisters for indirect engagements.
By the way for those that think they're gonna use actual grenades on children, they're just foam "fordy mike mikes" (40mm) that are designed to fit in a grenade launcher. Pepper balls are similar to pepper spray (but iirc it's a bit stronger)
doesn't make it better lol
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