From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 21:20:07 +0800
To: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [Noise] Shopkeepers Preventing Riot Redistribution
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9609151539.A7811-0100000@netcom9>
Message-ID: <323D0FAA.330E@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Lucky Green wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Jim Ray wrote:
> Indeed it was. In a beautiful-to-me scene which Miami's WSVN Channel 7
> (our big-hair station) called "chilling," Korean-American shopkeepers,
> perched atop their building with semi-automatic firearms, kept one
> block safe while the rest of the neighborhood burned without police 
> protection.
> Upon being informed that this was a biased interpretation of
> legitimate actions by the merchants, which _I_ found heartwarming,
> they said that chilling was "just a word."
> What your TV station probably didn't report was that the police
> quickly showed up at the scene. To arrest the looters carrying
> crowbars and torches? Of course not. The cops came to arrest the
> "sniper".  --Lucky

This fascinating aspect of law enforcement described above is something 
you can test for yourself:

Probably whatever state of the U.S. you (might) live in issues you a 
driver's license, to obtain which you read a booklet and pass a test. 
Get your booklet and read everything your state mandates about defensive 
driving, particularly in maintaining a minimum safe distance from other 
vehicles, given current velocities.

Now try to practice that safety on your state freeways. You will:

1. Be severly harrassed, threatened, and possibly injured or killed 
(more-or-less deliberately) by another driver who feels it's his/her 
right (incorrectly of course) to mount your car anally, rather than 
simply go around.

2. Be harrassed by the state police for "obstructing traffic" (even 
though the other driver initiated the problem, illegally), because after 
all, the state police are told (subliminally, I guess) not to protect 
you, but rather to keep traffic moving, which is "good for business".

3. Be charged as the party at fault when another driver runs into the 
back of your car, even when you are travelling in a straight line, 
within five MPH of the speed limit, and the freeway is practically 
empty.

Needless to say, such a charge is not hard to turn around if you're 
smart and know how to write stinging letters to the insurance company, 
if not the state govt. It's just interesting as hell to see the police 
follow a different book than their (presumed) bosses, the state govt. 

Common reason would suggest that the police would view a true defensive 
driver as a "troublemaker" (some sort of anarchist, perhaps?), and want 
to get that driver back into "normal" driving mode, or off the road 
completely.

I mention this because you can't normally test police attitudes with the 
gun-firing approach, but you can with a car. If my instincts prove 
correct, however, few people who read this post will see the reason in 
it, being in the majority of aggressive neurotic drivers (just a guess).