Update, yes there are snipers:
Cute are they cosplaying Gaza
Nah they haven’t shot any children or Journalists yet
“Yet” being the operative word.
Of course they’re not snipers.
. . .
Raises eyebrow: But what if they were?
Yeah, duh they aren’t snipers, they are police marksmen with high-powered scoped rifles, totally different.
Remember that US intelligence services speculated in using snipers to kill “Occupy Wall Street” protesters on university campuses.
FBI coordinated with banks and universities to get information on students.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
Should be treated like they are? Okay, so full outrage, comparisons to the Kent State massacre, and the administration facing reprisals and consequences for deploying snipers to intimidate, threaten, and potentially murder students.
We’re treating them like they’re snipers, Admin, you’re welcome.
Good. Update, they’re snipers.
Aye thanks for this. The first pic was up for interpretation. Also WTF?
The image may be ligit but please temper your outrage until the facts are clear.
Is that “not at all a sniper” wearing pantyhose over their head?
The fuck Ohio.
Dude looks like he’s smiling
“This is just like American Sniper. I am the American Sniper!”
If they should be treated like snipers, that means protesters should respond in kind:
Make smoke screens. Tires work best. Bicycle tire with gas will make thick black smoke making it hard for the spotter and sniper to see.
Force projection works both ways: make their advantages into disadvantages. Snipers are long range units, meaning they have to be away from what they are targeting. If you can create enough distractions they won’t be able to see the forest from the trees.
All in Minecraft, of course.
I dunno about the smoke. On top of probably seeming to be an escalation because you’d be burning stuff (I’d probably go with fog oil and a generator instead, only object is price, but, hey, tires can also get pretty expensive depending on where they’re sourced. Theater department might also have some stuff on em), but also a large amount of smoke might serve to obfuscate documentation and recording, which I would say is a pretty big priority. Keep a camera fixed on these snipers at all times, and you can tell when they’re firing and probably who’s been killed at what moment, and that’s maybe an important and large deterrent, compared to a smokescreen. I’d imagine if you were going with that and if it came to that, you’d just want to render the snipers ineffectual by other methods, which, you know, maybe your mind can wander about how you might accomplish that one, without me having to suggest a specific course of action there.
Tire smoke is generally not good to be breathing in. Better idea would be tarps.
Tire Smoke > Bullets
Tarps will produce a similarly toxic smoke.
You don’t burn the… ya know what, burn whatever you like
I’m going to burn the water station
I’m just going to leave this here
I’d rather breath tire smoke than get shot.
Make smoke screens.
Violent protest.
Force projection works both ways
Tankie
All in Minecraft, of course.
This guy is a foreign agent attempting to agitate Americans against their lawful government. Add his name to the list.
We should just send you to distract them by sucking their dicks off
I thought this was a good joke but apparently you might be saying this unironically?
Its a joke until you’re face to face with the cop who believes it sincerely.
You’re at their mercy, regardless. Sucking boot doesn’t change your outcomes.
Shoot first
Yeah, you’re putting snipers on a university aimed at the students. That’s not the behavior of a government that values personal freedoms like speech and assembly.
Free speech on college campuses means they have to pay bigots to speak and allow disruption from religious protests by non students, but students get riot cops and snipers for protesting genocide
So climb the building and eliminate the threat? How else do you deal with snipers?
In any case, the people saying this is pretty standard security for a large gathering of people are correct in it’s regularity, but I’m not particularly convinced that they’re correct in its efficacy as a practice. They’re all visible enough that they can be seen by the student body, which is either bad planning or blatant intimidation, and obviously gives up their position immediately, which is bad since they’re potentially a would-be ne’er-do-well’s greatest threat. If anyone becomes embedded in the protesting crowd, they become much less effective, if anyone takes up a tactical position, they become much less effective. If anyone starts to try to instigate violence between the protestors and police, which would probably be what any bad actor would do since it has a pretty high chance of success, they’re much reduced in their efficacy, or potentially even negative in their efficacy as it leads to an escalation of violence. If anyone has a bomb or does chemical attack, the sniper is probably too late.
Plus, from what I’ve seen of the other protests, the police already have a perimeter set up on the ground keeping track of who enters and exits, which makes sense. Snipers would probably be better served as a part of that perimeter rather than surveying the inside of the protest, since they can cover a pretty large distance, you could turn them around pretty quickly, if they did need to fire on where the protestors are actually gathered, they can screen who’s entering and exiting, and it’s overall better optics. They ould probably keep their position better concealed since there’s not a huge crowd of people looking at that side of the building (if they even made any attempt to be concealed, which should be really the bare minimum.
This doesn’t make any sense to me, even just as a kind of surface-level tactical decision. Maybe I’m missing something here, but this just seems like it’s maybe stupidity, or intimidation or something else I can’t think of.
ACAB
Those aren’t cops.
What are they?
They Snipers
Stupid answer.
ASAB?
Not if they take out the right perp
You need to have authority to be a sniper. Who has the authority for lethal law enforcement?
You need to have authority to be a sniper.
Is that even true?
Um…YES
The police don’t just pull farm boys with a crack shot every time they have a sporting event. They are fucking cops. Not only cops, but specialty cops. SWAT cunts. My homie is one - went from infantry to ranger to police to swat. Yeah - he’s a cunt, too. ACAB.
Sniping is not something you self-discover. You’re trained by a government-sanctioned organization.
Nah man when there’s a terrorist threat or some kids are getting fesity we call up those smitty brothers down on farmdale ave. I’ve seen em hit smack in the middle of grandma’s can o beans from a mile and a half away in the rain – i swears it!
All Coloured Are Bastards? Don’t you think it’s a bit racist?
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards.
Defund the dealerships!
As someone who’s worked large events and closely with police or other big wig officials, I am consistently surprised at how people are surprised about how high profile event security works.
The amount of work that goes into keeping people safe regularly is monumental. You’d also be surprised at just how much hard targets don’t get attacked when a limelight is cast on them compared to soft targets. It’s violence prevention 101 and easily the most important step.
PDF warnings:
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/whats-next-soft-target-attacks
Agreed, most of the responses here are ridiculous.
They bring snipers out anytime there’s a big event or a major public figure. Michelle Obama visited the University of Akron when I was going there, they had snipers all over the place.
They’re not bringing out snipers for some kind of perverted crowd control. It’s almost definitely so if someone shows up with a gun and starts firing into the crowd all the protestors don’t get shot.
Yeah, I’m not even from the USA and even I know that you guys do that a lot.
If you’ve ever been to a professional sporting event, you have almost certainly been at the business end of a rifle scope.
Wait they put up snipers in my bedroom whenever it’s time to “do the hanky-panky”?
Nah, they just have Google monitor you.
Because when my HPP and me get down to bizniz, you’d think it’s a professional sporting event, because of the passion dripping from the walls!!!
Yep b3causr there’s absolutely no difference in armed defense when the president or first lady is visiting and when students are protesting, none at all.
He’ll might as well tell the students of tiananmen square that tanks are just a normal part of defence.
🤡
Lol this is lemmy, Tienanmen Square “never happened” here. According to .ml, hexbear, and grad, anyway…
Bro this is literally standard practice. Most planned large events get all kinds of police presence. Including snipers and plainclothes.
So that makes it okay to have riot police intimidate these protestors and have snipers point weapons at peaceful protedtors?
Listen, we know what’s happening there but the snipers aren’t the problem…
I am angry a little because everyone consumes these sort of news without question.
Then someone does a post, most upvoted comment is seen as most true and correct and it all poisons our reality. Spoofing. Matrix.
Have you considered what would happen if an active shooter, consider one that’s pro-Israel, showed up in that crowd and they didn’t have a sniper?
Tell me you wouldn’t be over here screaming “ACAB” when the cops are unable to get to the shooter (and have to risk firing through a crowd or do nothing) because there are hundreds of college students between where the cops are standing and where the active shooter is.
Having a sniper on the roof is in no way similar to a tank running someone over in the street. There is no fucking practical application for a tank vs a civilian population. There is 100% a valid reason to use a highly skilled marksman to increase the odds that if something bad does happen, it’s stopped quickly, and you can get EMTs to the injured parties.
Your position is offensively wrong.
You Americans truly live in a weird world.
Have you considered what would happen if an active shooter, consider one that’s pro-Israel, showed up in that crowd and they didn’t have a sniper?
This is some absolute bullshit “good guy with a gun” mentality.
Also either painfully, painfully naive or fully deepthroating the boot. Like do you actually believe these anti-riot cops are there to protect the protestors?
Might as well claim that the police at the BLM protests were just there to protect them at that point as well.
Tell me you wouldn’t be over here screaming “ACAB” when the cops are unable to get to the shooter (and have to risk firing through a crowd or do nothing) because there are hundreds of college students between where the cops are standing and where the active shooter is.
I wouldn’t, I would be talking about the insane fucking gunman killing a bunch of people. Like do you remember the Vegas shooting? The discourse wasn’t about the police and how they didn’t have snipers everywhere at this event, it was about the actual shooter.
Having a sniper on the roof is in no way similar to a tank running someone over in the street
Okay, then what about the riot cops and traditional military that actually started the massacre? Am I allowed to compare those? Or would that undermine your point too much?
There is 100% a valid reason to use a highly skilled marksman to increase the odds that if something bad does happen, it’s stopped quickly, and you can get EMTs to the injured parties.
Yeah and it’s just a nice little coincidence that they could be used on the protestors too right? And we all know the police would never lie, or use force against protestors, especially left wing students right? So we should just take them 100% at their word and just let them point weapons at peaceful protestors.
You’re either the most naive person on the planet or have a boot kicking fetish. Either way you fucking disgust me.
This is some absolute bullshit “good guy with a gun” mentality.
Has any shooting to your knowledge been stopped by anything other than a self defender, a cop, or the guy shooting himself to avoid said cops? The common denominator in any of those is “a gun held by someone intending to stop the shooter.” (In the case of the shooter shooting himself, it is generally still to avoid a group of guys with guns intending to stop the shooter, the cops.)
You’re one of those “harvard says the good guy with a gun is a myth” guys, aren’t you? I can smell it in your comment. Seems you missed an important note from that study however: While defensive gun use is “more accurately estimated at 100,000 DGU/yr,” instead of the CDC’s reported estimates by Kleck and Lott, all gun deaths including suicide and accidents are still around 60,000 a year, adjusting for intentional homicide only gets 12,000/yr, and just for fun those scary black rifles that are “the problem” are only used in ~500 deaths/yr. Furthermore their study discounted entirely what is likely the most common form of defensive gun use, defensive display, in which the sight of the firearm is enough to scare off the attacker. This means that Harvards 100,000 estimate would be low if we included them. Still though, even with them pretending defensive display is all lies, 100,000>60,000>12,000>500, meaning guns are used far more for defense than murder or suicide.
What can we take away from this? Well, if 100,000 is SO infrequent that we can categorize it as a “myth,” what then is 60,000 or 12,000 or 500? If 100,000 dgu is a myth, so to must be our 60,000 gun deaths at 40,000 less.
Yeah I ain’ reading that. But I’m happy for you though, or sad that happened.
Cool lmao.
Yeah and it’s just a nice little coincidence that they could be used on the protestors too right?
Give me ONE incident of an active duty US sniper (police or military) EVER shooting a SINGLE protestor with even so much as a rubber bullet. Otherwise your argument is complete bull shit.
Edit: This isn’t some “good guy with a gun” or “untrained beat cop” situation. This is a sniper.
Does Kent State not count?
Those are not snipers, they were untrained national guardsman that shouldn’t have ever been there. No Kent does not count.
Yea but those were hippy beatniks so it’s fine.
/S
In that case it was a bunch of National guardsmen, not snipers so he’s not wrong if he’s talking just snipers.
The 40ish arrests kinda lean towards this being intimidation. Also I think shooting into a crowd (where these teams where pointing) has never been a good idea and as far as I can tell no evidence exists of even a single time a sniper team has been successfully used in any crowded area. (If you find some please share)
It’s not intimidation because it’s normal for any large crowd. The snipers are not there to arrest anybody. The snipers are not going to assassinate some random college student.
You’re also not going to find “the snipers really saved the day” articles because they’re just going to say “the police” in pretty much any article praising a police response. They also don’t normally shoot their guns and are more to assist the folks on the ground with figuring out where trouble is and how to get to it.
You could do a lot of the same job with a pair of binoculars. I’m sure they don’t because it’s just another expense and then you need to switch from binoculars to a rifle and find the target again if something does go sideways.
Kent state. There’s your one. Do you want two?
As I already told the other person: Those were not snipers, they were national guardsman that were untrained for that kind of work and they shouldn’t have ever been there.
Give me ONE incident of an active duty US sniper (police or military) EVER shooting a SINGLE protestor with even so much as a rubber bullet. Otherwise your argument is complete bull shit.
So because that very specific combination of a sniper shooting a protestor in America hasn’t happened yet that makes it okay? Snipers have shot other civilians, the police have shot protestors and police snipers have shot protestors before in other countries. So you would have to be really dishonest to pretend that means it’s fine.
Edit: This isn’t some “good guy with a gun” or “untrained beat cop” situation. This is a sniper.
“Police violence is okay as lk g as they are trained”
So was this shooting justified then because the sniper wasn’t as untrained as a random beat cop?
Like I get you’ve committed to the position and there’s no way you’re mature enough to deviate from that now, but my god this is such a bad hill yo die on.
Did you even read the article you linked? A dude shot his girlfriend in the head with a shotgun. Then was taking shots in the dark (literally) shooting from a building while he had a baby in his arms. That could not be more different of a situation from stopping an active shooter in a public gathering. It also has absolutely nothing to do with using snipers as some means of intimidating protestors or suppressing political speech. This was a very tricky domestic situation that went wrong.
This article also says:
A former federal law enforcement sniper, whose name KCUR is withholding because he now works in the private sector, said “99.9 percent of the time” snipers are relaying information to commanders, not firing their weapons.
The most important rule for a sniper is they “must be absolutely sure of the identity” of any target. That directive is on page one of the FBI’s Advance Rifle Training manual.
Don’t you dare start talking about maturity. You’ve been more than happy to make numerous personal attacks and inflammatory remarks.
I’m done with this conversation. You can believe what you want but you are very very wrong about the facts and risks of this situation and the personal attacks do nothing to help your argument.
I’m really not sure a sniper would be super useful in that situation. Obviously, different environment than the 2017 las vegas shooting, but I don’t really think that those snipers on rooftops would really be effective at all in taking out a committed shooter, which could just shack up in one of the many buildings with windows facing the crowd and fire down or into the crowd. Maybe in that case, a sniper might be able to peep out where the shooter is, or might be able to get a shooter on the way in or out, but with the level of people there and the level of surrounding buildings, I’m really not sure they’d be able to do very much. Obviously if someone just walks in off the street and opens up on everyone, then a sniper might be more effective, but I dunno.
It seems insane to me because I’ve only met armed police once in my life, and that was at download festival in the UK after a spree of terrorist attacks across the UK and the rest of Europe.
That was quite entertaining however as the armed police kept having to run away from drunk people who wanted pictures taken with the guns.
My God the bootlicking in this thread
Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
dude has his bipod deployed on top of his tripod, in possibly the least comfortable and most obvious position of all time, hoo lee, get this guy a medal or something we’re sending our best to protect against the dangerous student body
I knew this was a terrible country but Jesus fuck
Le sigh… Time for another crosspost to a boring distopia.
This doesn’t qualify… It’s just dystopia.
I think the replys normalizing snipers at events is the part that makes it qualified…
Lots of places in the US have snipers due to the possibility of terrorist threats, mass shooters, and attackers (eg. Major events like the super bowl), the thing about these snipers is that they’re there to make sure the protestors don’t get too out of hand.
It’s the difference between shooting an intruder trying to bang down your door, and shooting your own kid for being too noisy.
the thing about these snipers is that they’re there to make sure the protestors don’t get too out of hand.
We have absolutely no idea if that’s the case or not. Considering that snipers are often used when a lot of people are together to protect against terrorism and idiots with guns, it’s safe to assume the same here as well. Unless there is some evidence to the contrary of course.
I don’t think shooting into a crowd has ever worked to calm a situation. I seem to remember it not working to well in Boston when the British still ran the place.
Incredible country we live in
Hey keep me out of your circus. Just please don’t drag the rest of the world down with you.
If they’re actually snipers, they suck at their job.
No, these are police snipers their job is to shoot anyone who actually succeeds at hurting cops. They aren’t the same tactical role as military snipers
Sometimes they need to hide, some times they need to be seen
If you can see one team, there is probably at least one more you can’t.
I mean, they’re cops, chances are very high that they suck at their jobs.
Including the shooting part.
Their job is intimidation, so they are succeeding.
Touché
They aren’t trying to hide. OSU has these guys out for every football game or large gathering.
Their “job” here is intimidating protestors…
They can’t do that if they’re not seen.
If only there was a history class or something on campus…
If OSU is like my campus (dismantling the humanities college in a pro-STEM state), they may not have much of a history department anymore.
They’re law enforcement but not snipers
https://www.thelantern.com/2024/04/university-confirms-there-are-no-snipers-on-the-ohio-unions-roof/
Snipers are well trained professionals…
These are state troopers, which makes them far more dangerous because they’re untrained idiots and likely have the same high powered weapons.
Yeah, I don’t think this is one for the semantics game. There are guys with guns on the roof. There.
Okay so they have spotting scopes ad tripods for sure. Now they could have just brought those for the sake of gathering accurate info on protests I assume are 100-300 meters away to pick out details better (ie does that person pointing a gun or a dslr camera with a long lens?)
A modern AR-15 (like patrol rifles) with a proper zero, consistent ammuntion and in the hands of a capable person (it’s not hard it just takes regular practice) could easily be used effectively to engage man size targets with a guy on the spotting scope doing the target id to get the right guy.
With a basic bolt action precision rifle, even if it’s chambered in the same round, could be used even more effectively with target id capabilities of the spotting scope using the magnification of better rifle optics. I bet they have one on that second tripod.
And honestly I’d prefer that over 50ish dudes with rifles with their own set of mob mentality like they had at Kent back in the day
They have better pictures available. It’s 100% a scoped rifle.
I don’t buy it guarantee you they have a precision rifle up there.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a police man in possession of a good vantage, must be in want of a precision rifle
/s
Cops lie all the time
It wasn’t cops that said this. Did you even read or are you spreading misinformation
University administration, cops, same thing
You can try and try to muddy the waters of ACAB but this is very clearly not a relevant case. 🥱🥱🥱
Toodles.
Lol
All they know is eat hot chip and confirm priors
Are you retarded?
We’re so different from those godless immoral Chinese communists, something like Tianenman Square would never happen here.
Lol.
Lmao, even.
Let’s try this again without the Tiananmen Square Massacre copy pasta, at the explicit request of “seahorse” the Midwest social owner:
The difference between the two is that there was no weapon here. You can’t even make out what’s in front of the dude in black but most everyone here took a Twitter post as fact.
The Tiananmen Square massacre, on the other hand, did happen and did kill people. That’s the difference here.
I responded to the comment with the copypasta. Anyway, the point isn’t China good, the point is making fun of all the people in the US that screech about Chinese authoritarianism like we haven’t been captured by our own stupid fucking brand of authoritarianism.
We can keep that chain here one sec [edited]
I definitely agree, I’m all for ACAB. I was just making the express observation (prior to my comment being deleted by the owner) that, this is not one of those cases.
If we aren’t fair, reasonable, and dead honest on these points in our protests, they won’t be taken seriously. And when protests aren’t take seriously things get dangerous, and I don’t want to see legitimate protest against the police state turn into damnation or terrorism charges, more than they already are.
Thanks for being civil and having a conversation about this
“The difference between the two is that there was no weapon here.”
Source?
It does look like the top right of the banner in the OP
Agreed, but I still want to know what the source is.
I’ve also come to learn about marksman which are basically cops setup at major events with lots of people to prevent suicide bombers
Now that’s a double edged sword, especially because of, well all that the police have been doing since, well the beginning it would seem. I can’t trust a cop to do a routine traffic stop without shooting someone, I certainly would be concerned about one with a sniper at a high-stress/high movement event like this.
I can definitely see this being real now, but I’m not sure if I agree with it or not - I agree that a terrorist attack at an event like this would be devastating and I wouldn’t want that to happen either, but I don’t trust that the police are being trained appropriately or being audited/actioned on appropriately.
Ultimately my shitty initial tone and attitude were what bit me in the ass in this thread, despite just trying to get confirmation on the information from an appropriate source, so I’m just going to leave well enough alone now.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/04/26/snipers-college-protests-gaza/
Nothing conclusive I can see yet from AP etc, but it is a bit suspicious the universities and police are not responding/stonewalling requests for information from journalists, if they had no snipers how hard would it be to say there were no snipers?
Also a healthy skepticism isn’t afraid of questioning sources I wouldn’t apologize for it either, but it can also be a rhetorical tactic that sometimes is difficult to tell if it’s genuine or not. Not an excuse just an observation.
I appreciate your candor and civility, it’s much easier for us to talk and correct any miscommunications when we’re at the same level. Thank you.
I totally agree, the whole thing screams PR/scrambling to quench any flames, rather than to just come forth with the raw, uncensored/stretched truth. We deserve to have that from our government at the very fucking least.
Did they shoot and kill as many as in Tiananmen or less?
If your basis for ethical governance is splitting hairs about relative body count, stop, go back, you fucked up. But also: give them a minute. It’s the cops we’re talking about here. They might be a little slow, but they’ll get the job done eventually.
… I’d say the body count for which your government murders you is pretty damn relevant without splitting hairs lmfao.
Bro we can all tell you’re just looking for excuses to justify government violence when it suits you.
You can pull the mask off now, we know what you are.
Emphasis “relative”. The US govt and agents thereof (read: police) murder and brutalize often enough, and even get quite upset when people get upset over their doing it. That’s why I say it’s splitting hairs.
As far as i know the US state kills about thousand people each year on US soil
Many police department don’t report the deaths of people due to their actions or in their custody to any sort of national database as well, so estimates are likely undercounting. Corruption is rampant in departments as well, there have been cases of people dying and being buried by police without informing the family or anyone else.
So it’s likely much worse than we realize. Many murders are unsolved, there are many missing people cases also unsolved. In 2020, there were dozens of people reported missing that were involved in protests that were never found.
Translation: Threats of violence are fine for a government to regularly make as long as no one has died.
Not authoritarian at all
But they have these at football games and other major events including political events and so on too? Why is this any different, especially when considering it’s related to the Middle East and considering what happens w/ suicide bombers?
These spotters are different from the police shootings in the Kent State incident, no?
So because the students are protesting about something happening in the Middle East, you jump straight to worrying about suicide bombers? Not all Arabs are ISIS my dude, your bias is showing
This has nothing to do with bias, and everything to do with prior incidents (9/11, namely… but also the '93 bombing, the 2009 fort hood shooting the 2013 Boston marthon bombing, the 2015 san bernardino attack and the 2016 orlando nightclub shooting)
Further, I’m not super thrilled about you accusing me of being a racist because I’m concerned about a prevalent concern/non-zero likelihood risk or threat. Don’t assume maliciousness where ignorance may suffice. Flies. Vinegar. Honey.
You 'muricans are a bunch of fucking crybabies. I’m glad those two towers fell, honestly. Might help you grow a spine.
3Edgy5me
master troll 4 sure bro
To hell with your christofacist state. Worshipping a god of wrath like the abrahamic god is even worse than worshipping your own megalomaniac self
Take a breath, homie. It’s a play on an old cold war saying. I’m IRL a Buddhist.
Here we go again.
