N&R follows up Triad City Beat’s reporting on the Greensboro Police Department’s newly-formed civil emergency unit:
Created more than a year ago, the CEU has a specific mission: to prevent or curtail violence when people take their right to free speech to the streets.
….Their mission is to use as little force as possible to control order, Wolfe said.
Sometimes, he said, that means allowing protesters to gather even if they don’t have a city-issued protest permit. Other times, it might mean officers’ standing stone-faced while protesters scream at them, he said.And, he said, it might mean protecting the protesters themselves from being injured by counterprotesters.
“The last thing we want is for large groups of people to be fighting in the streets,” Wolfe said.
In today’s hyper-politicized world one’s reaction to this news kinda depends on who’s doing the protesting. It’s understandable the social justice guys over at Triad City Beat would be worried about the formation of such a unit, since it’s their clientele taking it to the streets these days. But what if–just imagine—a large crowd of unruly Trump supporters took to the streets? How long would liberals tolerate that before they’d either step themselves or expect the cops to step in?