Episode 3 - The Look of Modern Policing, and How to Film a Trump Rally

With social media flooded with calls to defund the police, and daily clashes with protestors in cities across the continent, Christine asks about the look of modern policing, and the viral videos from recent protests. And what did it look like inside Donald Trump's recent political rally in Tulsa? JJ describes the images and footage released by the Trump campaign, and the visuals outside the frame, too.

For some follow-up thoughts on the accuracy of conversational descriptions, and links to images from Trump's Tulsa rally, check out our Talk Description to Me blog. 

Transcript

JJ: 0:04

Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.

Christine: 0:29

Hi, I'm Christine Malec.

JJ: 0:30

And I'm JJ Hunt. This is Talk description to Me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description-rich conversations.

Christine: 0:45

I wonder if we could talk about what an actual police officer or a group of police officers look like these days? Because I read something provocative recently that it was a little meme on Facebook and it said, you remember when police used to look like paramedics, not paramilitary. And it really made me think about the differences because police are iconic visually. I know that that the visual of a police officer is an iconic sort of image, but is that representation changing and how

JJ: 1:17

Ah, such a good question? Yes. I, I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday and she was saying, I think it was her dad was a police officer, and there's still this image in our heads that the police officers look like Andy of Mayberry, right? Like maybe they're wearing khakis and they got a little name tag and, you know, they're strolling the streets and, you know, saying hi to the local shopkeepers and occasionally putting the, you know, the drunk in the drunk tank.

Christine: 1:45

Oh, the good old days,

JJ: 1:48

The good old days. Exactly. So while that kind of policing might still exist in some places, the police, especially the police that you are hearing about in these protests, that is not what they look like. They look decidedly different. These cops have full shields. And sometimes the shields are clear plastic. They're plexiglass very, very strong shields. And sometimes they're you know, maybe four feet tall and curved. And and they're held with one arm. In some cases they're actually like circular. They're just round, they're discs. The thing that's dangerous about those, the those round disc shields is that they're both offensive and defensive weapons as anyone who has seen any of the captain America movies knows. And they're wearing a full face masks. Like these are shields helmets with shields that go over the faces flak jackets or Bulletproof vests. Sometimes the Bulletproof vests are over top of uniforms. Sometimes they are integrated as part of the uniform. I'll talk more about that in a minute. And then, you know, Bhutan's or tear gas, canisters, or you know, guns that are firing rubber bullets. These are SWAT team members. These are not, you know, men and women in khaki pants and like short sleeve collar shirts that are, you know, going about doing their, doing their regular daily rounds. And in fact, the cops that are going around doing their daily rounds, it's important to note, especially in the context of why so many people are, are looking to defund the police. If, you know, if you've got a cat up a tree or someone steals your bike and you call the police and the police shows up the police officers that are, that are coming to your door in most of these cases, if you're living in a, in a, in a city in North America, I think it's reasonably fair to say the person that's going to come to your door. The police officer that's coming to your door is going to have a Bulletproof vest on and they might be integrated into the uniform. So now a lot of these vests are they are made out over the, their sheathed in a material that is identical to the shirt that the cop is wearing so that they cop just looks a little bit stuffed. You know what I mean? They just look a little full across the chest. And the, the Bulletproof vest is part of that uniform and that the belt, the tool belt. So you've got a gun holster. You've got perhaps a very large flashlight. You might have some sort of he might have a canister of mace or a pepper spray more likely a canister of pepper spray that, you know, looks like a small aerosol can, that you would, you know, use for hairspray or deodorant or something that might be on the belt. And then you've also got handcuffs and you've got all sorts of other pouches. And, you know, these are large individuals, usually who are fully decked out. This is, these are not khaki wearing you know, name tag folks. And the other thing that's worth noting is that there have been in the, in the United States, there have been security forces, private police forces, essentially that have been called into duty that don't have any insignia. They don't have anything on their uniforms to indicate if they're from whatever police department, CIA FBI, they don't have name tags. Cops are also the many have been accused of, and you can see in photos and videos covering up their name tags so that whatever they do while in these uniforms is you know, you can't trace it back to any individual because their name tags are either covered off or removed.

Christine: 5:52

Ooh,

JJ: 5:53

Canadian police forces decked out in this as well. Yeah, definitely in Toronto, any major city, I think in Toronto, you're going to find that cops have essentially the same uniform police have this, this type of uniform with a, with a flack jacket either, or a Bulletproof vest, either integrated or underneath the regular uniform shirt. And and you know, a large, you know, Laden tool belt that's standard now. So there is a militarization of the look of a police officer. And then what, by the time you get into protest situations, you know, the police officers that are meeting protestors, they are fully, fully militarized. They have large weapons, they have full body armor, full shields. No question that, that if you want that snapshot image go to go to SWAT team, don't, don't go to Andy and Mayberry

Christine: 6:55

As a side note in Canada, when you encounter a police officer just on the street, are they armed and visibly? So

JJ: 7:04

Yeah, they, they are a police officer walking the beat in Toronto or coming to your door because, you know, your bike was stolen. They're gonna, they have an arm, they, they are armed. They have a, they have a holstered weapon at their side

Christine: 7:19

In Toronto, where, where I live at some points there was talk about boarding up shops because of concerns that peaceful protests might turn into something else, which they didn't for which we are all grateful. But I wonder if you could say something about what, what it means to board up a shop.

JJ: 7:44

Yeah, absolutely. So usually when when storefronts are boarded up, it's big sheets of plywood that are plastered over any glass surface. So if it's a store that is mostly has a glass front, almost all, if not all of the glass is going to be covered with large sheets of plywood, if there's time, a store owner might put up some signage on the outside of that. So that you know, so you still know what the story is behind the sheets of plywood, but for the most part, it's just sheets of plywood covering all glass surfaces on the front of a building.

Christine: 8:20

Could we talk a bit about what it looks like when stores are looted?

JJ: 8:26

I saw one video that someone filmed, it's hard to know if this is representative of how a lot of the looting has taken place, but this one video I saw did, you know, stick out for me. And it was a shot through a crowd. And one of the it was a store that had been boarded up and either one of the sheets of plywood had been torn down, or there was a corner of window that was exposed and the window had been shattered. And there was a white person leaning into the store, taking things through the window, then climbed inside. They were still on the street, but they were reaching inside and grabbing things. And this particular video was being filmed by a black lives matter supporter who was being very intentional about filming this white person, leaning into the store and taking things and saying like, listen, it's important to know who's coming to these protests and why, and this was the, this was the point of the person filming. That's just one video, but it definitely was making the rounds.

Christine: 9:30

I wonder if we could do some distinctions between the visuals of the vast majority of protests that were peaceful and maybe the ones that got highlighted for not being peaceful. And so just in a general sense, as, as a blind person who hasn't looked at a lot of news footage, what does a peaceful protest look like versus what a not so peaceful protest looks like?

JJ: 10:00

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's really important to, to, you know, to differentiate the two, to, to distinguish one from the other. So the peaceful protests are, you know, large groups of people with placards, with signs, they're defund the police black lives matter signs you know, no justice, no peace signs, and they are marching and they are chanting. And sometimes these groups of people will stop. There'll be a stage set up, or there'll be a, an impromptu stage and some speakers will get up and address the crowds of people. And those protests are going on. I think at this point in literally every state in the United States, almost every province, if not every province in Canada and across the, across the globe, they've been protests in all kinds of places. And and you know, they look fairly straight forward again with the, with the, the one difference being people wearing masks and they're, and they're, and they're spread out a little bit more. So there's a little bit more distancing between protesters. The impulse is to say, and then at night, or then some of the hoodlums that get in front, and that's actually not the case. Some of, sometimes these protests in the middle of the day in the middle of downtown streets, they, these protests have, it's hard to come up with neutral terms here, the protesters and the police clash, and without, you know, doing my best, not to not to say which group is clashing with the other first, these groups are clashing. And in some cases it does seem to be the protesters who are antagonizing for, you know, whatever political reason they, they, they have, they feel they have, they are starting some aggression. In some cases, it's the, who are in the videos that are, that are, you know, that are coming out, who are seemingly without provocation attacking protesters and police officers, or pardon me. The police are sometimes without provocation, seemingly without provocation being aggressive toward protesters or even journalists. And then in some cases there are videos of of specifically white, young white men who are mucking in and trying to instigate further destruction. There was a video going around of a young white man with a, with a cell phone camera who was like, Hey guys, flip over that car. Hey, you know, in pointing out signs that he was asking people to tear down, like he was making a cool YouTube video or something in the middle of a very serious and important protest March, I can give you some, some specific examples of of videos where police officers seemed to respond quite aggressively, not even respond aggressively, seem to behave aggressively without much provocation there's of course one video where there's a whole group of like a, a whole group of police officers walking along a big open space. And and they're in, you know, they're, they're walking in formation, so there's a group of police officers and they're walking in formation. And, and one older gentlemen, I think he's in his seventies, maybe even as it in his eighties, he walks up and wants to address one of these, one of these cops. And he goes right up to the cop and, and tries to talk to him. And he's, you know, he he's the older, a white man is, is is gesturing toward the police officer and the, and the cop just pushes him, shoves him backwards. Now, again, it's hard to, I don't want to judge too much here, but it doesn't look like a particularly hard shove, but he does shove the man, this older gentleman stumbles backwards, the back of his head slams on the sidewalk. And he starts bleeding immediately. The one cop who pushed him leans down as if like, maybe he's considering he's gonna extend a hand and then kind of the other cops say"No, no no. It's time to go." and, you know, kind of gesture him to keep walking. And then this whole group of cops are still in formation, just keep on walking and they leave this man lying there on the ground. It's, it's astonishing. Yeah. There's another video that that I saw that was filmed from someone's front porch, residential street, a group of people on their front porch, and they're filming the street in front of them. And and they're a group of, of cops going by, and these are, you know, these cops are dressed like riot police. I mean, they are riot police, they've got masks, clear plastic masks. Some of them have a big shields plexiglass shields. And they've got you know Bulletproof vests send and, you know, and, and their work belts are just Laden with with, with tools. And and the cops are, you know, going straight down the middle of the street. There's nothing going on in the street as far as, as far as we can see from the video that's being shot from this one front porch, and the cops are yelling at the, at the houses, you know, go inside, stay inside, stay, you know, and they turn to the person who's, who's filming this from their porch and the cops fire. I, I believe it's a tear gas canister might be, I don't think it's rubber bullets. I think it's a tear gas canister right on to this front porch. And everyone has to charge inside. I mean, it's, it's hard when you're watching images like that, not to jump to conclusions, not to, not to have opinions about that. It's incredibly difficult to describe situations like that in any kind of neutral way, because it doesn't seem neutral. It seems like there is, there is an aggressor here.

Christine: 16:08

One of the things that I've been catching in the news is about mask wearing and how in general, we're advised that it's a good idea. And some factions don't seem to think it's as important. And so in the recent events involving Trump rallies in Tulsa, I came across some references to masks, not really being something that Trump feels are important. And so maybe some of his followers also following in those footsteps. And so I wonder if there's any images that you saw around mask use or lack thereof in the images that came from Tulsa.

JJ: 16:48

Yeah. So there are some fantastic images from that Tulsa rally and you know, as usual, if you look, if you look in the crowds in those Tulsa rallies, there are some things that stand out. First of all, a lot of white people, right? There's maybe one or two people of color, but it's mostly white people, a lot of older people, but in this Tulsa rally, I would suggest there were quite a few younger people as well. Again, these are generalizations, but you know, we're talking about trying to describe crowds of people. So you have to generalize masks, you know, looking at some of these crowd shots in the parts of the images that have crowds in them. There are definitely a handful of people wearing masks, but they are absolutely in the minority, frankly, there are probably as many masks as there are people of color in these crowds. What was really startling for me, looking at some of the images, of course, a lot has been made in the news of the numbers, right? The, the stadium holds almost 20,000 people and 6,200 showed up. That is when you're looking at the visuals of that, that is significant. So in the way that they seated people in this auditorium so that they could get a good shot, right? Like a lot of this is for film. A lot of this is for, you know, for the image. So most of those people, those 6,000 people are behind Donald Trump in this auditorium, so that when the camera's on him, it looks like he's got a crowd of people and they're all holding their signs, make America great again. Red, white and blue signs with white writing, Trump 2020, make America great again. It looks like there's a big crowd. If all you're seeing is a closeup, you know, video of Trump at the podium, in his blue suit jacket, long red tie, he's got a crowd behind him. Now you pull back a little bit. And just above that crowd are banks of empty blue seats, empty, totally empty. You pull back a little farther than you see at the sides of the auditorium. The, there are scattered groups of people, right? So, you know, it's like a poorly attended you know, minor league baseball game. There are a handful of people here and there, handful of people here and there, then you pull back even farther and you see that the crowd that supposed to be gathered in front of them is really pushed really close to the front of the stage. And there are big wide open expanses of like bare concrete on the, on the stadium floor where you hopefully have groups of people standing and cheering and, and all of those people are pushed really close to the front. So that in front of the podium, you've got these signs that pop up and it looks like there's a crowd. This is a great example of the difference between the image that politicians want to send out. And the image that is outside, the frame that they have composed inside the frame is, you know, it looks like any one of Trump's regular rallies. You've got the, you've got the signs, you've got the cheering crowd, a handful of those masks, but otherwise it looks like the basic Trump rally. You pull out a little bit and that's when you really see the truth of the situation behind Trump, there is no distance, no difference. There's no social distancing. These people are packed in at tight. Like they would be at any other rally outside people coming in. There was some social distancing in lineups and whatnot, but inside the stadium during the, during this rally, there, they're all packed in there. So that they're the people who are there are packed in tight so that it looks full, but there's no social distancing to speak of inside the stadium,

Christine: 20:46

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