The police officers weren't justified in thier crowd control tactics at the rainbow gathering july 3

"The mob began throwing sticks and stones at the police, in which case the police felt as though their lives were in danger, this is why the action was justified." The keyword is "felt". Feeling something is justified does not make it justified. They should have kept their cool, and not been so quick to randomly shoot people. If they are not capable of THAT, than they should be fired. Someone who witnessed the event firsthand said this on their myspace blog: "The police claim in their statement that we were throwing rocks and sticks. I did not observe or participate in such behavior" If anyone was throwing rocks, it was a small group of people, because it was not observed by this bystander. The danger then could not have been that great. Additionally, the police did NOT only shoot those who were throwing the rocks, but randomly firing at innocent bystanders with no affiliation to those who were throwing rocks. "‘Another Rainbow was detained for physically interfering'" In an "action alert" released by the "Colorado legal eagles", it said: "…one concerned woman tried asking the feds what the man had done. The feds refused to answer, and instead viciously threw the woman to the ground and pulled her head back by her hair while she was being handcuffed" "Officers began to leave the area with the subjects and were circled by Rainbow participants, according to the news release from Rita Vollmer of the Incident Command Team." Having people stand near does not constitute justification for shooting people. "…question of whether or not the events at the Rainbow Gathering could be considered a ‘Riot'…" The incident at the rainbow gathering is summed up by the term police riot. Definition of police riot from wikipedia: "A police riot is a term used for the wrongful, disproportionate, unlawful, and illegitimate use of force by a group of police against a group of civilians." This definition would fit more accurately, as far as I see it. "Which justifies Crowd/Riot Control methods..." Just because something is officially called a method of riot control, does not mean that it is ethically justified to use. "Now, whether or not the riot at Rainbow Gathering justified riot control measures, first off, yes, in fact, it did justify riot/crowd control measures because the officers' lives were in danger from death from mob (AKA Lynching). The officers could have easily been harmed or even killed from the large group of people." Yes there was a large group of people surrounding them, but only a small group of people throwing stones. In fact many people were trying to keep the situation peaceful (they were shot too). People who were not partaking in violence were shot too. That is not justified. They pointed guns at several children and a baby. That is not justified. They brought violence into kid village. That is not justified. "Since the Gathering started on July 1, the feds have cited hundreds of people for minor infractions of the law. Almost every vehicle entering the site has been searched, and gatherers are routinely harassed and intimidated. Campers have been charged with dirty license plates, failure to use a turn signal on a 4WD dirt road, and having objects dangling from their rear view mirror" -colorado legal eagles It would not be surprising then that the police were trying to instigate a riot. It is also questionable whether the police officer's lives were really in danger when reading this from the same "action alert" as above: "The feds say that the campers threw "sticks and rocks" at them during the incident. This has not been substantiated. However, this excuse is used every year by the feds as part of their propaganda campaign against the Rainbows to justify their harsh tactics. In Colorado in 2006, the feds also accused the Rainbows of throwing sticks and stones, but video evidence later proved that this was a lie." At the end of your argument you say: "Espessially considering that technically, the gathering did not ever have a permit to even be in the Forest it was in." First of all its "especially", not "espessialy". Also the gathering does not need a permit because it is not an official gathering. It has no officially recognized organization, and it has no leader(s). It is simply a collective group of individual campers who have all chosen to camp in the same area at the same time. It is a constitutional right that allows you to freely assemble. -Harlan