Woman pepper sprays shoppers over Xbox

[LynneSin]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/25/woman-pepper-sprays-shoppers-over-xbox/

woman at the Porter Ranch Wal-Mart in California Thursday night reportedly used pepper spray on other shoppers in order to move ahead in line.

One witness told KNBC that the incident happened while they were waiting in line to buy a new Xbox 360.

As many as 15 people were hurt, 10 of them treated for pepper spray inhalation, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Shawn Lenske.


“The woman, who is still being sought, used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart ‘to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store,’” Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. James Carson told The Los Angeles Times.

“She was competitive shopping,” he added.

I guess this woman is still on the loose - if you live near the Porter Ranch Wal-Mart I would suggest shopping elsewhere for Xmas.

I hope they find her and take away all her Xmas toys and give them to needy children.

[freshwest]

1. The fact that she hasn't been charged or taken into custody, since the authorities know who she is,

Says a lot about the police department's tolerance for assault. It's not just a matter of not shopping at that store again.

She's on the loose and has been given a license to assault repeatedly at any location and start a panic or possible riot with injuries to innocent bystanders.

So the police are condoning the behavior by saying 'she was competitive shopping.' One might make the argument they were being sarcastic, but deeds speak louder than words. They're letting this play out in the media, showing they don't care.

Yeah, labeling sociopathic aggression like it's a sporting event just makes the whole thing sound so normal, even cool...

:thumbsdown: for the enforcers for the 1%.

[LynneSin]

2. Imagine if she was a part of Occupy Porter Ranch

:grr:

[freshwest]

3. If she'd been a member of Occupy, she'd be in custody already and used to influence folks that way.

[LynneSin]

4. The woman says it was self defense, police don't know who to blame - how about blame Wal-mart

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_19426509

Walmart pepper-spraying may have been self-defense, police say

The woman who pepper-sprayed more than a dozen shoppers at a Los Angeles Walmart has not been charged because she may have fired in self-defense, police said Monday.
Detectives said they have reviewed videos that indicate the 32-year-old woman who shocked the nation by injuring at least 14 Walmart customers during a Thursday evening sales rush for video-game consoles may have feared for her life.

"What am I going to charge her with?" said Los Angeles police Detective Michael Fesperman, of Devonshire Division.

"There was a stampede at Walmart from people getting Xbox games for half off," he said. "There was no control. People were getting stampeded and trampled. There were people screaming, yelling that they were being trampled or crushed.

"This woman may have fired her pepper spray in self-defense."

Stores setup up these almost impossible mega sales - put an item everyone wants on half-price sale but limit it to only 5-10 items available in the store. Without a doubt stampedes will insue. XBoxes aren't cheap so to get one half price is a real bargain.

This is getting worse and worse each year and it will not stop until laws are made to prevent this stuff.

It's simple, in order to fill the stores on Black Friday, the store might put an extremely in demand item on sale for a very very low price. With this Wal-Mart it was an Xbox for half-price. Since these systems run about $300, getting one for $150 would make some kid a very special Xmas. But the thing is this - the stores will never EVER put more than a few of these items on sale, maybe 5-10 at most. The store knows they'll lose money on those 5-10 half price Xboxes (or other major sale item) but in return those that don't get the item are already in the store and will probably spend their money elsewhere instead.

The Good News for the store is they get alot of sales but the bad news is they usualy get about 10-20 people for every 1 item they have available with that supersale - hence the stampedes.

After reading that above article, I can't blame the woman. There was a stampede and she panicked. Be lucky it was only pepper spray. With our gun laws becoming more lax it's only a matter of time that it'll be guns firing during these stampedes. If you ever read anything about the psychology of herd stampedes whether in the wild or in the aisles of Wal-Mart, the logic brain pretty much shuts off and the survival part of the brain is doing all the thinking - and that can be dangerous. I'm sure on any other given day this woman would not use pepper spray while shopping but shut off her logic part of the brain who knows what she'll do.

Stores need to do 1 of 2 things. Either they must stock enough inventory to cover the sale for the customers expectations. However doing that means stores would take in major losses selling Xboxes and other hot items for such unheard of prices. The other options - stores must do the following: Provide extra security and setup lines outside the store. Then allow only 10-20 shoppers in at a time so there is little chance of a stampeded. Wal-Mart failed to do that on the day of the pepper spraying - they should be held accountable for the harm done by that woman.

[freshwest]

6. The Pikezella defense? We've already seen that posted here, they were 'afraid.' The first rule of...

Self-defense or so my teacher said, was to avoid situations that could result in conflict. If a conflict ensued, leave. Fast. Run if necessary, it's not a matter of pride. She wasn't afraid, or she'd have left the store at the first signs of impending mayhem.

She felt entitled to stay in the store, so she used her weapon. No one would have interfered with her getting out of the line to leave the Xbox to them, would they?

The police are going to defend this woman the same way they will defend Pikezella. Bottom line, don't want to be in a dangerous situations, just don't go in.

People in this country act like zombies, slaves to the consumer culture, fighting over scraps. The 1% know what's important, and that's where they invest their wealth, not this garbage they sell us.

It's only there to get our minds off the fact the environment is being destroyed, that we are approaching a narrowing of the population, and that the big players have bought our water, air, food and land rights, and they aren't gonna share with our dumb asses. We're the ones who defend the right to buy inedible pieces of plastic crap that are only one step from being deposited in a landfill.

This wasn't about stopping wars, abuse, food, water, civil rights or homelessness. As far as WalMart being to blame, it's a lot bigger than WalMart. To say they should have not operated the way they did, is to say that they made all these people believe their junk was worth coming in to buy no matter what, on their terms, on their Black Friday, for goods that could have been marketed any day. But the media gets money for this annual festival of avarice.

A lot of people do not feel the pressure of an emotional need to indulge themselves in what in the long run, doesn't change the status quo, in fact it keeps it running along. We're all evolving our ideas and perceptions of these events.

I hope I don't sound too harsh as I'm changing my views and don't see this as being benign as I once did. Good thread, LynneSin.

[LynneSin]

7. There's only one problem with your logic

It's simple - you're an intelligent person. I'd like to think I am too.

I see sales too good to be true after Thanksgiving the first thing I do is read the fine print - usually they are sales that only less than 1% of those going into the store will actually be able to buy. So I don't go.

But unfortunately the intelligence that you or I would use doesn't go very far with the rest of the country. I tried to explain that to my nephew a few years back when they had Macbooks on sale for extremely dirt cheap prices. I even pointed the fine print to him that said limited 5 per store. But he was young, had a drivers license and thought it would be fun to camp out to get the laptop. We all warned him to play it smart, his life & health was not worth the value of a cheap computer. But since he was over 18 (just over) he went.

He never got the laptop but he said after that he wasn't going to ever do sales like that again. He said it was a mob and at one point it wasn't worth going after the elusive sale.

You're not harsh at all, you're just intelligent. Shame more people in this country can't think like that.

[freshwest]

8. I've always been told I was intelligent, but I know i haven't always been 'emotionally intelligent.'

I've been driven to excess and looking for the quick fix to the pain of feeling powerless. A lot of what the 18 year old did has to do with wanting to belong to a group and have something to share with them. I've never camped out for a consumer good or tickets to a sporting event.

I confess to having gotten in long lines to get a better seat at a concert as a teenager, but I already had the ticket in my hand. But not as an adult, but in a way I guess Black Friday is like that for some people, but it's now way too ugly for something so contrived.

I understand the 18 year old logic, hating and loving and wanting and rejecting, feeling what the media tells one to feel. There is a certain beauty, I admit, in the Mac book, and occasionally I have lusts for that Mac Air. But what would buying it really accomplish?

I think one thing that divides people is how they look at the utility of an item. At this point, from hard experiences including being broke, although the source of my broke-ness was not buying consumer goods, I see things I spend my money on as investments.

Will it last a long time? More important, can I make money with it? Or am I just buying something to feel good?

By investment, I mean, does the purpose of the item being bought only benefit me for hours or days or years, is it transferable? Is it a universal, something that will outlast me?

This is the conundrum (what a grand word, haha) that confronts us. Are we leaving the world a better place, or leaving toxic waste?

I believe that the 1%, the ruling families, being the psychopaths many of them and their followers are alleged to be, grasped the concept of what makes life on Earth possible a long time ago. And they decided they would win the game of life. Of course, they have tunnel vision, and some of them are going to pay dearly for it. But who's crying now?

The 99%, or more correctly stated, those who are not their close servants, living off the crumbs they throw them. They've infected all of the world's socializing and uniting forces, be they religion, institutions of learning, science and government, not to mention business. These things could all be used for the greater good and to save the planet.

I posted a video of Michio Kaku, who I used to like, who finally became ubiquitous on the M$M. He's now preaching to those who see a way to live forever in cybernetic bodies, to go to the planets, and beyond. All eagerly swallowed by the young people in the video, are all brain massaged in this great media machine to think all of this will benefit everyone. It won't.

Back to the 18 year old logic, all that passion and confidence, but he did learn from you, didn't he? Good for you, and him, too.

I guess it's the gift of getting old, having time to reflect. There are few groups in society that conform to group think more than the young. In a way, group think is being part of what I guess one could call 'the pack mentality.' Stay with the group, look like the group, think, talk and behave like the group or be shunned, a form of survival. This is not irrational on their part, the way that things stand now, so long as no drastic changes take place to displace them out of consumer culture. This is why people commit suicide when they lose their economic place. Also why young people kill themselves when they see they aren't popular or acceptable to the group or can't cope with keeping up. They can't imagine how to survive without all this society they have been taught about.

In a way, as Democrats pushing to maintain the social safety net, we too, are trying to do a group think. But I believe we have very good reasons in the roots of philosophy and history and even religion to try to perserve a human society. And we're having a hell of a time with it as the young and elders being devoured by the society they are being taught in the media.

But I'm thinking a different paradigm is fast approaching us, one that many will be able to survive in, either. LIfe is not about getting a good deal for consumer goods. It's about those things that under gird civilization, that many have disconnected from as if it was beneath them.

Those who will be living on this planet of reduced resources, increasingly fascist governmental and corporate institutions controlling those limited resources, will of necessity, be forced to adopt a kind of asceticism to survive. Perhaps be vegetarians, or be prepared to rear and slaughter their own food. Give up the internet and all consumer goods as we know them now, go back to smaller communities and put up with that. A lot of young people, very wisely, are doing just that. In such situations if they cannot set up their lives in egalitarian associations, or even if initially they do, they may end having to kowtow to the local strong man, as otherwise they will have no food or water or a place to lay their heads because The Commons will be gone. It has no defenders.

The destruction of The Commons is being laid on the back of the common people, by those who claim they have been consuming the Earth's bounty for their brief pleasures, not realizing the planet is governed by cycles of feast and famine. We looked the other way when we got angry at each other and stopped supporting The Commons politically to see us through the famine.

Divide and rule, is a proven tool of the ruling families, who have patience and information. We know this, yet we cooperate and we created our rulers by giving them more credit than they deserved.

Thanks for reading my long-winded stuff. Kudos to you and those in your life who you are teaching a different way.

[NewJeffCT]

5. well, at least it was over something important

like an xbox.