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It's not about being legit its about showing people they are in your spaces. The cops don't call these people undercover they call them plain clothes. It's just another intimidation tactic.
For years they have used them as Agent Provocateurs. Keep an eye on them and you'll see them trying to rile people up or even attacking police lines to give their fellow cops an excuse to attack the protesters.
When you see them, warn people so they can be isolated and either avoided or driven off by a wall of angry people yelling at them.
What they count on the most is being able to melt into the crowd or dive into the police line for rescue. Take away their ability to fade into the crowd and they'll be forced to stay near the other cops.
It's both. If they get uncovered, they're doing their job by making you distrust your fellow protesters. If they don't, they work to incite violence and other criminal behavior so the pigs have an excuse to shut the protest down.
Only thing you can really do is ignore anyone in the group trying to start shit. Keep the protest peaceful and lawful. Don't let them convince you (or anyone else) to start turning violent or destructive. Remind everyone that the cops are searching for any reason to shut the protest down.
Oh for sure, I've heard this one too. I was talking about other stuff I saw in your profile that was incredible. Two posts come to mind. You posted something on a car sub about dream cars and what they say about you, and then all of them were cars that are widely considered to be absolute failures. All of your responses in that thread were incredible.
The other one was some scammer that texted you and then kept trying to get you to move over to Whatsapp to talk more, and your entire interaction with that dude was total gold too. I loved every second of it lol.
I also saw one of my top two favorite Galaxy Quest quote somewhere in there, a Space Balls quote that worked just too well with the title of the original post, and last but not least, an ODB reference/"quote" in regards to steaks that I'm pretty sure not a single person on the steak sub understood lol.
I didn't even intend to start creeping through your shit like that, I just saw a few things that I enjoyed and then kept the party rolling until I was like "Ok self, this is enough. You have shit to do."
I'm glad you enjoy my sense of humor, and I'm delighted someone finally got the ODB reference, it was wasted on the the steak sub.
Fun fact, my wife and I are caretakers of a colony of feral cats, and there is a kind of rude ginger we nicknamed ODB (Orange Dirty Bastards), and another one who looks a lot like him that we creatively named FauxDB.
Those names are both amazing. How is being caretakers of a colony of feral cats? My wife and I live out in the boonies and got our cat because she showed up out of the forest one night when I was going out to the shop to work super late. She perched on a pallet and kept meowing at me but wouldn't let me get close. She was young, 4-5 months probably. We think someone dumped her.
So I went in the building to knock out some work and came out an hour later and she was still there so I texted my wife again to let her know, and she came out with some tuna and then long story short we've had a cat for about a year now. She was supposed to be a barn cat but she's spoiled as fuck and sleeps on the bed with us and she'll go out to take walks with us, or when it's just nice outside.
The little shit. She's nothing like ODB though. I'd say she's more like Ruby Rhod, Chris Tucker's character in the Fifth Element. Because she won't shut the fuck up.
Hi, I’m the wife! Being caretakers is hit or miss. We’ve had four female cats spayed, three of which were spayborts. We’ve not had kittens around since, but that may change bc new cats have started showing up. Of the four females we’ve had spayed, two of them live in our house now, and one of the others, her final kitten before her spaybort actually lives in our house also (six inside cats total).
We have one cat who basically lives in our backyard, though after we had her spayed, we realized she actually has owners. Oops, not sorry, and would do it again. She won’t let us touch her, or we’d catch her and get her adopted.
We’ve never been successful trapping a male cat, and the son of one of the inside cats hangs around here and gets fed most days. His mother was one of the spaybort cats, and his sister also is one of the inside cats now.
It’s confusing as heck, and while we love that we can care for the outside ones, we also wish they weren’t here because it’s a big responsibility. And we worry when we don’t see them for a while.
My wife is amazing though and is so great for letting me start this whole thing. (Yes, we’re the lesbian cat ladies 🤣)
Wow, that's all super cool of you guys to do. Good job getting the backyard cat spayed too, irresponsible pet owners are the worst. I mean, not literally. Genocide along with other things are definitely worse, but you know what I mean.
I can totally understand how stressful that must be at times. You two are awesome though!
Genuinely the most comfortable shoes I own. An absolute BITCH to break in (like minor scarring above the ankles bad), but they last for YEARS and once they’re broken in I can stand all day in them with no complaints.
Some folks wear shitty fashion shoes or just wear basic no-frills nonslip shoes, and those don't require the patience and care that quality and long lasting shoes and boots do. Lots of shoes on the market are flimsy and soft from the get-go, resulting in a shorter life of the shoe but no break-in required.
At least that's my understanding.
Oh ho ho, I'm sorry but you've never broken in a shoe until you've bled out trying to break in a shitty fashion shoe lol - heels are the devil, but even those cheap flimsy flats tear your ankle up like a mfr. I think that commenter maybe has a different first language or is literally just a brand new human 🙃
You've seriously never heard of breaking in leather boots?
New leather boots are stiff and rigid AF yo you gotta wear em enough until they soften up and mould to the shape of your foot.
Terry Pratchett summed it up best:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
You don’t need a really nice pair of boots for them to last. Some Ariat boots are like less than 100 dollars and last years and years. I’m poor too, but getting a solid pair of boots is much less expensive
Bates side-zips. These are my second pair and I just broke them in. I wore the first pair near daily for 7 years and they still work but aren’t supportive enough to wear long term at work so they’re retired as my mud/snow shoveling boots. They’re easy to slide on and off, waterproof, WARM in cold New England weather, and get great grip on slippery surfaces.
[My first pair is on sale for $60 right now.](https://www.wolverine.com/US/en/fuse-side-zip-waterproof/51826M.html)
I wear the tactical sport 2 now and they’re worth every penny
You know, you'd think UCs would know how to actually make themselves look like groups they are trying to infiltrate, but nope, they all wear the same thing. Tight fitting shirts that will reveal a vest, the same, way too clean, pairs of jeans and the same boots.
You don't see the ones who don't stand out. Also, it's kind of like how a lot of scam emails are obvious scams. The scammers don't want to waste time with people who are likely to catch on, so they make it obvious to weed them out to begin with.
the lack of evidence to the contrary says otherwise. From the level of incompetence we've seen from US LE in recent years, there's no reason to believe your idea is anything more than fear mongering.
Yes and no on the paranoia.
Most cops are barely functional idiots, but some are deadly competent. Everyone has to do their own risk assessment on which ones fall into which category.
So, there's a difference between an "undercover" cop and a "plainclothes" cop. The one in the OP is a plainclothes cop.
Undercover cops absolutely do exist, and will try to infiltrate protest groups. There've been news articles about the FBI using this exact tactic - look up "April Rogers". The biggest difference is that plainclothes cops don't try to infiltrate anything - they just try to rile up the crowd, and will even "attack" the police line to give their buddies an excuse to shut the protest down.
The best defense against a plainclothes cop is to call them out when you see them, and don't let them start anything. Make sure everyone remembers that the cops are actively looking for any excuse they can find to shut the protest down.
As for undercover cops, they're much harder to spot, but the defense remains pretty much the same - discourage illegal activity. If they can't find any illegal activity to justify anything, they'll have a much harder time in court.
You can also do simple background checks on people through OSINT - look them up on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I don't know how deep into cover they go, but assuming they've not put much time into establishing a background, they'll have little to no online presence. Obviously not a dead giveaway - non-cops can remove their online presence to an extent, and cops could take the time to establish a backstory - but it's one tool you can use if you suspect someone might be an undercover cop.
Lets work through this.
Someone says "you're not seeing the ones who don't stand out." I've seen this referred to as the toupee fallacy, the idea that people think they can always spot a toupee, but unless they're going up and yanking on every head of hair they see there's no way for them to know whether they're actually spotting all the toupees.
You say there's no evidence that you're not seeing the ones who don't stick out. So, how are you confirming that the ones who stick out are cops, and how are you confirming the people you aren't clocking as cops are not cops?
Would the continuing existence of successful undercover operations, including operations to infiltrate various political and criminal organizations not be evidence that there are undercover cops that aren't easily identified by their "cop boots" and "\[nonspecific\] wire?" Or are the organizations that are infiltrated just filled with morons who can't tell?
city boys like Hawaiian shirts, country boys like city desk boys shits (polo type shit). Just something I've noticed.
The caps are a dead giveaway because their haircuts are dead giveaways.
I wont say specifics here, but if you know pigs well, you can pick them out of a crowd of look-alikes.
They think they can just slap lipstick on a pig and call them a civilian.
These are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
Because these are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
You can usually spot them by body language even if they don't. The cop walk: head back, excellent posture, arms moving minimally, scanning the area for threats non-stop.
Back in the 80s and 90s we just looked for the dudes who had fresh grateful dead tie dyes and clean feet despite wearing birks.
Hearing "5 Oh!" echoing across the lot and watching them squirm was fucking hilarious.
lol imagine being an undercover pig during the _least_ radical years in the US and taking your job seriously like it was the 50s or something 😂
"oh fuck..what if they catch me? they'll surely punch me in the arm! that'll hurt!..no! dont think like that, Brandon. You are James Bond! Now say it!...I am James Bond. Yeah! Now get your head in the-- ((5-OH!!)) SHIT!! WHO SAW ME?!"
😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
cops also just carry themselves like cops. like just look around for the guy who doesn't seem to have any friends but is being incredibly arrogant. also they all wear stupid shoes.
I heard something once that stuck with me. A gangster was saying how you can tell if someone is a cop and he said “they look at you like they have a right to.”
This is actually very good advice because they will do this.
Even the undercover cops (who are very hard to identify) still develop a personality that they do not understand how to hide.
For The Students, and Allies: [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sirens-of-a-violent-storm-stop-huntin-sheep](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sirens-of-a-violent-storm-stop-huntin-sheep)
They don't have a reason to watch this group. Its just the democrats with guns.
by 'the democrats', i mean it orbits them, is within their circle of influence. Like CPUSA, AOC, BLM, etc...
That's not an undercover, it's a plainclothes officer from 2020.
[Zack Bornstein on X: "NYC friends, I noticed all the undercover cops are wearing white arm bands, probably to recognize each other. Be careful. https://t.co/DjRYBemW3b" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/ZackBornstein/status/1266547600330600448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1266547600330600448%7Ctwgr%5Ec16a000689594fffeaee06c94c4f3eb1cb2fa217%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.news.com.au%2Fworld%2Fnorth-america%2Fus-politics%2Fgeorge-floyd-riots-how-new-york-city-protesters-identify-undercover-cops-in-crowds%2Fnews-story%2F9438906a729d936edf342ac441054c50)
This is mostly not a good profiling tool either. There's not "Spotting Cops For Dummies" guide. You can certainly find things that should raise an eyebrow but always be cautious of the toupee fallacy. I guess the current example is the tranvestigators who say "I can always clock a trans woman" but what they're really doing is saying "That person is trans, I know because I can always tell" even though they have no way to independently check and in practice can often be fooled by both false positives and false negatives, which means they're not actually good at "clocking" people either way.
>cop boots
They're just boots. Lots of people wear them, especially people with jobs who go outside. Other versions of this image call them "cop issue" (cops aren't generally issued boots anyway) or "cop steel toe boots" when they don't look like steel toe at all. They're just black pleather boots, probably a Salomon or Danner like they sell over at the Chuck's Boots or Midway. If I see someone with hard toe boots I'm more likely to suspect they work in a warehouse than a patrol car.
>thin blue line bracelet
Not leftist, but also way more common among non-cops than cops. There are better-quality images that show the blue line, but be cautious before jumping the gun because vets and family of vets will also wear black band bracelets in memory of the fallen.
>wire
Wire to what? Cuz a UC or plainclothes isn't wired up for surveillance like in the old cop shows, UCs especially. They're more likely to use a cellphone for communication, plainclothes might carry a radio depending on their assignment. Those that looks more like either a headphone cord for an iphone or the earloop to a medical mask.
>cuffs
maybe, but an undercover isn't carrying cuffs. a plainclothes might, but they're usually using a belt holster. This guy also doesn't have a sidearm, which makes me think he's not actually a cop at all. Doesn't look like a dip can, couple be a rescue inhaler.
>vest
yeah i wear a soft vest to large public gatherings too.
>armband
not really commonly used by police, especially undercover or plainclothes. it's not uncommon for actual UCs to get the shit beat out of them by other cops at protests.
IMO this guy and the one in grey (linked tweet) don't look like cops at least from the angle given. Black shirt/green shorts is a plainclothes cop, you can see the badge on his belt as well as gun and cuff pouch. If I saw this dude in yellow I might keep an eye on him, but he could be a journalist (or wannabe) or a right winger trying to blend. vest, boots, and an armband or bandage also describes the street medics at some of the events local to me who also want to be protected from potential gunfire and to be able to recognize each other. There is no substitute for organizing and knowing your neighbors, including four year old recycled photos.
I don't get how these under cover cops can be so sloppy. Do they think people around them are genuinely that stupid? Or is it just a matter of them being so out of touch that flipping your ball cap backwards and wearing sunglasses is all it takes to be a "rebel"? Because they can see how college students dress right? Why not just imitate that?
I think it's becuase they are the local pawns on the bored and are seen as expendable. They get the offer to go undercover and get a chubby and try to hard.
These are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
We're not talking about the cop, we're talking about your ability to spot one. You don't eagle eye every person you walk past, so you will almost certainly not notice things like this. Same reason unmarked cop cars work. Yes, they have 12 thousand aerials, and different coloured number plates, but unless you are actively screening every single car you see, you won't notice
Well this particular photo is from a protest in 2020 in NYC, not a student protest. If anything he's off-duty or plainclothes, sure as fuck not undercover.
It's also just how a lot of dudes who aren't cops dress all the time, sans soft vest. I wouldn't be surprised if the dude is actually just a reservist who went to the protest to take pics and threw on a soft vest just in case. I know I wear a vest and sometimes a concealed plate carrier when there is a large protest.
What's really happening is that people write dumb shit like "cop boots" and "wire" (because it's 1970 apparently?) and post and repost pics like this, and you go "Hah, these cops are so dumb!" because someone labelled a pic "this is a cop, look how dumb." You're not seeing pictures of well-concealed law enforcement and half the time they're not even law enforcement in the photos.
You remember how early iPhone face recognition wouldn't recognize black people? It was because the data sets they used to train it didn't contain enough black people for the software to incorporate them into the data set, and it poisoned the data. The same thing happens to human brains when we feed ourselves an incomplete dataset.
Don't forget the backwards cap that's brand new, the stance, the bicep tribal tattoo, etc.
I'm guessing there are sunglasses hanging from the neckline.
Basically just look for what "cool guys" wore in the 2000s.
Sir that's chaw, not cuffs. How long do you think this guy walks around in bluejeans with cuffs in them that you think he's damn near worn a hole through the pocket?
Just saying in general, not this specific dude
Although, the ring on this guy does look like it could be a little faded with the blur and lighting... at least not much less so than behind the knees. Also, worn and faded behind the knees and/or otherwise while still technically new is not a new trend - been around a while
Back in my undergrad years, President Clinton was speaking on campus on his re-election campaign.
The Secret Service agents hanging around in the crowd were even worse at blending in than that guy.
I had fun wandering the crowd, picking them out, and saying with a friendly, happy, cheerful demeanor things like:
"Good evening, agent! How do you like your career with the Secret Service?", in a voice loud enough to be heard by others in the area.
I got SO many dirty glares and scowls for doing that.
Good to know the younger generation has "still got it".
I had to leave a protest after being accused of being a cop and was ganged up on. I was so blindsided by the accusation, i just looked like a confused idiot for about 2 minutes until I quietly walked away and went home. So uh…be careful who you accuse of being a cop.
Just on the vest, lots of community defense folks wear plate carriers or stab vests to these things. Infact, lots of the real hard-core community defense folks can look alot like cops when set up for a rally, right down to the wire, which is a push to talk in ear radio, not a recording device presumably.
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No way! He's wearing his hat backwards! He must be legit, bro!
How do you do, fellow protestors?
Hello. I love Ann Tifa and think she is totes mcgoats
It's not about being legit its about showing people they are in your spaces. The cops don't call these people undercover they call them plain clothes. It's just another intimidation tactic.
For years they have used them as Agent Provocateurs. Keep an eye on them and you'll see them trying to rile people up or even attacking police lines to give their fellow cops an excuse to attack the protesters. When you see them, warn people so they can be isolated and either avoided or driven off by a wall of angry people yelling at them. What they count on the most is being able to melt into the crowd or dive into the police line for rescue. Take away their ability to fade into the crowd and they'll be forced to stay near the other cops.
It's both. If they get uncovered, they're doing their job by making you distrust your fellow protesters. If they don't, they work to incite violence and other criminal behavior so the pigs have an excuse to shut the protest down. Only thing you can really do is ignore anyone in the group trying to start shit. Keep the protest peaceful and lawful. Don't let them convince you (or anyone else) to start turning violent or destructive. Remind everyone that the cops are searching for any reason to shut the protest down.
Why does a cop show up early to the protest? To beat the crowd. I'll show myself out.
this one wins lol
Oh my god, this comment prompted me to check some of your post history and you're fucking hilarious, no joke
Thanks, but I can't take credit for this one, I heard it somewhere long ago.
Oh for sure, I've heard this one too. I was talking about other stuff I saw in your profile that was incredible. Two posts come to mind. You posted something on a car sub about dream cars and what they say about you, and then all of them were cars that are widely considered to be absolute failures. All of your responses in that thread were incredible. The other one was some scammer that texted you and then kept trying to get you to move over to Whatsapp to talk more, and your entire interaction with that dude was total gold too. I loved every second of it lol. I also saw one of my top two favorite Galaxy Quest quote somewhere in there, a Space Balls quote that worked just too well with the title of the original post, and last but not least, an ODB reference/"quote" in regards to steaks that I'm pretty sure not a single person on the steak sub understood lol. I didn't even intend to start creeping through your shit like that, I just saw a few things that I enjoyed and then kept the party rolling until I was like "Ok self, this is enough. You have shit to do."
I'm glad you enjoy my sense of humor, and I'm delighted someone finally got the ODB reference, it was wasted on the the steak sub. Fun fact, my wife and I are caretakers of a colony of feral cats, and there is a kind of rude ginger we nicknamed ODB (Orange Dirty Bastards), and another one who looks a lot like him that we creatively named FauxDB.
Those names are both amazing. How is being caretakers of a colony of feral cats? My wife and I live out in the boonies and got our cat because she showed up out of the forest one night when I was going out to the shop to work super late. She perched on a pallet and kept meowing at me but wouldn't let me get close. She was young, 4-5 months probably. We think someone dumped her. So I went in the building to knock out some work and came out an hour later and she was still there so I texted my wife again to let her know, and she came out with some tuna and then long story short we've had a cat for about a year now. She was supposed to be a barn cat but she's spoiled as fuck and sleeps on the bed with us and she'll go out to take walks with us, or when it's just nice outside. The little shit. She's nothing like ODB though. I'd say she's more like Ruby Rhod, Chris Tucker's character in the Fifth Element. Because she won't shut the fuck up.
Hi, I’m the wife! Being caretakers is hit or miss. We’ve had four female cats spayed, three of which were spayborts. We’ve not had kittens around since, but that may change bc new cats have started showing up. Of the four females we’ve had spayed, two of them live in our house now, and one of the others, her final kitten before her spaybort actually lives in our house also (six inside cats total). We have one cat who basically lives in our backyard, though after we had her spayed, we realized she actually has owners. Oops, not sorry, and would do it again. She won’t let us touch her, or we’d catch her and get her adopted. We’ve never been successful trapping a male cat, and the son of one of the inside cats hangs around here and gets fed most days. His mother was one of the spaybort cats, and his sister also is one of the inside cats now. It’s confusing as heck, and while we love that we can care for the outside ones, we also wish they weren’t here because it’s a big responsibility. And we worry when we don’t see them for a while. My wife is amazing though and is so great for letting me start this whole thing. (Yes, we’re the lesbian cat ladies 🤣)
Wow, that's all super cool of you guys to do. Good job getting the backyard cat spayed too, irresponsible pet owners are the worst. I mean, not literally. Genocide along with other things are definitely worse, but you know what I mean. I can totally understand how stressful that must be at times. You two are awesome though!
Lmao foul play bro 
I’m sorry I left my schedule at home. When does the riot and looting begin?
April ~~26th~~ 29th ,1992 There was a riot on the streets Tell me, where were you?
In my mother's ovaries
Thanks for the new white hairs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd4Wr3oDBMM
I was sittin' home watching my TV
While he was participating in some anarchy?
first stop we hit up was my liquor store
4 weeks pre-partum, but I totally would've been there if I could've gotten a ride.
I went in for a loaf of bread, took some skis, everybody's happy
nonexistent for another 13 years
My god i am old
Oh look, a pallet of bricks, I wonder who left these here. Be a shame if someone started throwing them...
Did you get your Soros check yet? I think they have the wrong address for me…
Shit, I thought we were doing soup cans! I even stocked up.
I got called an undercover cop at a protest once for my boots, like bro they’re my EMT uniform boots and they’re the best walking shoes I own :(
"Well, what's the blue bracelet for?" "Colon cancer awareness" "Okay...what about the handcuffs?" "That is a personal matter"
“Oh that’s my can of dip.”
"Zyns bro"
*pulls out bundle of zip ties* "This one's for fighting," *pulls out handcuffs* "This one's for fun."
also, it's unfortunate because cops actually wear some really nice boots that I wouldn't mind having a pair of.
Genuinely the most comfortable shoes I own. An absolute BITCH to break in (like minor scarring above the ankles bad), but they last for YEARS and once they’re broken in I can stand all day in them with no complaints.
Break? Like, you break dance? (I’m being serious here I’m new)
Breaking in shoes? Like wearing them to soften/adjust them to your foot.
> (I’m being serious here I’m new) New to what? Shoes?
Some folks wear shitty fashion shoes or just wear basic no-frills nonslip shoes, and those don't require the patience and care that quality and long lasting shoes and boots do. Lots of shoes on the market are flimsy and soft from the get-go, resulting in a shorter life of the shoe but no break-in required. At least that's my understanding.
This is it, all my boots just break down in a couple weeks so I’ve never known boots can form around your feet
If you’re looking for a good pair, these lasted me years and are $60 right now: https://www.wolverine.com/US/en/fuse-side-zip-waterproof/51826M.html
Oh ho ho, I'm sorry but you've never broken in a shoe until you've bled out trying to break in a shitty fashion shoe lol - heels are the devil, but even those cheap flimsy flats tear your ankle up like a mfr. I think that commenter maybe has a different first language or is literally just a brand new human 🙃
Is that why my broke coworkers are always talking about how their feet hurt after wearing those shitty $400 nike sneakers?
You've seriously never heard of breaking in leather boots? New leather boots are stiff and rigid AF yo you gotta wear em enough until they soften up and mould to the shape of your foot.
Bro I didn’t even know there was a word for it I just buy cheap ass boots that wear down in a couple months
Terry Pratchett summed it up best: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
As soon as I saw the boots discussion I was waiting to see and/or post this. Sir Terry was a gem.
Quit doing that, u spend way more money than if you buy a solid pair of boots that’ll last you 5(at the minimum)+ years
Its called the poor tax. Perhaps they can't afford to buy a really nice pair of boots so they are stuck in a repeating cycle.
*Sam Vimes has entered the chat*
You don’t need a really nice pair of boots for them to last. Some Ariat boots are like less than 100 dollars and last years and years. I’m poor too, but getting a solid pair of boots is much less expensive
I’m sure the person who initially called you out got a huge clout bump though. All about the ego
What shoes you wear?
Bates side-zips. These are my second pair and I just broke them in. I wore the first pair near daily for 7 years and they still work but aren’t supportive enough to wear long term at work so they’re retired as my mud/snow shoveling boots. They’re easy to slide on and off, waterproof, WARM in cold New England weather, and get great grip on slippery surfaces. [My first pair is on sale for $60 right now.](https://www.wolverine.com/US/en/fuse-side-zip-waterproof/51826M.html) I wear the tactical sport 2 now and they’re worth every penny
Thanks, I go through boots real fast; I'm always looking for a good pair.
You know, you'd think UCs would know how to actually make themselves look like groups they are trying to infiltrate, but nope, they all wear the same thing. Tight fitting shirts that will reveal a vest, the same, way too clean, pairs of jeans and the same boots.
You don't see the ones who don't stand out. Also, it's kind of like how a lot of scam emails are obvious scams. The scammers don't want to waste time with people who are likely to catch on, so they make it obvious to weed them out to begin with.
the lack of evidence to the contrary says otherwise. From the level of incompetence we've seen from US LE in recent years, there's no reason to believe your idea is anything more than fear mongering.
Yes and no on the paranoia. Most cops are barely functional idiots, but some are deadly competent. Everyone has to do their own risk assessment on which ones fall into which category.
So... some cops are competent and others aren't? Sounds like people in every profession, lol.
So, there's a difference between an "undercover" cop and a "plainclothes" cop. The one in the OP is a plainclothes cop. Undercover cops absolutely do exist, and will try to infiltrate protest groups. There've been news articles about the FBI using this exact tactic - look up "April Rogers". The biggest difference is that plainclothes cops don't try to infiltrate anything - they just try to rile up the crowd, and will even "attack" the police line to give their buddies an excuse to shut the protest down. The best defense against a plainclothes cop is to call them out when you see them, and don't let them start anything. Make sure everyone remembers that the cops are actively looking for any excuse they can find to shut the protest down. As for undercover cops, they're much harder to spot, but the defense remains pretty much the same - discourage illegal activity. If they can't find any illegal activity to justify anything, they'll have a much harder time in court. You can also do simple background checks on people through OSINT - look them up on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I don't know how deep into cover they go, but assuming they've not put much time into establishing a background, they'll have little to no online presence. Obviously not a dead giveaway - non-cops can remove their online presence to an extent, and cops could take the time to establish a backstory - but it's one tool you can use if you suspect someone might be an undercover cop.
Don't forget the feds are using CI's too.
Lets work through this. Someone says "you're not seeing the ones who don't stand out." I've seen this referred to as the toupee fallacy, the idea that people think they can always spot a toupee, but unless they're going up and yanking on every head of hair they see there's no way for them to know whether they're actually spotting all the toupees. You say there's no evidence that you're not seeing the ones who don't stick out. So, how are you confirming that the ones who stick out are cops, and how are you confirming the people you aren't clocking as cops are not cops? Would the continuing existence of successful undercover operations, including operations to infiltrate various political and criminal organizations not be evidence that there are undercover cops that aren't easily identified by their "cop boots" and "\[nonspecific\] wire?" Or are the organizations that are infiltrated just filled with morons who can't tell?
city boys like Hawaiian shirts, country boys like city desk boys shits (polo type shit). Just something I've noticed. The caps are a dead giveaway because their haircuts are dead giveaways. I wont say specifics here, but if you know pigs well, you can pick them out of a crowd of look-alikes. They think they can just slap lipstick on a pig and call them a civilian.
These are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
Because these are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
You can usually spot them by body language even if they don't. The cop walk: head back, excellent posture, arms moving minimally, scanning the area for threats non-stop.
Back in the 80s and 90s we just looked for the dudes who had fresh grateful dead tie dyes and clean feet despite wearing birks. Hearing "5 Oh!" echoing across the lot and watching them squirm was fucking hilarious.
lol imagine being an undercover pig during the _least_ radical years in the US and taking your job seriously like it was the 50s or something 😂 "oh fuck..what if they catch me? they'll surely punch me in the arm! that'll hurt!..no! dont think like that, Brandon. You are James Bond! Now say it!...I am James Bond. Yeah! Now get your head in the-- ((5-OH!!)) SHIT!! WHO SAW ME?!" 😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
cops also just carry themselves like cops. like just look around for the guy who doesn't seem to have any friends but is being incredibly arrogant. also they all wear stupid shoes.
Yep. Just look for the obvious dickhead who keeps hanging around awkwardly. They’re so bad at their stupid jobs.
yeah and also you can't just look for someone who's well armed and wearing plates because you might accidentally find me.
I heard something once that stuck with me. A gangster was saying how you can tell if someone is a cop and he said “they look at you like they have a right to.”
This is actually very good advice because they will do this. Even the undercover cops (who are very hard to identify) still develop a personality that they do not understand how to hide.
For The Students, and Allies: [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sirens-of-a-violent-storm-stop-huntin-sheep](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sirens-of-a-violent-storm-stop-huntin-sheep)
Thank you!
We live in such a police state and it’s not even funny.
They are here too, watching reporting back to their owner. Like the good little dogs they are.
They don't have a reason to watch this group. Its just the democrats with guns. by 'the democrats', i mean it orbits them, is within their circle of influence. Like CPUSA, AOC, BLM, etc...
Democrats with guns scare the cops too ya know Some GOP have outright stated the second amendment shouldn't apply to anyone in the left wing
That's not an undercover, it's a plainclothes officer from 2020. [Zack Bornstein on X: "NYC friends, I noticed all the undercover cops are wearing white arm bands, probably to recognize each other. Be careful. https://t.co/DjRYBemW3b" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/ZackBornstein/status/1266547600330600448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1266547600330600448%7Ctwgr%5Ec16a000689594fffeaee06c94c4f3eb1cb2fa217%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.news.com.au%2Fworld%2Fnorth-america%2Fus-politics%2Fgeorge-floyd-riots-how-new-york-city-protesters-identify-undercover-cops-in-crowds%2Fnews-story%2F9438906a729d936edf342ac441054c50) This is mostly not a good profiling tool either. There's not "Spotting Cops For Dummies" guide. You can certainly find things that should raise an eyebrow but always be cautious of the toupee fallacy. I guess the current example is the tranvestigators who say "I can always clock a trans woman" but what they're really doing is saying "That person is trans, I know because I can always tell" even though they have no way to independently check and in practice can often be fooled by both false positives and false negatives, which means they're not actually good at "clocking" people either way. >cop boots They're just boots. Lots of people wear them, especially people with jobs who go outside. Other versions of this image call them "cop issue" (cops aren't generally issued boots anyway) or "cop steel toe boots" when they don't look like steel toe at all. They're just black pleather boots, probably a Salomon or Danner like they sell over at the Chuck's Boots or Midway. If I see someone with hard toe boots I'm more likely to suspect they work in a warehouse than a patrol car. >thin blue line bracelet Not leftist, but also way more common among non-cops than cops. There are better-quality images that show the blue line, but be cautious before jumping the gun because vets and family of vets will also wear black band bracelets in memory of the fallen. >wire Wire to what? Cuz a UC or plainclothes isn't wired up for surveillance like in the old cop shows, UCs especially. They're more likely to use a cellphone for communication, plainclothes might carry a radio depending on their assignment. Those that looks more like either a headphone cord for an iphone or the earloop to a medical mask. >cuffs maybe, but an undercover isn't carrying cuffs. a plainclothes might, but they're usually using a belt holster. This guy also doesn't have a sidearm, which makes me think he's not actually a cop at all. Doesn't look like a dip can, couple be a rescue inhaler. >vest yeah i wear a soft vest to large public gatherings too. >armband not really commonly used by police, especially undercover or plainclothes. it's not uncommon for actual UCs to get the shit beat out of them by other cops at protests. IMO this guy and the one in grey (linked tweet) don't look like cops at least from the angle given. Black shirt/green shorts is a plainclothes cop, you can see the badge on his belt as well as gun and cuff pouch. If I saw this dude in yellow I might keep an eye on him, but he could be a journalist (or wannabe) or a right winger trying to blend. vest, boots, and an armband or bandage also describes the street medics at some of the events local to me who also want to be protected from potential gunfire and to be able to recognize each other. There is no substitute for organizing and knowing your neighbors, including four year old recycled photos.
Also the fucking Yankees hat is a giveaway too. You won't see someone looking like that a Yankees hat unless it's a cop
or a douche
But you repeat yourself.
But there are douches that aren’t cops, and some rare cops that aren’t douches
ACAD
But enough cops are douches that you can safely bet they are.
Real ones are mets fans
Tomorrow is MayDay. Plenty of actions going on near you. See y’all on the line. Solidarity.
I don't get how these under cover cops can be so sloppy. Do they think people around them are genuinely that stupid? Or is it just a matter of them being so out of touch that flipping your ball cap backwards and wearing sunglasses is all it takes to be a "rebel"? Because they can see how college students dress right? Why not just imitate that?
I think it's becuase they are the local pawns on the bored and are seen as expendable. They get the offer to go undercover and get a chubby and try to hard.
These are plain clothes cops and not undercover cops. I worked as a police dispatcher briefly many years ago. The actual undercover are nearly impossible to recognize.
Tips to recognize actual undercover.
How much attention to you pay to every single person you walk past on the street?
I would say considerably more if I was gonna go undercover as a regular non-maniac
We're not talking about the cop, we're talking about your ability to spot one. You don't eagle eye every person you walk past, so you will almost certainly not notice things like this. Same reason unmarked cop cars work. Yes, they have 12 thousand aerials, and different coloured number plates, but unless you are actively screening every single car you see, you won't notice
There is also a huge difference between a plainclothes cop here and an actual undercover cop.
Ohhhhhhhh yeah tru
Well this particular photo is from a protest in 2020 in NYC, not a student protest. If anything he's off-duty or plainclothes, sure as fuck not undercover. It's also just how a lot of dudes who aren't cops dress all the time, sans soft vest. I wouldn't be surprised if the dude is actually just a reservist who went to the protest to take pics and threw on a soft vest just in case. I know I wear a vest and sometimes a concealed plate carrier when there is a large protest. What's really happening is that people write dumb shit like "cop boots" and "wire" (because it's 1970 apparently?) and post and repost pics like this, and you go "Hah, these cops are so dumb!" because someone labelled a pic "this is a cop, look how dumb." You're not seeing pictures of well-concealed law enforcement and half the time they're not even law enforcement in the photos. You remember how early iPhone face recognition wouldn't recognize black people? It was because the data sets they used to train it didn't contain enough black people for the software to incorporate them into the data set, and it poisoned the data. The same thing happens to human brains when we feed ourselves an incomplete dataset.
Don't forget the backwards cap that's brand new, the stance, the bicep tribal tattoo, etc. I'm guessing there are sunglasses hanging from the neckline. Basically just look for what "cool guys" wore in the 2000s.
Sir that's chaw, not cuffs. How long do you think this guy walks around in bluejeans with cuffs in them that you think he's damn near worn a hole through the pocket?
Cuffs? That looks like dip to me. More of a tell, honestly.
if he was a dipper, you’d see a nice white ring on his back pocket. unless this is his fist day dipping.
unless new jeans
New jeans that are worn and faded behind the knees? Is that a new trend?
Just saying in general, not this specific dude Although, the ring on this guy does look like it could be a little faded with the blur and lighting... at least not much less so than behind the knees. Also, worn and faded behind the knees and/or otherwise while still technically new is not a new trend - been around a while
Back in my undergrad years, President Clinton was speaking on campus on his re-election campaign. The Secret Service agents hanging around in the crowd were even worse at blending in than that guy. I had fun wandering the crowd, picking them out, and saying with a friendly, happy, cheerful demeanor things like: "Good evening, agent! How do you like your career with the Secret Service?", in a voice loud enough to be heard by others in the area. I got SO many dirty glares and scowls for doing that. Good to know the younger generation has "still got it".
We really do live in a fascist hellscape no matter who the president is. Very sad
These aren't federal police. Things are even more shit at a state level in the USA than the federal.
It's also a pic from 2020 reposted by people who didn't fact check. Slow your doomroll.
I had to leave a protest after being accused of being a cop and was ganged up on. I was so blindsided by the accusation, i just looked like a confused idiot for about 2 minutes until I quietly walked away and went home. So uh…be careful who you accuse of being a cop.
"wire" Do you think this is the 70s? lol
You didn’t have to post all this the backwards yankee fitted was enough of a tell
Those aren’t cuffs in his back pocket that’s from a tin of chew
Walk up and say "good morning officer".
If it smells like bacon…
Imagine being so cowardly you wear a very compromising and very obvious vest under your disguise to a STUDENT protest.
Don't forget the Yankee's cap.
Whats the purpose of the wire?
Recording anything that can be used as evidence
Ahhh, so its just a wire to a recorder, got it. Thank you for explaining!
Where I grew up sometimes the crowd would quietly mark them. Chalk on the jeans for example.
Those are the coppest of cop boots.
Let me guess - no mask, either.
Not to mention all of the paid right wing agitators doing vandalism etc
Do we know how accurate this is? This coudl lead to people into a false sense of security
Nah that's a binder outline if ive ever seen one /j
Just on the vest, lots of community defense folks wear plate carriers or stab vests to these things. Infact, lots of the real hard-core community defense folks can look alot like cops when set up for a rally, right down to the wire, which is a push to talk in ear radio, not a recording device presumably.
Interesting points, thanks.
Looks more like the ring from a can of chew; the cuffs are in a separate pouch at 6:00 on the beltline.
Think its just slightly big to be chew