Yazata
Valued Senior Member
To not give the police the orders they needed to control the riots they are just as guilty of inciting the riots as are those who participate. Now more building are on fire and because the police have been ordered to back away even more looting is going on.
I agree with you that the Baltimore Mayor and Police Commissioner share huge responsibility for what happened. I don't blame the rank-and-file police. They have already been painted as murderous racists bent on killing young black men by an unholy alliance of the media and their own superiors. Any use of force against violent street-thugs was effectively ruled out before anything had even started. The police were apparently just ordered to stand by and watch the riot, as the Mayor told the cameras that she had tried to give "space" to those who wanted to "destroy", and expressed her opinion that "peaceful" protests can sometimes result in property damage.
Today she is denying that she said those things, which are on video, and insisting that the media is 'twisting' her words. But I'm willing to bet that it accurately reflects what was being said in City Hall and the kind of orders that police were given.
I expect that many Baltimore police were totally demoralized last night, thinking "Fuck this, if this is the kind of city that the rulers of Baltimore want, then they can watch it burn. I'm not risking injury and my police pension to try to stop arson and looting, if my own superiors don't have my back."
How exactly does looting and burning stores who are black owned show anything other than disrespect for their own neighborhoods?
Then the media and the so-called social "scientists" will 'discover' that black neighborhoods have fewer stores, amenities and jobs than other neighborhoods and call that evidence of "racism".
Why does burning down family owned stores help the rioters cause of bringing justice to the person who was killed?
It doesn't. The looted and burned businesses are targets of opportunity, very tempting to the kind of young men who are used to getting what they want by force and intimidation.
The National Guard should have been brought into help stop this before it got out of hand but it looks like the mayor doesn't think so as her city goes up in flames and looters take everything they want.
The National Guard are all for show. They are a military force, probably with experience in places like Afghanistan. They fight wars, they aren't trained riot police. I guess that calling them out for riots is supposed to show that the government is taking resolute action, suggesting that the rulers are prepared to employ military force against the rioters.
Except that everyone already knows that they aren't. Those National Guardsmen have doubtless been given very stringent rules of engagement and are forbidden to discharge their weapons except in the most dire circumstances. So if the Baltimore police were bad, just standing around watching arson and looting take place without intervening, expect the Guard to be twice as bad. Don't expect them to shoot looters or even make arrests. They are just there in hopes that they will look scary and intimidating.
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