Baltimore Protests and Riots

[The Romulan Republic]

Simon_Jester, if you feel that waging guerrilla warfare against police would be in any way justified, you are a lunatic. And if you express support for such actions here, you are an advocate of terrorism. I truly hope I am misunderstanding your sentiments, and I apologize if that is the case, but I'm not sure how it could be.

I thought you were smarter than this. But its not just the Right that is turning towards bullets in the streets. I really fear that, with elements of both the Left and the Right sympathizing with violence, we will see a civil war in the near future. And if, God forbid, it happens, if America one day comes to resemble Syria and Iraq, those who cheered on such a future will be deserving of more scorn and condemnation than my knowledge of the English language is capable of expressing.

Broomstick, you are right. But I see people going beyond merely understanding the situation to condoning it.

Edited.

[Broomstick]

True - but then, these sorts of situations tend to attract extreme viewpoints.

[The Romulan Republic]

Which is why its all the more important to resist the tendency towards extremism at a time like this. I do not want my country to be a country where politics and law is decided with bullets and fire.

[Napoleon the Clown]

You see police denying diabetics they've arrested access to insulin. Each of those words? Different links, different instances of diabetics being denied their insulin.

You want to know another way to deny diabetics access to their insulin? Break into the local pharmacy, loot everything of value, and then set the fucking building on fire.

That CVS pharmacy just opened recently, and was the culmination of many peoples' efforts to bring new businesses and services into an impoverished area. And then in a few hours of insanity and utter stupidity, people burned it to the ground.

Does anyone honestly think that that store is going to re-open? Or that any new grocery stores or business would move into the area? Why would any company invest money in a place where business get torched and looted?

I'm sorry, aren't the police constitutionally bound to not engage in cruel and unusual punishment? Aren't they constitutionally bound to provide life-saving care?

The people torching stores and destroying businesses are fucking criminals, and I never said destroying the property of innocent people was right. I even said that there are people who are just using the situation as an excuse to get their fill of destruction. But you can't acknowledge that, you can't acknowledge that for some people getting violent is the only thing they think can work at this point. You don't have to see it from their point of view, so you don't fucking care about how the police treat them.

There are a lot of desperate people out there that feel their voices are not being valued. People that feel their livelihood is under threat of being destroyed, that their very lives are at risk because of how the system currently is.

You want to know another way to threaten and destroy peoples' livelihoods? How about breaking into a looting a liquor store? Maybe more than one! Or maybe break into a local mall, drive cars up to the entrance, and grab anything you can.

These are local business, owned by locals, that likely employ people from the neighborhood. Way to stick it to the man!

Again, there is no excuse for the behavior of these people. Listing "explanations" for their actions or statements about how the rioting is "understandable" while buildings are still smoldering and National Guardsmen are patrolling the streets of my city is probably the most counter-productive thing to do. It plays right into the hands of people who oppose serious police reform or efforts to stop police brutality (Seriously, pick any conservative website you want. I can guess what they are all reporting on without even checking.)

You fucking idiot, I never said destroying other people's property was right. I was explaining why some might think violence is the only thing that might work at this point.

You're too stuck in a privileged position to realize that for many people, the police are nothing more than a legalized gang. If you wanna talk about "thugs" let's go for a more apt group to finger: The police. They run what amounts to a protection racket. They can harass, intimidate, assault, and even kill people with near impunity. If you don't think that's justification for getting pissed the fuck off, you're a blindingly stupid person.

But I'm not inclined to say you can't understand why some may turn to violence. Your focus on just a few things while ignoring everything else I posted suggests to me that you don't have the guts to say that you feel as though people have no right to be angry at the entire criminal justice system. Either you have your head too far up your own ass to look at what happens on a near-constant basis, or you just don't care about them because they aren't in your income bracket. They're just lazy, stupid, good-for-nothings. And no, I'm not implying it's a racial matter for you. I'm saying that it's all about a view that because they're poor, they don't matter. That you believe they wouldn't be poor if they were as good as you.


Saying "I understand why there are people that would do this" isn't the same as condoning it. It's called empathy.

[KroLazuxy_87]

Seeking the causes of a bad situation is not the same as condoning the situation. Seeking out reasons and risk factors for people turning to crime is not the same thing as excusing criminal acts.

If you don't try to find out the factors leading to crime then you will never solve crime and may inadvertently take actions that lead to a greater level of crime.

THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

This thread reads like a back and forth of "The rioters are pieces of shit and should condemned" followed by "Yes, they should be, fuck them. How about we figure out why they're rioting? OH! Here's why they're pissed off." Rinse and repeat.

I haven't seen a single post saying that the violence or vandalism was a good thing or worthy of approval. Violence is never the answer (unless Nazis) but that doesn't mean when violence happens we shouldn't look into the root causes.

[cmdrjones]

Only white people are allowed to revolt in this country it seems.

Can't take my guns away oh no. I need my M4 for home defense just trust me. Tired of being suppressed by years of institutional racism well too bad that sucks. Don't make me live in fear for a week with your violence! I don't care that minorities live every day of their entire lives in fear of racist police, or becoming gang fodder after being trapped in the ghettos. But that Obama man i'm just saying we may have to do something if he dares to make me sign a form indicating I have no history of crime or mental illness before I purchase my Barrett.

Human rights are not for the criminals or mentally ill? You hater, you!

[cmdrjones]

* apparently for eyeballing a police officer and then running away, cause if he's running away he must be guilty of something right?

But he was guilty of something. Carrying a concealed switchblade carries a three year sentence in Maryland.

Yeah that's a crime, but owning a home arsenal isn't.

I apologize for my above post, I didn't know you were Korean. My bad, let me guess, Hirobumi Ito should've just been left to do whatever he wanted eh?

[cmdrjones]

Protesters tend to confront a specific topic or group. So... they'll speak out against a corrupt political system, or march in protest of an unpopular law, or yell insults at the police. They might even throw rocks and worse at the police.

Rioters, on the other hand, just destroy what is around them. If the police are there they will be targeted but if not they'll smash cars, windows, start fires, etc.

Looters are thieves, plain and simple. They take stuff that isn't theirs and run away with it.

Baltimore has been subjected to all three recently. Unfortunately, the latter two groups often use the actions of a the first group as a cover for themselves.

Holy shit.... we agree. (This is becoming a trend)

[cmdrjones]

I suppose its possible that I misunderstood it. I get edgy about this sort of thing. Far too many people seem to have turned their backs on peace, justice, and the law. I can't tell you how many people I've seen in recent years, on both the Left and the Right, leaning towards political violence. It disturbs and frightens me and perhaps I overreact sometimes as a result.

Edit: Still, that bottom excerpt seemed like a pretty unambiguous indictment of those who are calling for peace.

To recognize that the time for peace has, in all likelihood passed away does NOT mean that those who recognize it enjoy violence... they may predict it, or even condone it, but I doubt very much that too many who are acquainted with it, actually enjoy it.

Let me put it this way: Which is the higher virtue, Justice or Peace?

North Korea is VERY peaceful.... it's kinda short on Justice though, no? If a force was to invade North Korea with the righteous goal of establishing Justice, I don't think any here would cheer the violence, what we would be cheering (I would anyway) is the eventual establishement of Justice.

[The Romulan Republic]

North Korea isn't peaceful. Its just that the violence is going all one way (the state committing violence against the people).

Edit: Also, America has gone through much worse times in its history than now. I'll take the civil rights we enjoy today over any other era in American history. In light of that, it seems terribly premature to be calling for a bloody revolt.

[KroLazuxy_87]

Here's an interesting take on why some of the early reporting regarding the numbers of rioters was so high.

One teacher's Facebook post describes what she saw Baltimore cops doing before the riots broke out.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon_Jester, if you feel that waging guerrilla warfare against police would be in any way justified, you are a lunatic. And if you express support for such actions here, you are an advocate of terrorism. I truly hope I am misunderstanding your sentiments, and I apologize if that is the case, but I'm not sure how it could be.

Will you PLEASE learn some mental flexibility? All this black/white thinking and kneejerk overreaction is getting tiresome. Especially when it leads you to conclude that people must be stupid because clearly they think stupid things because clearly the only interpretation of their words is the stupid one because clearly you can't be bothered to back up and think "wait, what else could he have meant?"

To spell it out as simply as possible:

For people who have long felt oppressed and tyrannized by the 'police' set over them to rebel against those police... That is at least an understandable human reaction. I would not condemn it strongly because I can understand how people believe they have been tyrannized, and may seek to rebel against that tyranny.

I think that, tactically, this is a bad idea, that it should not happen. That it would be bad for society and counterproductive.

But it's hard for me to say "it is EVILWRONGBAD to use violence against a violent authority that has resisted efforts to reform it peacefully!" Even if I disagree... I try to give the powerless the benefit of the doubt in why they decide to fight the powerful.

Meanwhile, while I could at least comprehend the idea of urban blacks who rebel against the police specifically, when the criminal element among those same urban blacks destroys their own homes and businesses, that's a disaster all around and makes no sense and is not something that one can sympathize with.

You want to know another way to deny diabetics access to their insulin? Break into the local pharmacy, loot everything of value, and then set the fucking building on fire.

That CVS pharmacy just opened recently, and was the culmination of many peoples' efforts to bring new businesses and services into an impoverished area. And then in a few hours of insanity and utter stupidity, people burned it to the ground.

Does anyone honestly think that that store is going to re-open? Or that any new grocery stores or business would move into the area? Why would any company invest money in a place where business get torched and looted?

I'm sorry, aren't the police constitutionally bound to not engage in cruel and unusual punishment? Aren't they constitutionally bound to provide life-saving care?

The people torching stores and destroying businesses are fucking criminals, and I never said destroying the property of innocent people was right. I even said that there are people who are just using the situation as an excuse to get their fill of destruction. But you can't acknowledge that, you can't acknowledge that for some people getting violent is the only thing they think can work at this point. You don't have to see it from their point of view, so you don't fucking care about how the police treat them.[/quote]That sounds falsely attributed.

I mean, the problem here is that we have basically NO evidence that ANY of the looting and destruction is being carried out by people who 'think only violence can work...' So saying "you can't fault them for being violent! They're oppressed!" doesn't work.

People who get violent because they feel oppressed and think they have no options, and who are at all worthy of sympathy, target that violence, they don't indiscriminately lash out against their own community and make the plight of their own people worse.

Again, there is no excuse for the behavior of these people. Listing "explanations" for their actions or statements about how the rioting is "understandable" while buildings are still smoldering and National Guardsmen are patrolling the streets of my city is probably the most counter-productive thing to do. It plays right into the hands of people who oppose serious police reform or efforts to stop police brutality (Seriously, pick any conservative website you want. I can guess what they are all reporting on without even checking.)

You fucking idiot, I never said destroying other people's property was right. I was explaining why some might think violence is the only thing that might work at this point.

You're too stuck in a privileged position to realize that for many people, the police are nothing more than a legalized gang. If you wanna talk about "thugs" let's go for a more apt group to finger: The police. They run what amounts to a protection racket. They can harass, intimidate, assault, and even kill people with near impunity. If you don't think that's justification for getting pissed the fuck off, you're a blindingly stupid person.

Why is it that you're so quick to get angry when he implicitly says that the real problem is rioting, and go 'how DARE you accuse me of advocating rioting...' But then you have no problem making an equally shaky claim that he is endorsing not caring about whether the police act ethically or not?

Surely... if he isn't allowed to say anything that could possibly be misconstrued to mean an insult against you... you are obliged to not just arbitrarily make up random political views and attribute them to him on the basis of stereotyping.

Here's an interesting take on why some of the early reporting regarding the numbers of rioters was so high.

One teacher's Facebook post describes what she saw Baltimore cops doing before the riots broke out.

Although to be honest... when I was a teenager, denying me my ride would not have resulted in me throwing rocks and bottles at people.

I think in this case we can say that:

1) The police probably screwed up crowd control badly before so much rioting could even happen, AND

2) There are a significant number of people here who are using violence in situations where thinking and using words would be a lot smarter, and the result is that the violence is directed internally, damaging only the community that dishes out the violence.

[The Romulan Republic]

Will you PLEASE learn some mental flexibility? All this black/white thinking and kneejerk overreaction is getting tiresome.

Its true that I sometimes overreact. This is a touchy subject for me, but that's not a justification for inaccuracy.

As for black and white thinking, that depends on what you mean. I tend not to think people are all good or all bad, but I do think certain ideas are good or bad. I'm not a fan of moral relativism, and I make no apologies for that.

Especially when it leads you to conclude that people must be stupid because clearly they think stupid things because clearly the only interpretation of their words is the stupid one because clearly you can't be bothered to back up and think "wait, what else could he have meant?"

You said "If a faction of the protestors organized a serious, committed guerrilla underground devoted to waging urban warfare against a police force they see as an occupying army, and refrained from committing crimes against the populace, I would have very little to say against them except "In the long run I don't think this will work out for those guys."

This suggests that you have little or no moral objection to such a course of action. You may not be advocating it exactly, so I apologize for suggesting that you were. In hindsight, that was an error on my part. However, I still find the fact that you could find nothing more to say against such a course of action deeply disturbing and indicative of both a logical and moral deficiency.

To spell it out as simply as possible:

Don't condescend.

For people who have long felt oppressed and tyrannized by the 'police' set over them to rebel against those police... That is at least an understandable human reaction. I would not condemn it strongly because I can understand how people believe they have been tyrannized, and may seek to rebel against that tyranny.

It is understandable why many people in Iraq and Syria, having been raised in an impoverished society subject to western invasions and taught fundamentalist Islam from an early age, might join ISIS, behead people, and turn women into sex slaves. It is also understandable why many Germans, with their country in ruins, might embrace Nazism. That doesn't mean we can't or won't condemn it.

I think that, tactically, this is a bad idea, that it should not happen. That it would be bad for society and counterproductive.

Oh good. You're not completely insane.

But it's hard for me to say "it is EVILWRONGBAD to use violence against a violent authority that has resisted efforts to reform it peacefully!" Even if I disagree... I try to give the powerless the benefit of the doubt in why they decide to fight the powerful.

Whatever the motives are, the result is people getting hurt and society getting worse. That's enough reason for condemnation of the act, if not necessarily the people performing it.

Meanwhile, while I could at least comprehend the idea of urban blacks who rebel against the police specifically, when the criminal element among those same urban blacks destroys their own homes and businesses, that's a disaster all around and makes no sense and is not something that one can sympathize with.

Agreed.

[Dominus Atheos]

Man I love reading Free Republic, it's always so entertaining.

Are Obamaphones being used to mobilize the mobs?

This is total conjecture on my part, but as we watch all these cities going up in flame, and we see massive amounts of people showing up and being bussed in (quite organized), I'm wondering if all those Obamaphones are being used by the regime to text coordinates, instructions, etc. What else could explain these organized riots?

+http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3284202/posts

You heard it on Free Republic first folks, the Obama regime is using it's "Obamaphones", a program started under George Bush and funded by a bill originally signed into law by Ronald Reagan, to organize these riots.

Wake up sheeple!

[Grumman]

Oh no! Somebody, somewhere on the internet, said something stupid!

[Vendetta]

This is an unfortunate side effect of a riot. It always draws attention because it has a lot of attention-grabbing power.

If these riots weren't happening, Freddie Grey would just be another statistic and nobody would care.

Seriously, there's no other way to express the fact that US policing is fundamentally strucuturally broken as an institution. No, it's not a few "bad apples", it's a massive systemic failure that leads to mass death of the population, frequently unreported (some forces simply do not report their statistics for police homicide) and almost never punished.

US police kill the population at one hundred times the rate UK police do, twenty times the rate of Canadian police, and somehow nobody thinks this is a problem.

US Policing is broken, it is a far worse thing than a few riots and yet it will see no change or reform until anger over police actions is not confined to a few stores in one city being looted. When every inner city burns due to anger with police actions, then you might see change, but not until.

Peaceful protest won't accomplish anything because it doesn't make people sit up and pay attention.

[salm]

I think one shouldn´t condemn riots on the fact that they are "bad things". "Bad things" can be better than the alternative.
It´s a bit like voting. You get to chose between two or three assholes and one of these assholes is going to be your countries boss for the next few years so you try to make sure you get to be led by the least asshole.
Riots are "bad things" just like assholes but in some cases rioting might be better than not rioting.
So, like with most things you can not generalize riots.

[mr friendly guy]

Did the LA riots cause the state to hold another trial for the police who beat up Rodney King, a trial in which at least some of those police were found guilty? From memory the answer is yes, and in which case I would be forced to admit riots sometimes do bring about change. Therefore as much as I want to, I can't dismiss it offhand, I need to see if it brings change first.

[LaCroix]

US police kill the population at one hundred times the rate UK police do.

No.
They kill more per month (about 100) than the UK per century (about 60 since 1900 -> 0.043 per month ).

The US kills popupation at a rate of 2325 times the rate of UK police do.

[Terralthra]

Especially when it leads you to conclude that people must be stupid because clearly they think stupid things because clearly the only interpretation of their words is the stupid one because clearly you can't be bothered to back up and think "wait, what else could he have meant?"

You said "If a faction of the protestors organized a serious, committed guerrilla underground devoted to waging urban warfare against a police force they see as an occupying army, and refrained from committing crimes against the populace, I would have very little to say against them except "In the long run I don't think this will work out for those guys."

This suggests that you have little or no moral objection to such a course of action. You may not be advocating it exactly, so I apologize for suggesting that you were. In hindsight, that was an error on my part. However, I still find the fact that you could find nothing more to say against such a course of action deeply disturbing and indicative of both a logical and moral deficiency.

You realize that, among other things, you're condemning the WWII French Resistance as terrorists?

[Thanas]

They probably would be viewed as terrorists already under this model because their actions were not restricted to the occupying Nazis, in fact most of their actions seem to have been directed against the parts of the french populace that were collaborating.

[Terralthra]

They probably would be viewed as terrorists already under this model because their actions were not restricted to the occupying Nazis, in fact most of their actions seem to have been directed against the parts of the french populace that were collaborating.

Indeed, their actions against Vichy France were what I was referencing. Not the actual occupying army, but the police and government forces widely seen as collaborating with said army.

[Joun_Lord]

US police kill the population at one hundred times the rate UK police do, twenty times the rate of Canadian police, and somehow nobody thinks this is a problem.

US Policing is broken

Plenty of people think this is a problem. The problem though is nobody knows the solution or can even agree on the cause.

Police are of course responding no longer as police but more like soldiers in many instances. They are in many cases former soldiers and never got over the mindset of being a soldier, treating everyone as a possible enemy combatant, as a person in a war. Policing and soldiering are two highly different professions despite the tools and uniforms becoming increasingly the same.

But cops aren't shooting people just because they are paranoid bastards who think every Wii mote, airshit gun, pointed finger, or anything else vaguely gun shaped (if even that) is a dangerous tool held in the hand of a insurgen........I mean citizen. Violent crime is a problem in America.

But why is it a problem? Do the availability of guns make America so violent (despite countries liked Switzerland and Israelland having pretty high rates of gun ownership thanks to military arms for citizens not to mention the Swiss's high private gun ownership rates)? Does poverty, thousands of desperate people who have to turn to crime just to survive? Unfair laws that destroy lives over the most minor of offenses? A broken prison system that is for profit alot of time and rarely tries to rehabilitate a person, meaning they are likely to reoffend? Endemic racism? Lack of opportunities to where inner city youths and backwoods white trash are both making or selling drugs because they are too ill educated, have too much discrimination against them, and just lack a means of escaping their situation to be able to do anything else? Mexicans and Indians stealing our jerbs? Because minorities are naturally violent and dance better then white bread people because of twitch nerves? People so scared of police and the consequences of being caught that they are more likely to fight back rather then being arrested peaceably?

Ask 10 people why America is so violent and you will probably get 10 answers. Unless you ask Eurocommies, they will just say its because Americans are Americans (I kid, kinda).

But don't think the fact we have poor black kids in the ghetto armed with auto weapons killing each other over sugar, spice, and cocaine and poor white people in the holler armed with double barrel boom stick killing each other over cousin fucking and meth to excuse the police.

The police are definitely to blame for blowing away people just at the mere sight of a gun. For fucks sake the British are practically scared shitless over just the mere sight of goddamn ammo and the bobbies won't usually shot a dude dead for holding a gun or gun shaped object (of course that might also be because most Brit cops are armed with billy clubs and their charming British attitudes).

Policing needs reformed, most definitely. However more needs to be done then just say "cops suck" and leave it at that, drop the mic and walk out. One needs to also find out why crime is so high that has the cops scared like an upper middle class white woman around black men or Felicia Day around dudes in video game shirts.

[Vendetta]

Policing needs reformed, most definitely. However more needs to be done then just say "cops suck" and leave it at that, drop the mic and walk out. One needs to also find out why crime is so high that has the cops scared like an upper middle class white woman around black men or Felicia Day around dudes in video game shirts.

The thing is that crime isn't that catastrophically high compared to those other countries where police forces manage not to kill that people, and gun ownership isn't that high compared to some of those countries either. The problem is the police not the society they operate in.

When you look at the reasons given for police homicide most are a result of someone "not following police instructions". What this means is that the US police have to use violence to prop up their authority at a far greater rate than other forces worldwide.

The problem is that the US police forces do not operate with the consent and co-operation of the communities they serve. They don't draw their personnel from those communities and the personnel they do draw from elsewhere don't respect the communities they serve. We see that clearly in places like Ferguson where the ethnic makeup of the police force is almost diametrically opposed to that of the actual city, an almost all white force policing an almost all black town which they have no respect for is a Michael Brown waiting to happen.

US police forces believe that their authority is derived from the law and from force and places them above the rest of the population, but that isn't how police work, real police (not gendarmes) derive their authority from the trust and cooperation of the community they police, and should not forget that they are public servants.

There is also no effective recourse to justice above the police for communities wronged by them. The justice system is obviously, amazingly, racially biased with black people three times more likely to receive a custodial sentence for the same crimes as white people, so the communities who suffer at police hands cannot expect to find justice in a court they know is stacked against them.

Even at a legislative level, policies are maintained which were insituted as a blatant criminalising of the black population. The war on drugs, particularly cannabis, was openly intended to criminalise black people.

There aren't many easy solutions that aren't monumentally drastic (like "sack all US police officers and judges, rebuild from scratch as a genuine police force intended to serve the public and with strong oversight by the public), but make no mistake that the vast majority of the change needs to be done by police, the police as an entire system need to accept that they are doing it wrong and make a genuine effort to gain the trust of the people they are supposed to be serving.

And that will be painful for them, it will mean an end to bluewalls, it will mean an end to police hostility to oversight and criticism, it will probably mean breaking the power of the police union to do anything beyond collective bargaining for employment & pension conditions, it will mean new bodies with direct disciplinary powers over the police who are independent from the rest of the justice system, and they won't like any of that.

[Thanas]

Here are a few measures I think should be enacted (to steer this into constructive criticism):

- Disbar soldiers from becoming policemen or enact strict quotas, like "no more than 40% of the force can be ex-soldiers and no two soldiers can go on patrol together."
- Make patrols double. Two officers alone are way better than just one guy who might get scared and do something regrettable.
- Require that at least 40% of the force are minority-recruited.
- In double patrol pair, as a rule, one minority member with one non-minority member
- Try to hire as many women as possible. You'd be amazed at how de-escalating female police members are (seen this myself in action)
- Force officers to conform to the threat evaluation protocol used by European police agencies (three step system, a pyramid of escalation etc.)

None of the solutions are going to make this go away on its own, but I think they would greatly reduce the risk of violence (and now I am prepared for the great nitpick).