The last several days have been extremely distressing. Local police simply aren’t prepared for as much widespread lawlessness as we’ve seen. So far the responses of the city and state have been ineffectual. Quelling the disorder is going to require a much greater show of presence and, possibly, force than either the mayor or the governor have been willing to provide.
The most fundamental purpose of government is not to provide health care or housing or to educate children or to pay pensions to public employees. It is to preserve order. If it can’t do that it loses all legitimacy and we’re well on our way.
There are at least four different groups involved:
- Peaceful lawful protesters
- Protesters who aren’t above doing a little rioting and looting
- Casual rioters and looters who are using legitimate protests as cover for their vile conduct
- Organized criminal “smash and grab” gangs
I don’t know what the situation is in Minneapolis or New York or Los Angeles but here in Chicago the last three categories far outnumber the first. There are few if any signs of anarchist gangs, Antifa, or white supremacists here.
There have been dozens, maybe even hundreds of incidents of rioting, looting, and violence. A huge number of shopping malls have been affected, all over the metropolitan area. 24 people have been killed, 66 wounded. None of those killed have been killed by police.
There have been dozens of videos of looters shown on local television. All of the faces of the rioters and looters in these videos are black. Their boldness is simply remarkable. They’re operating in broad daylight and without even attempting to conceal their identities. Needless to say they’re not observing social distancing and generally their facemasks are dangling around their necks.
Unless people just start getting tired of rioting and looting or the thieves and vandals run out of things to steal or destroy I don’t see how this ends without ordinary people starting to take matters into their own hands. We’re entering Max Max territory.
One factor common to many serious civil disorders is partial elite approbation or equivocation of protests.
Celebrities, Joe Biden’s staff were bailing out people arrested in Minnesota. De Blasio’s daughter was arrested at a protest. What message or incentives does that send?
Until there is a consensus that the protests need to be stopped, perhaps by reminding historically, elites who thought they could use the mob for their own purposes were burned, the protests will continue.
Lookup Duc d’Oleans.
Celebrities donated to bail out Freddie Gray protestors, Tamir Rice protestors and other similar protests according to several sites. Maybe the problem is not celebrities donating but having these same kinds of killings occur accompanied by a lack of response by the judicial system.
Lets remember that we (deliberately) have an armed populace. If you want to have, as the conservatives here seem to want, mass shootings and killings to try to stop the protests you have to think about the consequences. Might work, but there is also a lot of history of that actually leading to an extended period of conflict. As ex-military I am not opposed to killing when needed, justified and beneficial, but no one does this in first world countries. Maybe there is a reason for that. For right now I think we can increase our number of Natl Guard to the point where we have overwhelming unarmed force. Arrest those engaged in criminal behavior. As noted, they are largely on camera so should be easy to convict. Most are probably long term criminals anyway.
Longer term, to avoid this kind of stuff government needs to maintain its legitimacy. There has been a lot of discussion about this over Covid. I think, have not looked real recently, in every state that has been slow on opening the majority of people have favored slow opening. However, when possible I agree that we should try to find some way, if we can do so , to safely accommodate the minority, or at least make sure that the minority bears the risks for its own actions. (Just to throw it out there, let rural areas open. In return, if they have an outbreak they have to treat their own population. They dont get to send them to the urban hospitals which is what they do now with sick pts. If a pt from an opened area drives to a closed area to get better care, they may be turned away. This would never work since the bleeding hearts would take them anyway, but just an idea.)
In this case the minority occasionally get killed by the police, but we know that is just the top of the iceberg. Minorities get assaulted by the police much more often. They get stopped buy the police much more often with the police drawing weapons more frequently. Even the internal surveys of the police show they are more likely to abuse minorities. If minorities that that they were being treated fairly then the govt would have the legitimacy to handle individual cases of bad behavior, which we will always have. As it stands, it looks like we have institutionally sanctioned/ignored harmful behaviors.
Steve
Baltimore had a serious riot and crime wave after Freddie Gray.
For those who like to harp on racial bias issues, as a backdrop to rationalizing the behavior of minorities engaged in riots and mayhem, i would direct them to publications by Heather MacDonald, and research studies by Lois James (WA State University), or Professor Roland Fryer (Harvard) for perspective.
Furthermore, one of the most recent DOJ studies, comprising 75 of the largest counties in the US, penciled out the following numbers: blacks made up 15% of the population, but were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders, and 45% of assaults. Such lopsided percentages, between demographic size to the ratio of crimes committed, may have something to do with why one ethic group is stopped more frequently by police than other groups.
I know my personal observation of yesterday’s events indicated the number of AAs participating in looting, pushing people down, throwing items through windows and at police cars, was far greater than the 13-15% they represent in the breakdown of our population.
I’d collapse dot point 2 and 3 into one, and replace with young and idealistic caught up in the moment.
The notion that there is not organization, and Antifa, is just naïve beyond belief. The helmets, the tactics, the mysterious pallets of bricks…. They hide among the zealous and egg them on. That’s the MO, well known. This isn’t their first rodeo. Watch the videos carefully.
I’d suggest the legitimate protesters are 10%-15% or less. The tactics of the thugs delegitimize them. Those who turn a naïve blind eye or excuse the thugs should be ashamed as they are contributing to the problem by this delegitimization. Floyd deserves better.
As noted in Chicago it appears to be primarily criminal gangs and just plain lawlessness. So far I have seen no evidence in any coverage here of Antifa involvement or white supremacists for that matter. It may be different elsewhere.
I agree with you about the legitimate protesters.
While it is true that more minorities are arrested for crime that does not necessarily mean they committed more crimes. The disparity in drug arrests and incarcerations is very well documented. Easy to find documentation.
As to Fryer et al, Nature published a nice study explaining the disparity between Fryer’s study and those of other people, like Ross. Of note, Fryer, like as seen in all other studies shows that at the population level blacks are more likely to suffer violence at the hands of the police, roughly 3-3.5 times as much. Fryer tries to then look at this on an encounter basis, ie is violence more likely on a per encounter basis. This has problems. If blacks have more encounters, and if many of those encounters are not warranted, then it skews that data. The results are also highly skewed if there is a lot of heterogeneity on the population. So go talk with your minority relatives or minority employees, if you are comfortable talking about it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0110-z
Steve
In Chicago nearly all homicides are perpetrated by blacks on black victims.
“In Chicago nearly all homicides are perpetrated by blacks on black victims.”
Yes. So if a small group of police believe that then justifies stopping lots more black people because of that stat then you introduce both heterogeneity and excess encounters into the studies. Suggests that population studies might be superior, or at the very least studies based upon encounters need a lot of adjustment.
(I am probably the only one nerdy to care about how studies are actually done, but it does matter, unless you just want to believe what you already believe.)
Steve
‘We’re entering Max Max territory.’
The only reason why we haven’t exited the on-ramp to the superhighway of a true civil war is the law-abiding populace’s fear of the police. Fear that they would be prosecuted for defending their property and their loved ones against rioters and looters who get away scot-free all too often. Should that fear go away, should the law-abiding continue to see more and more cops joining the protests instead of policing them and protecting the people who pay their salaries, we will reach a tipping point where the law-abiding will say f**k it and turn its wrath and its weapons not only on those threatening them but on the police as well. If you think the police are overwhelmed now, just wait until they have to also fight an enraged and armed populace. Only the loonies who think they’d come out on top of that situation want it. I certainly don’t.