Riots, looting, vandalism, etc.

I seem to recall from history class that some American protesters became rather rowdy in the year 1775. Perhaps the government at the time would have profited from a more lenient approach than the one they chose?
 
Reason had a good headline today saying feds send in outside agitators.

There could be a case that a softer touch reduces rioting more than other strategies.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Reason had a good headline today saying feds send in outside agitators.

There could be a case that a softer touch reduces rioting more than other strategies.
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At least in Portland, is there really an argument that they are being too lenient? What's really left for the Portland cops and the feds on the ground to do? They are already deploying most of the non-lethal tools at their disposal. Seems pretty well understood by the protesters that they are going to get gassed and beaten, yet they still come.

Short of declaring some sort of martial law and curfew, mass arrests, or using lethal force, what else can the cops do to beat the city into submission?

Edit: I haven't spent much time on Reason in a few years. The comments section are quite interesting. Seems that a few honest-to-god libertarians are disgusted by the many fair-weather libertarians that have outed themselves as conservative authoritarians over the course of the Trump years and hastily abandoned Libertarian principles. Bob, as our resident Libertarian-ish person, have you observed any such Libertarian inter-ideology anguish?
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
At least in Portland, is there really an argument that they are being too lenient? What's really left for the Portland cops and the feds on the ground to do? They are already deploying most of the non-lethal tools at their disposal. Seems pretty well understood by the protesters that they are going to get gassed and beaten, yet they still come.

Short of declaring some sort of martial law and curfew, mass arrests, or using lethal force, what else can the cops do to beat the city into submission?

Edit: I haven't spent much time on Reason in a few years. The comments section are quite interesting. Seems that a few honest-to-god libertarians are disgusted by the many fair-weather libertarians that have outed themselves as conservative authoritarians over the course of the Trump years and hastily abandoned Libertarian principles. Bob, as our resident Libertarian-ish person, have you observed any such Libertarian inter-ideology anguish?
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Perhaps the residents of Portland should be asked what they prefer.
 
acbytesla said:
I don't think its ok. I don't think you're going to find many on the left that thinks it is ok. The problem is hooligans too often co-opt protests.
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I remember when I learned this, I was a teenager in the 80s.

The example then was a bunch of guys who were arrested for throwing molotov cocktails at police in a United riot, a few weeks after being arrested for throwing molotov cocktails at police in a City riot.

They had no real agenda or loyalty, just needed an excuse to get into a crowd fight where they're less likely to be personally identified.

We *have* seen a few false flags, though, performing minor vandalism, such as MAGAs spraypainting BLM slogans in weird places to embarrass protest supporters. But I haven't seen anything major along those lines so far.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Strangely enough, the cities that didn't take an iron fist approach to breaches of public order have been the most successful in keeping things peaceful.

Many major cities in the US had outbreaks of protests that turned into riots in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd murder.

Now, only a select few are still having ongoing, if not escalating, bouts of public disorder and opportunistic looting. It should be noted that these cities have also seen some of the most robust police responses since day 1.

Doing nothing, or using a very light touch, is often the best tactic if the goal is reducing violence or property damage. Sending out the riot cops to gas and beat crowds practically guarantees continued unrest.

Portland has had 50+ days of continuous unrest in the streets. The cops are out in full force, using everything short of just opening fire with lethal weapons into the crowd. It's a real-time natural experiment in the effectiveness of jack-boot tactics to quell riots and is failing miserably.
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Are you condoning this?

What do you think of the people in the the video?
 
Meadmaker said:
I wish that they understood that this sort of thing helps Donald Trump.
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My impression is that some people aren't worried about that, because they're too cynical on two levels:

* they believe trump will steal the election no matter what the public votes (Clinton got the majority in the last election, it didn't matter)

* they believe Biden will be just as indifferent to their exclusion from the system (Republicans and Democrats have been in power all their lives and built everything we see, why would the next president being a Democrat matter?)

If the system's gonna crush you, might as well get a working toaster to ride it out.
 
Martin Luther King said:
Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention
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TL;DR riots are a problem, but if you're getting riots, you've got bigger problems.
 
Belz... said:
You're asking for evidence of unacceptance to prove acceptance? How does that work?
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Well I've certainly seen a lot of signs at these protests claiming that "Silence is Violence" (or complicity). So according to such logic, not publicly condemning something is equivalent to being complicit in it.
 
Modified said:
They sometimes do it because their local sports team won the championship. I'm not sure if that qualifies as "content", but it is certainly not discontent.
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I agree.

One thing that was baffling to some people (not to me) about the Vancouver riots, which were triggered by the Canucks losing (1994) and the Canucks winning (2011), respectively, was that so many of the looters and vandals were just middle class asshats who didn't even live here.

Basically dudes sitting at home in the suburbs turn on the TV and see a huge crowd is getting ugly, grab their riot go-bag, jump on the SkyTrain and get off at Granville.

In the 2011 riot, the judges were hearing defenses like, "I can't get convicted for vandalism, it might impact my medical residency assignment yer honour. Also, my flight to Edmonton leaves in an hour can we move this along please?"
 
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Puppycow said:
Are you condoning this?

What do you think of the people in the the video?
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No. But as others have already posted, riots and opportunistic crime are unintended and predictable consequences of a complete breakdown of the social contract that has been precipitated by police brutality and impunity.

It sucks that people are rioting and looting. I don't see this as a legitimate reason to allow the cops to violently suppress a genuine uprising against their tyrannical authority.

The fact that looting and opportunistic crime is worse in cities where the cops are going hog-wild with violence, and that these cops have no plans to change their tactics, shows that cops don't care about the looting either.
 
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