zlacker

>>oftenw+(OP)
"Of course, as Gillham pointed out, negotiating and managing a protest can’t really work if the protest wasn’t organized ahead of time. That goes double, he said, if the topic of the protest is police brutality. It’s hard to negotiate with someone about the best way to demand they be fired."

This point is important. The police can't police themselves, and for a lasting solution to this problem to emerge there'll have to be major structural changes to the way police oversight and review is carried out.

I hope these protests are a turning point that'll lead to such reforms, but I suspect no significant changes will occur. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

>>WillDa+Q7
> wasn’t organized ahead of time

Protests might have been unorganized, but riots most certainly are organized. Torching a police car carries a minimum 5 year sentence. It's not the protesters who are doing that.

Moreover, it is still being "organized". Someone keeps dropping off pallets with bricks. There are agitator leaflets all over twitter. People have been recorded on video handing out cash to "protesters" from a thick wad of bills. Someone is organizing and funding the riots.

>>m0zg+K8
> People have been recorded on video handing out cash to "protesters" from a thick wad of bills.

It would be trivial to contrive that exact scenario.

I’m not say that it was contrived, just that it would be trivial to do so.

>>TheSpi+qc
That I do agree with. A lot of other things would be trivial to contrive as well. I would not be surprised if the scenes of devastation we see in the media are far smaller in scale IRL, and we're just being shown the same smashed storefront from different angles to drive clicks.

But at the same time I think peaceful protesters would not burn police cars or loot, seeing how looting does absolutely nothing good whatsoever for their cause. They would especially not burn or loot minority businesses, churches, or low income housing complexes. Someone is very deliberately and efficiently pouring gasoline into this fire IMO, that much is pretty obvious by now.