zlacker

>>laurex+(OP)
Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations.

I have been to a few rallies/vigils/marches lately and all incidences of violence that I have witnessed either in person or through media has been instigated by the police. As far as I know,every documented case where a formerly peaceful crowd turns into chaos has been started with police shooting pepperspray, teargas, or whatever into the crowd.

I find it really hard to not come to the conclusion that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.

>>jascii+Wb
To me, it was pretty clear that the police in Santa Monica and Long Beach allowed the looting to occur while treating the protesters like criminals from the outset. This isn't to say that other local precincts weren't significantly better in their treatment of protesters, but there's clear evidence that many police departments are either corrupt or completely inept in addressing violent crime.

This has been a long time coming, too. In the last few years, many police departments around the country have thrown their hands up and publicly stated they won't be bothering with most property crimes. The way they see it, the only crimes worth their time involve people not committing real crimes at all or crimes involving guns or knives. Anyone who doesn't get why people don't trust the police has been living under a rock. This goes beyond just racism.

>>ravens+Ee
The police seem to clearly be allowing looting on purpose. SoHo was looted two days in a row. Where were the NYPD? There are 10's of thousands of uniformed officers Maybe you can say the first day they somehow missed it, but two days in a row? Come on. I refuse to believe that they didn't see this coming - they brag about how they're "gathering intel" on terrorist groups, but they couldn't check twitter to see #soho trending?

They want the story to be about rioters so they're letting them riot. It's a way to shift the public opinion (same way some cops have been seen breaking car and store windows).

>>static+4k
What would you have preferred? If the police shows up and the looting does not stop, they can either use force (aka violence) to make it stop, or they can go home, essentially giving up the rule of law in the area.

Not showing up can be a tactical decision: you don't have to generate more bad press and more cries about police brutality and you also don't need to quasi-officially hand over the area to the looters.

The state's power isn't real as in "we can crush you", it rests only in everybody's fear of the state being able to crush them. If there's a chance that the state has to back down, not seeking the confrontation sounds like a smart choice to me, even if it comes at the price of a day or two of looting.

>>luckyl+3t
The state's power is not just fear alone, it's legitimacy. What stops people from looting under normal circumstances is the belief that looting is wrong and will be punished, and people will agree punishment was justified.

Failing to respond to looting damages the state's legitimacy. Responding to looting and failing to stop it damages the state's legitimacy. Even responding to looting and successfully stopping it damages the state's legitimacy, because mass looting signals that looting has become more acceptable.

>>strken+941
Oh, absolutely, but there are different levels of damage.

Germany has an issue with criminal clans from the Middle East, our law enforcement system isn't equipped to deal with them and our laws in general aren't either. The approach is pretty much "try not to engage", because while it's damaging to have "extended families" with hundreds of members where basically everyone of them has a criminal record, the other option is either locking up everybody (terrible idea in Germany) or trying to reason with them and failing (showing the state tried to handle it but failed). Not engaging is just the cheapest option and does the least amount of damage (I'm not suggesting that's necessarily true for the situation in the US, I don't know it well enough).

If the Leviathan shows its teeth and the problem doesn't go away, it has to bite. If it doesn't, everybody will see that the teeth aren't that sharp any more, and that will encourage more challengers.

> The state's power is not just fear alone, it's legitimacy.

For the people that don't require laws and punishment to behave morally, yes. For those that do, they obviously don't care about legitimacy or that looting (or any crime) is wrong, otherwise they wouldn't commit it. It's only those people that any society needs to worry about, and it's only those people that the state needs to convince that it is stronger than them.