It’s probably also worth asking: when have violent protests ever helped the cause?
I think that the violence of the protests helped to get Derek Chauvin arrested. But I’m not sure that continued violence will help the broader movement.
So, at least in my town, it looks a lot like violent protests of the sort you decry do help. Certainly nothing else has done as well.
By contrast, nothing will bring back George Floyd, let alone the countless black people afflicted by police brutality that weren't caught on camera. With millions still unemployed and a sense that society has left so many behind, COVID in the US was a powder keg looking for a match, and a breakdown of order shouldnt really be unexpected.
Some agitators are anti-government. Others are full on anarchists. Others want to bait people into race wars (a la the Turner Diaries, cited by white nationalist mass shooters and the Oklahoma City bomber).
> Besides, these businesses are all insured
Some of them are. But having to claim on insurance is an expensive proposition that eats into profit margins (which is extra difficult in the middle of a worldwide depression).
> Im certain that Apple and Luxottica, some of the richest companies in the world, can write off the loss.
Most companies aren't multinational megacorps in high profit businesses.
I drove through South Central Los Angeles about 1 year after the Rodney King riots. I don't know what proportion of the businesses were rebuilt, but it was pretty clearly that many of the buildings hasn't been rebuilt. Large scale building damage takes a LONG time to rebuild and probably means the business can't run until it's done.
In all these riot situations, it is portrayed as the poor sticking it to the rich, who presumably are using the police to oppress the poor. But I suspect that in reality it is mostly the poor becoming even more downtrodden by the criminal elements, and the rich remain unaffected. Perhaps the rich even profit a bit from what happens, such as politicians winning more government money to "help with all the troubles".
The problem is converting that into something tangible that furthers their goals.
It's not required that the police be peaceful, only the protesters.
MLK, Letter From a Birmingham Jail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore#Crime_stati...
A little further down:
"Homicides in Baltimore are heavily concentrated within a small number of high-poverty neighborhoods."
So, my prima facie impression from these data points is the stand down has not benefitted the poor.
In either case, you're massively misrepresenting the "stand down" order, which was not a policy of indefinite disengagement, but rather a specific instruction given in the scope of the 2015 protests in an attempt to avoid further escalation. Whether or not the order was successful in that sense is a matter for separate discussion, but to claim it's a permanent thing, the way you are doing, is simply false to fact - which is probably why you still haven't sourced that claim.
While we're on the topic of BPD actions during the 2015 protests, have you heard about the cop who used the opportunity to loot drugs from a pharmacy and later sell them on to street dealers? [1] I suspect not; for all your apparent interest in the doings of the Baltimore PD, you seem surprisingly ill informed. That's far from all the Gun Trace Task Force got up to, either [2], nor were they alone in their corruption. These are things you need to know about, if you want to talk about policing in my town and expect to be worth taking seriously. But here you are, needing to be told about them. I wonder why that is.
[2] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/2/...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltim...
“These guys aren’t stupid. They realize that if they do something wrong, they’re going to get their head bit off. There’s no feeling that anybody’s behind them anymore, and they’re not going to do it,” he says. “Nobody wants to put their head in the pizza oven when the pizza oven is on.”
I hope this doesn’t get me labeled as “white” or “moderate” (I am neither).
The article also, despite a clear editorial slant, can't quite avoid hinting at the kind of solution that actually does need to happen: not for police officers to simply abrogate the responsibility they accepted with their oaths when the public makes clear their conduct has been unacceptable, but for police officers to improve their conduct, and discharge the responsibility they took on, to actually protect and serve.
I grant that that lies outside the false dichotomy you choose to draw, between police doing nothing and police continuing in the massive abuse of power status quo ante. But, after all, it is a false dichotomy. You can do better.
I hope you can do better, anyway. For one thing, you promoted the deputy police commissioner, which I'm sure he appreciates, and spun the world clear around on its axis so he got mugged in the daytime, when he didn't, instead of at night, when he did. (cf. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/20/us/baltimore-deputy-police-co...)
These are very strange errors of fact to go on making with, it seems like, every single claim you've introduced so far. Wherever you're getting your information from, you might consider finding sources that do a better job of sticking to facts, because whatever you've been using up to now seems not much good at anything beyond leading you into error.
Yup.
And I personally think that a lot of the violence isn't the average protesters who care about police accountability, but people who are just using protests as an excuse to wreak havoc with less chance of being singled out for arrest.
but, in baltimore that just led to lax police, more crime, and more homicides
i believe the same will happen with these riots. police will withdraw from blac neighborhoods, and the criminal element will have free reign. that is a bad outcome, and more innocent people will suffer than will benefit
we are trying to make life better for innocent black people, but being scared of the neighborhood gang bangers is not a step up from being scared of the police
and this will not bring justice for the victims, police may throw some sacrifices, but they otherwise will just be less caring about black neighborhoods and police mistreatment of black people, and the gulf will widen
Just like MLK is regarded as "peaceful" when in fact he and others spoke quite a bit about the fact that there was never any response from white people unless property was attacked.