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Do you believe in an "eye for an eye"? If not, how could you say that there's been more violence from police than protesters? By my count, more people have died
by 0xy 6y ago
Do you believe in an "eye for an eye"? If not, how could you say that there's been more violence from police than protesters? By my count, more people have died in the resulting riots than the initial incident.
That doesn't mean police are "less bad". It means they fucked up badly, and then rioters and looters are responding badly to a bad situation (including with attempted murder, rape, assault, property destruction, arson, etc).
In fact, numerous businesses owned by black people were unfortunately torched during the rioting. What part of that is justice? Further, what good does it do to black neighborhoods to have their houses burnt down, critical supplies interrupted in the middle of a pandemic and other such egregious behaviour?
Anarchists are using this situation to cause chaos and destruction.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoThere are a lot of layers here; I’ll do my best to unpack things as I see them. First, violence by police is always worse than violence by civilians, full stop. They took an oath to protect and serve their communities in a job they knew could be dangerous, so they are obligated to go above and beyond in preventing violence and deescalating conflict. If necessary, they must be willing to suffer physical trauma in order for civilians to be safe. This is an axiomatic belief for me; if you can’t meet me on it, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. I think everyone recognizes that the protests have caused far more violence than the murder of George Floyd alone. But the best way to prevent further violence would have been to immediately arrest the officers (as any civilian would have been) and hold them accountable. As it stands now, the other three officers who helped restrain him and prevent bystander intervention have not even been arrested. It seems to me that police and politicians across the country are willing to accept thousands of arrests, thousands more injuries and millions of dollars worth of property damage all to protect four officers who should absolutely face trial. That brings me to “acceptable” and “unacceptable” rioting. There are no doubt people using the protests as cover to sow chaos, or to do “riot tourism” — we’ve all seen videos of that. That is not okay. But plenty of rioting is happening because a group of people have been crying out in every which way that they are drowning and nothing seems to help. I’ve seen even staunch conservatives acknowledge that Floyd’s death was beyond the pale. And it’s not just him: it’s Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others. And those are just the deaths that make the news — that’s a small subset of all the times when someone was “just” beat up, or profiled, or arrested for no good reason. Plenty of black people feel that society is not honoring its contract with them; given that, can we really blame those protesting for feeling that they don’t need to honor their contract with society?
- 0xy 6y agoPolice and politicians are not supposed to be involved in decisions of whether to prosecute crimes, so the fact you lay guilt on them for not prosecuting is puzzling. Prosecutors are supposed to be making those decisions on behalf of the state or federal government. The police did everything in their power (immediately firing them). It's up to prosecutors to do the rest. Do you think police generally support what happened?
- jakelazaroff 6y agoDistrict Attorneys and Attorney Generals are both politicians elected by voters. Police also wield enormous political power. I do believe police generally support what happened.