6 ms·

A lot of the lawlessness we are seeing is a direct result of us just standing idly by last summer when Manhattan was ransacked and cities had properties burned

A lot of the lawlessness we are seeing is a direct result of us just standing idly by last summer when Manhattan was ransacked and cities had properties burned all over with windows knocked out everywhere. I even think (controversial opinion) that that lawlessness was a "green light" for what happened on January 6th. Why wouldn't you think if you see DC helicopter video of several blocks aflame in DC that you could storm the Capitol? Seems fairly rational to me (though wrong.) I don't think the "broken window theory" is 100% right, but there is certainly something to it. Instead of letting up on drug prosections, we've let some actual criminals go free, something I simply don't understand. Minor property descrtuction and theft can snowball.

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woodruffw 5y ago
I witnessed the 2020 protests firsthand and saw no looting or riotous behavior; only marching. Commercial theft seems to have been, overwhelmingly, performed by opportunists and not the protesters themselves, and only one actual property fire was recorded[1]. This is in direct contrast to the efficient cause of the riots during January 6th, which was political and not opportunistic in nature. Attempting to discharge the responsibility of those involved in the latter by appealing to the former is distasteful, to say the least. [1]: https://citylimits.org/2020/06/09/how-widespread-was-violence-on-new-yorks-nights-of-unrest/ https://citylimits.org/2020/06/09/how-widespread-was-violenc...
- ui4jd73bdj 5y ago
  To me the comparison is very accurate. On both occasions there were mostly peaceful protests and some opportunist. The fact that you call one a protest and another a riot is quite telling of your bias.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    The key observation is that the NY protests had two discrete groups: protestors, and opportunists. There was no such distinction during J6: the opportunists who did storm the Capitol and menace our legislative branch started as protestors, and promoted themselves to riotous behavior when the opportunity presented itself.
- zepto 5y ago
  > I witnessed the 2020 protests firsthand and saw no looting or riotous behavior; No, you witnessed a tiny portion of the protests. I personally know of business owners whose businesses were looted, literally just local store owners.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    I am not denying that stores were looted, or excusing looting. Read the comment carefully: the distinction is between protesters and opportunists, with the latter not being protestors. There is no evidence that protestors individually or collectively engaged in looting.
    - Anon1096 5y ago
      Are you going to make the same distinction for all the peaceful protesters on January 6th who never entered the Capitol? Because if not I don't really see a difference.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        Actually, I do make that distinction, and I think most people do as well. I'm not particularly enthused about the initial protest, but I would not characterize the protestors who did not enter the Capitol (and did not encourage others to do so) as "rioters."
      - gumby 5y ago
        I haven’t heard of any investigation, much less charges leveled, of people who protested but did not enter the Capitol. People who might know of / ultimately be charged with incitement have been subpoenaed, but again, I don’t know of any charges. Anyone pressing such charges will have to show a clear line between first amendment speech and not, so they are going to be careful not to waste their time.
      - happytoexplain 5y ago
        I and all my personal friends make that distinction about both sets of events. Regardless - reading a thoughtful, honest post that you happen to disagree with on some ideological level, and projecting your internal image of a hypocritical political enemy onto them by extrapolating to things they didn't say, is one of the most common forms of conversation poison.
- eric_b 5y ago
  Well I can assure you the protesters in Minneapolis were violent, destructive, and I personally saw hundreds of protesters looting stores, breaking ATMs, smashing windows etc. etc. Hell, the protesters even burned down the police precinct. The riots in Minneapolis were worse by every metric than Jan 6. And in some cases orders of magnitude (cost of damage, for one). And I'll tell you what else - a lot more people are going to jail for the Jan 6 riots than the Minneapolis ones.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Not that there is a reason to compare the two, but a mob of people going after the elected leaders of a democratic country, especially during election procedures, has far more implications and ramifications on a country than looting.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      Its actually much worse to unleash violence on poor communities and immigrant business owners.
    - eric_b 5y ago
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I would have said the same thing if non Trumpers stormed the building containing a country’s political leaders performing election procedures to certify the country’s new leaders.
      - happytoexplain 5y ago
        The social/political affiliations of the people involved is not the only variable by a long shot.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        At least 85 people have been charged with carrying or using a weapon during the riot[1]. It seems like a large number were knives and other blades which, while not as eye-popping as carrying a rifle into the Capitol, are just as illegal. [1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/capitol-riot-weapons-charges https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/capitol-riot...
walrus01 5y ago
"Manhattan was ransacked" is total hyperbole and absurd. The whole island of Manhattan was ransacked? Of what? When, exactly? You know Manhattan is a really big place, right? Have you been there? As to the "letting up on drug prosecutions", in the Reagan-esque war on drugs, the Drugs won that war a long time ago. Maybe it's time to start treating serious drug addiction (meth, coke, heroin, etc) as a mental health crisis instead. Turns out that it actually costs a lot of money each year to keep a person incarcerated, and when they get turned loose back into society without addressing the underlying metal health and addiction issues, it just repeats in a loop.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Pretty easy to Google images of retail in Manhattan. Huge percentage of stores were vandalized and had their goods stolen. Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+2020+protest+retail+looting&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjr_aWgm7f1AhVvCZ0JHd6CD4kQ2-cCegQIABAC&oq=manhattan+2020+protest+retail+looting&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzoHCCMQ7wMQJzoFCCEQqwI6BAghEApQvAVYviBgtiFoAHAAeACAAaoBiAGCDpIBBDE2LjSYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=wY3kYauZLe-S9PwP3oW-yAg&bih=679&biw=393&prmd=nisxv https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+2020+protest+retai... There was effectively no police response for the first few days and each night looting got worse. Eventually the police mobilized and normalized the situation
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    Instead of saying huge percentage, why not just tell us the number?
    - adam_arthur 5y ago
      Why don't you Google it and report back? I lived there at the time, it was very widespread and pretty much universal across mid-lower manhattan. Anyway, I saved you the trouble: "An estimated 450 businesses across New York City were vandalized and in some cases looted in late May and early June, according to the city's Department of Small Business Services." Don't need the stats to back it up if you were there to see it though.
jlmorton 5y ago
Given the massive and disproportionate police response in DC to the protests over the summer, I find it extremely puzzling how you could conclude anyone would see that very large response as a green light for a protest, let alone storming the Capitol.
BoorishBears 5y ago
- Near unprecedented unemployment after (mis)handling of a global pandemic https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemploymen... - K shaped recovery driving near unprecedented acceleration of wealth inequality https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition - Raging mental health crisis bearing down on an already overwhelmed medical system https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-health-crisis-america-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-h... - Raging drug crisis also raging on concurrently https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/00000005/art00036 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/... - Clogged supply chain resulting in unprecedented amounts of vulnerable goods https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft... - I could keep going, but all of this and you think... protests caused this? You saying "Manhattan was ransacked" is hilarious, I live in Brooklyn, next stop after Barclay Center, where global news networks were painting a picture of a warzone using an overturned car... Almost every person who marched at Barclay went past my apartment and you know what the damage was? The police removed the trash cans on my street in anticipation, so for a good two weeks afterwards there was trash everywhere as people just dumped it in the street instead. Oh yeah, and some businesses took way too long removing their plywood defenses despite 0 signs they were actually tested. Actually one cool story literally steps from that burning car was those same protestors stopping would-be rioters from breaking into stores... - Seriously, we need to drop this narrative that the iron fist of the law is what would stop this. So many people trying to run interference by pointing the finger at "defund the police" chants... is the only thing stopping you from stealing from a train the idea the police might catch you? Criminals are criminals, they don't respect the rule of law so you're not going to get them by sprinkling more agents of the law to crack down on people. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011128710382263?journalCode=cadc https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001112871038226... (Note the author here, Gary Kleck, this is someone who's practically a patron saint of tough-on-crime proponents after his work on DGU. And even his study can't seriously back the claim.) - Now you can try jailing all the criminals of course, and just keep growing your jails until you've exhausted the sources of crime... But even with the harshest prosecutors, eventually these people need to leave. If our prisons were about reform it'd be one thing, but crime is rampant is our prison system. So all you're doing is sticking criminals in an incubator while screwing over the communities they're from and setting the next generation of criminals in motion...
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Linking all of this to the War On Drugs losing the wind in it's sails is a Reaganesque leap. We've had broken windows policy, all it's done is rope a lot of black and hispanic people into the system after manufacturing crimes through the War On Drugs.
sd8f9iu 5y ago
Manhattan was not "ransacked" last summer. You clearly don't live in one of these American cities. The overwhelming majority of the protests were peaceful [1]. Your claim that an attempted coup was somehow spurned by protests relating to the extrajudicial killing of black men is a rather bold one to make with absolutely no supplied evidence. I suppose finding cause in the drastic uptick of far-right violence [2] you have conveniently omitted, which would serve as a much better basis for the "broken window theory", is too easy of a conclusion to make. As is finding cause in the president quite literally inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol on the basis of false claims of election fraud. No, it's those protesters! [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
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woodruffw 5y ago

I witnessed the 2020 protests firsthand and saw no looting or riotous behavior; only marching. Commercial theft seems to have been, overwhelmingly, performed by opportunists and not the protesters themselves, and only one actual property fire was recorded[1]. This is in direct contrast to the efficient cause of the riots during January 6th, which was political and not opportunistic in nature. Attempting to discharge the responsibility of those involved in the latter by appealing to the former is distasteful, to say the least. [1]: https://citylimits.org/2020/06/09/how-widespread-was-violence-on-new-yorks-nights-of-unrest/ https://citylimits.org/2020/06/09/how-widespread-was-violenc...

ui4jd73bdj 5y ago
To me the comparison is very accurate. On both occasions there were mostly peaceful protests and some opportunist. The fact that you call one a protest and another a riot is quite telling of your bias.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  The key observation is that the NY protests had two discrete groups: protestors, and opportunists. There was no such distinction during J6: the opportunists who did storm the Capitol and menace our legislative branch started as protestors, and promoted themselves to riotous behavior when the opportunity presented itself.
zepto 5y ago
> I witnessed the 2020 protests firsthand and saw no looting or riotous behavior; No, you witnessed a tiny portion of the protests. I personally know of business owners whose businesses were looted, literally just local store owners.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I am not denying that stores were looted, or excusing looting. Read the comment carefully: the distinction is between protesters and opportunists, with the latter not being protestors. There is no evidence that protestors individually or collectively engaged in looting.
  - Anon1096 5y ago
    Are you going to make the same distinction for all the peaceful protesters on January 6th who never entered the Capitol? Because if not I don't really see a difference.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Actually, I do make that distinction, and I think most people do as well. I'm not particularly enthused about the initial protest, but I would not characterize the protestors who did not enter the Capitol (and did not encourage others to do so) as "rioters."
    - gumby 5y ago
      I haven’t heard of any investigation, much less charges leveled, of people who protested but did not enter the Capitol. People who might know of / ultimately be charged with incitement have been subpoenaed, but again, I don’t know of any charges. Anyone pressing such charges will have to show a clear line between first amendment speech and not, so they are going to be careful not to waste their time.
    - happytoexplain 5y ago
      I and all my personal friends make that distinction about both sets of events. Regardless - reading a thoughtful, honest post that you happen to disagree with on some ideological level, and projecting your internal image of a hypocritical political enemy onto them by extrapolating to things they didn't say, is one of the most common forms of conversation poison.
eric_b 5y ago
Well I can assure you the protesters in Minneapolis were violent, destructive, and I personally saw hundreds of protesters looting stores, breaking ATMs, smashing windows etc. etc. Hell, the protesters even burned down the police precinct. The riots in Minneapolis were worse by every metric than Jan 6. And in some cases orders of magnitude (cost of damage, for one). And I'll tell you what else - a lot more people are going to jail for the Jan 6 riots than the Minneapolis ones.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Not that there is a reason to compare the two, but a mob of people going after the elected leaders of a democratic country, especially during election procedures, has far more implications and ramifications on a country than looting.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Its actually much worse to unleash violence on poor communities and immigrant business owners.
  - eric_b 5y ago
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I would have said the same thing if non Trumpers stormed the building containing a country’s political leaders performing election procedures to certify the country’s new leaders.
    - happytoexplain 5y ago
      The social/political affiliations of the people involved is not the only variable by a long shot.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      At least 85 people have been charged with carrying or using a weapon during the riot[1]. It seems like a large number were knives and other blades which, while not as eye-popping as carrying a rifle into the Capitol, are just as illegal. [1]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/capitol-riot-weapons-charges https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/capitol-riot...

walrus01 5y ago

"Manhattan was ransacked" is total hyperbole and absurd. The whole island of Manhattan was ransacked? Of what? When, exactly? You know Manhattan is a really big place, right? Have you been there? As to the "letting up on drug prosecutions", in the Reagan-esque war on drugs, the Drugs won that war a long time ago. Maybe it's time to start treating serious drug addiction (meth, coke, heroin, etc) as a mental health crisis instead. Turns out that it actually costs a lot of money each year to keep a person incarcerated, and when they get turned loose back into society without addressing the underlying metal health and addiction issues, it just repeats in a loop.

adam_arthur 5y ago
Pretty easy to Google images of retail in Manhattan. Huge percentage of stores were vandalized and had their goods stolen. Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+2020+protest+retail+looting&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjr_aWgm7f1AhVvCZ0JHd6CD4kQ2-cCegQIABAC&oq=manhattan+2020+protest+retail+looting&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzoHCCMQ7wMQJzoFCCEQqwI6BAghEApQvAVYviBgtiFoAHAAeACAAaoBiAGCDpIBBDE2LjSYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=wY3kYauZLe-S9PwP3oW-yAg&bih=679&biw=393&prmd=nisxv https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+2020+protest+retai... There was effectively no police response for the first few days and each night looting got worse. Eventually the police mobilized and normalized the situation
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Instead of saying huge percentage, why not just tell us the number?
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    Why don't you Google it and report back? I lived there at the time, it was very widespread and pretty much universal across mid-lower manhattan. Anyway, I saved you the trouble: "An estimated 450 businesses across New York City were vandalized and in some cases looted in late May and early June, according to the city's Department of Small Business Services." Don't need the stats to back it up if you were there to see it though.

jlmorton 5y ago

Given the massive and disproportionate police response in DC to the protests over the summer, I find it extremely puzzling how you could conclude anyone would see that very large response as a green light for a protest, let alone storming the Capitol.

BoorishBears 5y ago

- Near unprecedented unemployment after (mis)handling of a global pandemic https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemploymen... - K shaped recovery driving near unprecedented acceleration of wealth inequality https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition - Raging mental health crisis bearing down on an already overwhelmed medical system https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-health-crisis-america-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-h... - Raging drug crisis also raging on concurrently https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/00000005/art00036 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/... - Clogged supply chain resulting in unprecedented amounts of vulnerable goods https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft... - I could keep going, but all of this and you think... protests caused this? You saying "Manhattan was ransacked" is hilarious, I live in Brooklyn, next stop after Barclay Center, where global news networks were painting a picture of a warzone using an overturned car... Almost every person who marched at Barclay went past my apartment and you know what the damage was? The police removed the trash cans on my street in anticipation, so for a good two weeks afterwards there was trash everywhere as people just dumped it in the street instead. Oh yeah, and some businesses took way too long removing their plywood defenses despite 0 signs they were actually tested. Actually one cool story literally steps from that burning car was those same protestors stopping would-be rioters from breaking into stores... - Seriously, we need to drop this narrative that the iron fist of the law is what would stop this. So many people trying to run interference by pointing the finger at "defund the police" chants... is the only thing stopping you from stealing from a train the idea the police might catch you? Criminals are criminals, they don't respect the rule of law so you're not going to get them by sprinkling more agents of the law to crack down on people. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011128710382263?journalCode=cadc https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001112871038226... (Note the author here, Gary Kleck, this is someone who's practically a patron saint of tough-on-crime proponents after his work on DGU. And even his study can't seriously back the claim.) - Now you can try jailing all the criminals of course, and just keep growing your jails until you've exhausted the sources of crime... But even with the harshest prosecutors, eventually these people need to leave. If our prisons were about reform it'd be one thing, but crime is rampant is our prison system. So all you're doing is sticking criminals in an incubator while screwing over the communities they're from and setting the next generation of criminals in motion...

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

Linking all of this to the War On Drugs losing the wind in it's sails is a Reaganesque leap. We've had broken windows policy, all it's done is rope a lot of black and hispanic people into the system after manufacturing crimes through the War On Drugs.

sd8f9iu 5y ago

Manhattan was not "ransacked" last summer. You clearly don't live in one of these American cities. The overwhelming majority of the protests were peaceful [1]. Your claim that an attempted coup was somehow spurned by protests relating to the extrajudicial killing of black men is a rather bold one to make with absolutely no supplied evidence. I suppose finding cause in the drastic uptick of far-right violence [2] you have conveniently omitted, which would serve as a much better basis for the "broken window theory", is too easy of a conclusion to make. As is finding cause in the president quite literally inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol on the basis of false claims of election fraud. No, it's those protesters! [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

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