[zlala]

My local news channel (Austin), they just reported, that a helicopter (didn't say from where) was getting ready to take off and deliver more amino to the NO police. The NO police have fired so many warning rounds, they are running out of amino. They also said 7 officers were arrested for looting.

[Clemenza]

According to some of my relatives who were living in the city at the time, Hugh Addonizio (the Mafia-connected mayor of Newark in 1967) initially thought that the riot was one of many minor "rumbles" that occassionally occurred in the ghetto, and thought that it would be easily dispatched by a couple of squad cars. Dumb, dumb decision by a stupid, stupid mayor. Sound familiar?

[PeterPrinciple]

Mayor Dixon's no-arrest order precisely replicated the initial blunders of 1968. If other mayors and police chiefs follow her example, the nation will be in for a "long hot summer" indeed. For the lesson of history is plain: In riot situations, the earlier the police make arrests, and the more arrests they make, the lower will be the toll in life, limb, and property. And the cop on the street will not act decisively unless he feels he has the support of his superiors — principally his chief and mayor.


Key point.............

[NonValueAdded]

Nice advice, seemingly being roundly ignored in the Big Hard.

[DonnDe]

Riots begin when some set of social forces temporarily overwhelms or paralyzes the police, who stand by, their highly visible inaction signaling to the small percentage of teenaged embryonic psychopaths and hardened young adults that a moral holiday is under way. This criminal minority spearheads the car-burning, window-smashing, and blood-letting, mobbing such hate targets as blacks, or white merchants, or lone cops.

Seem familiar?

[DB]

Wait until some major buildings downtown catch fire...

It will be an inferno.

And no one will be able to get there to put it out.

The city could burn before this is all over.

[litehaus]

I can recall cops in BOCA RATON, Florida expressing the opinion that they should throw all the weapons confiscated "over the wall" to what was referred to as 'Pearl City'and let the residents finish each other off....

There exists, whether anyone wants to admit it or not,an element that we would all be better off WITHOUT..Yeh..I know, I ain't being PC..TS!

[SW6906]

Ping!

[rellimpank]

--and as a aside to this, I forget who I am quoting--"urban riots occur for two reasons, fun and profit"--

[Buzwardo]

Ambrose Bierce once defined the term "riot" as a "popular form of entertainment put on for the local militia at the expense of innocent bystanders." Were it only true in this instance.

[gitmo]

Riot bookmark. Read it after I've gotten some sleep.

[jordan8]

Eugene Methvin, there's a blast from the past. I've still got a copy of The Riot Makers around somewhere.