Oh my God I almost forgot that!
I'm still sleepy here but I remember hearing somebody, later identified as a local council something, giving a narrative, saying he was driving through the neighborhood, giving street names, saying how quiet it all was. When, again, before my lying eyeballs I'm seeing this looting and flames shooting out of a building.
Again, we have pure chaos and anarchy going on before our disbelieving eyeballs, gangs of thugs going into what appeared to be private homes, certainly it was obvious it wasn't THEIR home. At one point two people from within a home broken in this way ran out! I see buildings erupting in flames, I see this scene with looters ramming the back of a building with a board, other looters throwing stuff out from within.
I mean, hey, they might have been sleepy but I GOT EYEBALLS!
Then there's this man reporting over a cell phone I suppose about how calm everything was, the serenity would like to kill ya. Then the camera spans over to those cops all standing around, not busy at all, tra la la.
Lookit, it really unfolded before my lying eyeballs this wall and I had no idea what the hell was going on. I have no conspiracy theories to express because I don't think there was a conspiracy going on. I did hear the Fox anchor say something about cops not responding because they wanted to let the rioters act it out, something like that.
Not saying I believed it or disbelieved it. If someone held a gun to my head and demanded my theory, I'd suggest that those cops strolling around as buildings burned and people fled their own homes, well I'd go with Occam's razor. The narrator, I forget who by this time, said the cops strolling about were about three blocks away. So I'm thinking those cops didn't even know all that stuff was going on three blocks away.
Remember the helicoptor had the advantage of having an overview of the entire area. Those cops were down at street level. At some point, and not really that long thereafter, those cops DID start marching in the direction of the rioting and marched with an obvious purpose. I'd guess it wasn't more than fifteen minutes and that's at the outside as I remember in my sleepy state, that the cops starting moving after the rioting began. Again, Occam's Razor, I'm thinking they probably didn't get their marching order over the radio waves till then. You know the sargeant calls the loot calls the mayor, heck, ten minutes or so probably about normal before the BIG word went out.
Fifteen minutes isn't really all that time to let the rioters "act it out" or whatever noble reasons apply. Nah, I think it was probably a more normal sequence of events as reality would have it. It was the helicoptor's perspective that made it surreal.
I demand the right to be wrong about all the above. Just my eyeballs reporting after all. Just now, it's speculation. I am still baffled.
The real disconnect from "reality" to me was watching the footage of the riot on Fox News while they had an interview with a doctor talking about toxic molds.