and when it does anything can be the first target.

make excuses for the looting and stealing. Does that make them any better than the cops who took an innocent life? It is a sad day when stealing feels good. Now someone in that neighborhood will not be able to get their prescription from CVS near their home that is desperately needed. It's time to teach people how to process that feeling of being disrespected by actions that create a productive ending. I have seen this looting produce nothing more than boarded up stores that refuse to return to areas. Does that feel good?

I get your argument but that little piece is more than one step over the line.

and DU hasn't really wanted to "talk" much about it. However, now that some teen-agers decide to "attack" a CVS, suddenly, what's going on in Baltimore is newsworthy.

Something that I'm sure the community learned from Ferguson, suddenly the media was interested in what was going on in Missouri only after the QT got looted. I, for one, see a pattern.

and monitoring what is happening.

the correspondent's dinner. I don't care if anyone replies to my post or not. I've seen people ask about the lack of discussion.

to have. It'd certainly be more productive than just complaining about looting.

then riot away!

won't bring about change? I'm not disagreeing with you, i just am curious how you can be so certain and what your prescription might be.

and family members in spite of my best efforts and peaceful protest, I might be tempted to start thinking about what sort of change non-peaceful forms of protests might bring. Is it really that cut and dried to you? If so, why? Tell me it isn't just because you said so.

people who still know poverty but do not steal and loot. If that were the case then all of America, at this point, would have people stealing and looting and burning. The country would be ablaze.

just poverty, it's about an unarmed man being killed by police thugs. There is almost always a day of reckoning.

But imagine the sheer desperation and hopelessness that would lead to such rage.

Rather than condemn, try to put yourself in their shoes.

looters are teenagers who were dismissed early from school and saw opportunities for some mischief in the form of looting and stealing. Maybe it does not really matter to them that these stores will not return. Oh well. The family of Mr. Gray asked that this not happen. I guess the looters said to hell with what the family wants.

And they are easily riled to do foolish things.

Still, my teenaged kids would never have done this. Not because they are better kids than these kids, but because they are not festering in a pool of poverty and racism and police brutality.

It's easy to label a person as bad. It takes a little more effort to see things from that person's perspective.

The deeply racist city government of Baltimore provoked this and are solely to blame .

matter? How much good did looting and stealing do in Ferguson? Nothing. Boarded up stores and the same old same old.

People do not riot if they have education, jobs, housing, food, medical care, and hope. You are witnessing the results of severe disenfranchisement of whole communities, where hope for any of these things isn't always in view, let alone existing in their reality.
We are all damaged by this injustice, and we must all help to stop this injustice.

the players, hate the game that puts certain communities into a paradigm of abject poverty and crushed hopes and dreams.

But no one seems to care cause it's "therapeutic" or some shit.

people.

When the LEGAL behavior includes disproportionately murdering people because of skin color there must be some realization that the the rules of civil society have ALREADY failed.

This is what total breakdown of social norm looks like. VIOLENCE, injurious, deadly, destructive.

As I remember the Long Hot Summer...it took decades to recover, and in some cases repair to the damage people did in rage to their own community never happened.

...they are taking advantage of the unrest for their own opportunistic purposes.

It's a classic mistake to conflate those who are seeking justice and reform in their protests with those who may be reacting out of anger and with those who are just using the relative chaos for their own personal aggrandizement.

Step in, Mr. President.

According to news media reports.

check out local WBAL too.. Something has to done to help this country and people-

He should then take the steps he can to fix the problem. The President has a lot of power and pull. His DoJ can make it tough on renegade police departments. He can show those being brutalized that he is on their side.

Besides giving a speech, what else should he do?

Please be specific.

The DOJ is already investigating.

It's past time for the POTUS to step up and deal with this issue of police violence against the public.

stir up trouble. And she herself is black. I trust that she knows her city well.

so it could very well be that people who want to stir the shit is coming in and disrupting lawful protest.

They keep calling the looters "protesters" :/

You're already starting to see that take shape in some of the reporting going on now by the cable news shows. The police look like they are standing down and not taking charge to defuse the situation. They're just letting these kids - and they are kids - loot, burn and run rampant in the streets.

One commentator said that the Mayor said that they should just let them have some of the city to destroy. I can't believe that statement and I'm afraid that this is all going to come back to bite this poor Mayor of this city.

Almost like that's what the police want to have happen.

calm mayor. Exploitation by people who want to make things worse of the city's problem right now is causing extreme pain in that city...

she wants to do the right thing by her city - but she is caught up in the middle of this and partly because she is black. I'm sure that there will be a lot of white citizens of the city that will be on her case after this and I'm sure that there will be a lot of black citizens on her case as well.

calm things down and looking for causes in her own city departments...

On that we agree.

The funeral was today and the family asked for a day of prayer with no protests. The community leaders leaders who have been interviewed have all said that these acts of violence are not coming from their groups. These are the same sort of opportunists who always finagle their way into protests to wreck havoc and loot.

To merge the two groups minimizes the death of Freddie Gray.

The actions are wrong, but the frustration with the system is real.

No one is forcing these looters to tear down their neighborhood in protest. They are responsible for their actions. Welcome to the adult world.

This started when cops threw the rule of law out the window and severed the spine of a young man.

Now we are seeing the consequences.

Criminal behavior sparked criminal behavior.

the victim's family and neighbors react, then it is really important, cant have that.


Reminder:

Reverse everything, white folks burned down the entire country the FIRST time one of them was lynched for being white.

I don't condone it either, yet humans always do things for a purpose even if they don't know what that purpose is.

If you have rioting and looting in the streets, chances are the police are not really that good at their jobs?

If the cops and the community are one, you don't ever have rioting or looting.

Simple way that works imo.

...that aint working anymore.

Look, I don't approve what these looters are doing in any way but its getting attention and maybe it will make an officer think twice before pulling that trigger or beating someone to death.

"Hmmm I could kill this unarmed black guy and cause half of my city to be burned down or I can just arrest him" - Officer A.Whol

They're destroying important resources in their own neighborhoods, and people are shaking their heads. The cause is being set back by this violent nonsense.

What do you suggest? What do you think can change the police brutality problem?

~ President John F. Kennedy

Where would the gay rights movement be without the stonewall riot? Sometimes the straw finally breaks the camel's back...

this is what they get.

...and many businesses were destroyed, costing who knows how many people their jobs and livelihood, many of the members here responded with stuff like "at least they're not dead like Michael Brown".

This place is a real fucking joke sometimes. I hesitate to call it "Free Republic" bad but it definitely has its moments where it's up there in terms of batshittery.

Black lives matter, especially those that are still living in these communities AFTER the looting and riots happen.

On April 29, 1992, shortly after four white LAPD officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King, rioting broke out in Los Angeles. On May 1, President George H. W. Bush delivers a nationally broadcast response to the unrest, which lasted more than a week.

http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/george-bush/videos/bush-on-los-angeles-riots

Not a Bush fan, (repeat -- not a Bush fan) but he did come forth with a message to the nation as was discussed above by some posters.

Everyone knows this and everyone also knows very few officers get prosecuted. Usually a paid vacation is their form of punishment for most who cross the line into brutality. Change is way past due:

Swedish Police Officers Vacationing in New York Show the NYPD how to do Effective Policing

It’s possible to detain a subject without resorting to lethal weapons at the first opportunity — and four Swedish police officers showed how it was done Wednesday.

The officers — Samuel Kvarzell, Markus Asberg, Eric Jansberger, and Erik Naslund — were riding on uptown No. 6 train to see “Les Miserables” when a fight erupted between two homeless men. The officers responded to the call for help, and a bystander began recording the confrontation on their cell phone."

http://aattp.org/watch-swedish-police-officers-vacationing-in-new-york-show-the-nypd-how-to-do-effective-policing/