Riots Invite Crime, Not Justice

Blacks end up suffering more when hostility to police makes it impossible to maintain urban order.

By Robert L. Woodson. Excerpts:

"the violent protests have also been decried by black Twin Cities residents who are witnessing the devastation of their community. Floyd’s girlfriend, Courtney Ross, urged residents to stop looting and burning in his name, saying that Floyd “loved the city” and would be “devastated” by its destruction.

The violence in Minneapolis elicits flashbacks of the rioters in Ferguson, Mo., after the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown."

"Ferguson residents suffered deeply in the wake of the violence. Public bus service was suspended and people couldn’t get to work. Volunteers from churches in the area brought in donated food because so many local stores and restaurants were burned-out shells.

In Minneapolis, as in other sites of violent protests throughout the nation, the media has helped stoke racial animosity. A CBS reporter condemned the disparity between police responses to the riots in Minneapolis and a recent demonstration by a mostly white crowd at the Michigan Capitol, omitting that the latter was nonviolent. Perhaps because of heightened media scrutiny, Minneapolis police showed significant restraint, which might have emboldened rioters to besiege and burn down a police precinct building."

"A pattern known as the Ferguson effect has emerged across American towns and cities racked by antipolice protests in recent years. To avoid charges of racism, officers have stepped back from fully enforcing the law. In this state of “police nullification,” entire neighborhoods have descended into free-fire zones, where street violence and homicides have skyrocketed.

After the 2015 police shooting of a black man in Cincinnati, civil-rights activists descended on the city to decry the institutional racism of law enforcement. When officers subsequently declined to enforce the law aggressively, there was a significant increase in murders in one crime-ridden black district. The civil-rights advocates who had led the protests didn’t have to live with the consequences of lawlessness when they returned to the safety of their neighborhoods."