Currently, our country is in shock and outraged over the horrific arrest and subsequent murder of George Floyd. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should feel this way, and peaceful protest should certainly be the order of the day.
This disconnect between the police and their methods, especially in dealing with people of color, simply has to stop. Our citizens are sick of it, and the public should be mortified by what they saw happen to Floyd as he was being arrested. Such gruesome displays of brutality stick in everyone’s mind and override the good work and sacrifice our police officers do every day to protect the public. The good our men and woman in blue do is stained, besmirched and greatly diminished every time this happens by those few bad seeds in the police force. It is sad that they maintain a culture to protect these brutes because of the strength of their unions and the “Blue Code of Silence.”
Rioting in the streets, looting, vandalism, attacking the police officers who are there to protect them is not peaceful protest. Running down officers in speeding cars and shooting at them with bullets or throwing bricks is not peaceful protest, and these people should be ashamed — but, of course, they are not. They are the very miscreants the police are there to protect us from, and while the police are trying to do their very dangerous and apparently thankless jobs, rioters are burning cars and police stations, at the same time idiots are carrying signs to defund the police.
The vast majority of the protesters have been peaceful, but the violent rioters are ne’er-do-wells whose mission is chaos, not righteousness or justice. They are the vermin of civilization, and the cities who are letting them rampage are making excuses for their outrage and allowing them to run wild in the streets.
Consider this: The big cities that are mostly making the news are all run by Democratic mayors. These include Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia. Only one does not have a Democrat as governor. Each and every one has apologized for the mayhem while allowing it to continue.
When Freddie Gray was killed while being arrested in 2015, the Baltimore mayor famously allowed the riots to continue overnight, because she felt their anger. Police were told to stand down and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was quoted as saying they also “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”
As these cities burn, liberal media news host Chris Cuomo of CNN has stated on air, “Please show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”
John Porta
Westhampton
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