This is what happens when the police show up in two minutes. Thieves scatter like rats. Want to enjoy warm fuzzy feelings? Witness masculine virtues of honor, in action.
Lets back up. There was a canceled then back-on-again protest in downtown Van Nuys yesterday. Canceled because the organizer was deemed not authentically a person of color, nor BLM endorsed, and as Twitter chat would have it Van Nuys was thought too poor and not white enough to deserve looting anyway. Somehow a small crowd showed up anyway and peaceably assembled for the afternoon to chant and placard at passing drivers.
This didn’t last. Saturation news coverage summoned the locusts.
Dozens of suspected looters spilled out from a Boost Mobile store in Van Nuys today, many getting away with apparently stolen goods in hand. Nearby, police declared an unlawful assembly and began dispersing a large crowd of protesters https://t.co/wvk4tBncba pic.twitter.com/OkxaBwFpqb
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 1, 2020
They hit the jeweler, the weed shop, then the cell phone store, but by the time they reached Walgreens, LAPD reversed it’s we’re allergic to handcuffs ethos that prevailed over the weekend and rolled up in force. They stopped them at the entryway, hammers in hand. A bus was waiting to haul them away en masse to the Pitchess detention center. The mob fanned out across the neighborhood, looking for softer prey.
Guess who happened to be walking his dogs on Raymer Street when the looters broke into the side door of Target and started hustling flat screens into waiting cars?
Police response was swift. Four undercover cars, six black and white, and a helicopter. This is the way the world is supposed to work. Following the disintegration of order this week, it felt like a movie from the VHS era.
This should have been Saturday. It should have been last Thursday in Minneapolis. But it wasn’t and here we are.
……..but how’s the BOOKSTORE???
(Old joke. Always applicable.)
All pretence of shock about the brutality that led to this is stripped away. Revealing the very gossamer sheen of civility that is only overlaid our country by dint of blue uniformed force.