Really, Was It Any Surprise?
Published at 10:38 on 25 November 2014
I think not. Cops who kill are almost always exonerated.
I cannot offhand readily think of any counterexamples to the above fact. I’m sure they exist, but they are rare. Very rare.
Unfortunately, rioting tends to be very little deterrent to such things happening. In fact, it’s a common outcome, yet the killing persists, decade after decade.
Again, this is not a surprise. Rioting is not rebellion. It is unfocused, unplanned, rage. It typically takes the form of the downtrodden destroying their own neighborhoods.
If the reaction took the form of more organized actions, and groups like the Black Panthers of old formed and persisted as part of the reaction, then one might expect the Establishment to take such things seriously, because the reaction to them is posing a more serious risk to that same Establishment.
But already pretty tatty neighborhoods becoming even more rundown (as a result of rioting-induced damage) is of little or no threat to the Establishment. So don’t expect things to change until the rage matures into a more focused effort to challenge the overall system as a whole.