This is my understanding of the riots.
I recently saw a video of a guy named Jody McIntyre being dragged mercilessly by a cop from his wheelchair during the student protests. McIntyre has cerebral palsy. He supposedly threw something at the police, though it wasn't proven. Regardless, even if he had, the consensus is the cop should never have dragged him so violently out of his chair.
This experience brings up a very important point: what happens when a cop clearly abuses his power? Do we cut him slack and use circumstantial logic to justify his actions i.e. "it was a stressful evening, so many students protesting, we thought we saw him throw something. I just flipped my lid." the end. In that case, is the cop excused? Does he have to defend his actions in court? Not necessarily.
There is a committee called the IPCC that deals with complaints of an abuse of power. McIntyre brought his claim to the committee only to have it thrown out. They dismissed it as an attempt to avoid his own contribution to the event. Needless to say, this brought into question the credibility of the IPCC. Who do they support: the police or the prosecutor?
It is apparent after watching McIntyre's video "Bars of Change" that there are many, many stories just like McIntyre's. There is a police force that is not willing to admit that they cross the line. In a society that is hellbent on fairness and justice, this infraction seems to undermine the entire system.
Story after story talks of black and arab men needlessly searched by cops routinely, so much so that it has become a part of their life. In one summer, an interviewed arab man said he had been stopped by the cops 35 times--and he was only 14.
Some don't have any problem with this. They think its important in order to maintain a civil society. Yet, this is condemning and typecasting groups of people without any chance of breaking their defined stereotype. As a white person, I can say that we cannot understand this treatment. We don't understand the discomfort it must cause to be relentlessly searched day in and day out without an apparent cause. We can't understand what it must be like to know that a brother or uncle was shot needlessly by a cop because they thought he had a gun in his hand when it only was a lighter. We won't understand what it is like to grow up in this environment and to see the blatant hypocrisy in the police and government system. This is why we struggle so much when we try to understand why there is so much anger towards the government. We think they are angry at authority figures because they have an inherent repulsion for authority that is replaced with an inherent sense of rebellion. We psychoanalyze them and give them a narrative that always ends with "if they try hard enough they would get out of this situation."
Narratives like these are the ones that blind outsiders to see the visible symptoms that something is very off. People had been complaining, protesting, demanding answers for people murdered without any probable cause only to be ignored. They don't feel safe anymore when the people who supposedly keeping the peace are the ones who are killing people. This point cannot go ignored. You cannot overlook this. It is so important to understand.
When Mark Duggan was murdered without any cause it lit the city on fire--literally. So many of the people who live with this daily prejudice erupted in unison; it was their time to speak up for all the injustice that had been ignored. And to get their voices heard, they acted radically.
Fire became both their siren and their weapon. It spoke clearly that they are serious and this issue is real. No longer will they kindly sit back and watch this problem exacerbate. In doing so, it riled up thousands of people. Some took advantage of the high that comes with the power of being heard and did what they pleased. Their perception had become reoriented where places that had been off limits in the past now were free to access. It's as if they stepped into an alternative reality where older people, people they trust, condoned their behavior, and said you can have whatever you want, you're doing this for a cause.
From the outside, this mix of self-indulgence and political insurrection seemed mindless and barbaric. Innocent people, shop owners, clerks, residents--people who have nothing to do with the 'system'--are the victims. They have become the scapegoat for the 'rioters' problems. The tables have turned. The 'rioters' are often the scapegoats of everything that is wrong in the world and are pushed down as a result. Now, the 'rioters' are responding back, through their main weapon, physical force, in order to be heard. It makes for a very confusing situation, where emotions are flying wildly. It doesn't help that the 'rioters' mismanage their anger, forcefully lashing out on those who are vulnerable. These are the moments that undermine the cause and conflate it into a picture of mindless thuggery.
The problem with the argument of "they should have known better" is that the people who enforce that attitude, the members of authority on their own community, condoned the political insurrection. They gave freedom for the youth to act how they please. They shift into a mentality where they are told you don't have to worry about your consequences, just act. And act they did, with pure abandonment, releasing their own personal rage and taking whatever they want. If anyone has been caught up in the moment and saw later what they did hadn't the foresight they wished then they should relate to this situation. It is further amplified because the political framework legitimately defends the protest. There is a need to separate the actions that are sheer rage and actions that are righteous anger. Leaders of this event should have stepped up and advised the youth they way they should handle it. Although, I suspect the energy was uncontainable; the youth were going to act as they please. At that point they have to take responsibility that they chose to continue to engage in the overt rebellion that satisfied a self-indulgent behavior (a lot like the bankers and journalists of the world.)
It's just sad that the ramifications of this event are going to cause an even greater fracture between both social groups, rioters and non rioters. It will cause the 'rich' to look down upon the 'poor' even more. It's just a sad day for sociality.
