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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

While I think you are right that Trump is doing this to escalate the situation,

> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before

sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.

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Are we watching the same things? It would seem they are. I see videos of LA police shooting reporters (with less than lethal but from a lethal distance) and swarms of cops ignoring 3 mounted officers attempting to trample a guy on the ground. Tons of arrests already. LA police are plenty capable of escalating things all on their own. They arrested a solid 1/4 of the protesters last night and will keep right on doing that, I'm sure.

Note I edited my post to remove "before". What I meant is at the start of these protests. LA had and continues to have plenty of its own law enforcement available. There is simply no reason to nationalize the guard without consent of the governor.

Trump decided to call out the National Guard in response to one car getting burned. That's something on the scale of a sports riot, not a collapse of law and order. You are making a mountain out of molehill, or falling for the manipulations of the people who are.

All this trump nonsense aside -

It's hilarious to me that we even have the cultural understanding of a sports riot, and it's assumed that it's just not that bad. Just people having a good time, burning up a car and smashing businesses to celebrate (mourn) their team's victory (defeat).

Is that supposed to be funny? Because in a super dry sort of way it's hilarious as a concept.

I guess it needs hundreds of marines, huh? You’re deflecting from the issue as so many others are here in bad faith.

Sports riots following a big game are just not that unusual in developed countries (even in Japan from time to time!), and no, they are not that bad. They are minor transgressions that rarely involve serious injury or loss of life and it's foolish to treat them as existential crises.

I think the fact that the LAPD had a press conference where they stated they were prioritizing responding to only certain kinds of crimes and cancelled time off for officers among a whole list of changes, indicates they could use help and adding in federal resources was the correct decision.

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