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Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

Not going to try to defend the actions police or anything (I think the protest is for a good cause), but one piece of info I think is valuable:

Mob mentality is dangerous. There is a thin line between a "peaceful protest" and a riot. If you have seen other protests that have turned into riots (like in France where several innocent shops got destroyed in an anti-Israel protest), or in England where the riots got way out of control, you know what can happen. Its a few police trying to keep a huge crowd in control - and it is a scary job. Unfortunately being well-armed makes the crowds even angrier.

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Riots like these happen because people feel that society is fundamentally hostile to them - that it is trying to kill them. And so it makes perfect sense to attack society in general. Cops, shops, news vans...whatever. People fight back when they are under attack. It's a natural response, and suppressing it only causes it to build up and erupt.

You don't prevent riots like this with tanks, you prevent them by having a healthy society. And ours is seriously ill.

The riots and burning occurred before the police in riot gear showed up. Not after. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/attacked...

From the article you posted:

> At first, the crowd was quiet, even peaceful, he said. But as night dropped, more began showing up. And cops came, too, with riot gear and assault rifles.

The crowd was angry, tense and numbered in the thousands. You're not going to show up with flyswatters.

Here's my point. Would YOU have reacted the same way? I would not. Most people would not. Why are people trying to blame the police for their actions?

Interesting fact that just came up. The boy who was killed had robbed a convenience store just minutes before. http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/videos/ferguson-poli...

And now the story takes a turn.

You lied. You said they were already rioting before the police turned up in riot gear.

There's no point continuing the conversation with someone willing to mislead.

And so what if he did rob a shop? The penalty for that is arrest, charge, trial, conviction, punishment. Not drag to the back of a police car, shoot him in the head.

The riots occurred after the cops murdered an unarmed black man. But why even try to argue about the causality? The fact is people are alienated from society, and consequently give no fucks about society's rules or expectations.

If you want people to care about your shit, they need to have some stake in it, some meaningful reason to respect it.

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