Stores & Riots

[klkla]

But I think this looting is absolutely unacceptable. These stores did not do anything to these people (probably even employ some of them). These stores are not the Minneapolis Police or affiliated with them in any way. The fact that so many people think it is okay to go loot stores like this is very troubling

Just to be clear the protestors are not doing the looting. As Alpha said and people here have witnessed the looters are organized groups (probably gang related). Some have infiltrated the protestors and start it by breaking windows before their friends get there.

[klkla]

I was on the rooftop of my apartment building in the heart of Hollywood during the RK riots (Hollywood Bl. & Wilcox Av.)

What I saw shook me to my core. It looked like a news video of Beirut. In my area I saw mostly hispanic families and some white adults looting stores by the rack full (very few black folks). This of course was a micro view of what was going on elsewhere in Los Angeles.

THIS...............is different! It feels different!

As many of you noted and by my own observations, something else is going on here independent of the "legitimate" protesters.

There is a clandestine underbelly to this. It is more organized, targeted and subversive. I strongly believe there may be several players in this with specific agendas. Anyone who knows me knows I am categorically NOT a subscriber to conspiracy stuff.

Players (agitators) from other areas and foreign influences seem to be involved. Extreme right wings groups have been identified by some national intelligence agencies. Rogue law enforcement people (no visible badges or emblems)seem to be in the mix agitating and disappearing. I don't know what to believe.................

Add all that to many people being so enraged and already compromised by this pandemic along with hundreds of years of disturbing history.......................

Moderator.................if I have crossed the line with my expression...........please delete. I understand

Actually you are spot on. There has to be something more to this. The protestors have done damage to police cars and stuff like that but the looting is being organized by someone else. It could be gangs. It could be organizations trying to change public opinion against the protestors to protect their own interests. At this point we don’t have enough information to know who it is but I hope we find out.

[klkla]

When we all started on this page, who would have thought that we would be talking about a pandemic or social unrest? Especially the toxic combination of both? . What a freakin bizarre world and times we find ourselves in! It is scary, sad and kind of terrifying!

Yes. It’s incredible to see how things can go wrong so quickly. We will persevere eventually. We always do.

[storewanderer]

Just to be clear the protestors are not doing the looting. As Alpha said and people here have witnessed the looters are organized groups (probably gang related). Some have infiltrated the protestors and start it by breaking windows before their friends get there.

It is a reach to say that not even one person who participates in the protests is also not participating in the looting? No way to prove that is or is not the case.

We know who (rather, what organizations) is organizing the protests as that has been made public. We don't know who is organizing the looting as that has not been made public. Until we know who is behind the looting, it seems premature to conclude that the looting is or is not somehow related to the protests. Put another way, had the protests not happened, would the looting have happened? Again, no way to know.

I will say this though: the looters vs. the protestors, as two different groups, then now you have yet another set of groups in conflict with one another. So if I were in the protesting group and then this looting group is coming along behind me (as if I led the way for them), I would be quite angry at the looting group for following my cause but engaging in physically destructive behavior directly behind my non-physically destructive peaceful protest.

Without going too deep down here, based on the videos of the people doing the looting, the number of people looting, etc. it is clearly a well organized operation that is bring out a lot of people, arranging carpooling for them to perform the looting, etc. I do not think those thousands who are looting around align with "right wing groups" and risk arrest, etc. to promote that. So who is motivating them to loot and make them willing to take these risks and vandalize all of these retail stores? How did all these people know to get in that carpool and those multiple carpools to be at whatever shopping center at whatever time? This is an organized operation and I will say a very well organized operation.

As with any crisis there will always be bad actors that come out and attempt to work it to their advantage. Go through the stages of Coronavirus recommendations and you can see how we got here. Cage people up, close businesses and cause people to be laid off (so they do not have money to buy their needs), tell everyone to wear masks (so they can't be easily identified when they are looting). There is a bigger force at play here. The question is how big can it get and can it get big enough to completely overwhelm law enforcement which is already half scared to touch anyone after what happened in MN. Kind of like those retail stores that won't do anything to shoplifters for fear of lawsuits or their employees getting stabbed/shot. Now we have police forces standing and watching as looters loot retail stores for fear of their defense efforts going the wrong way.

Nothing positive will come of this looting. These communities will lose their stores at least temporarily. Those who do the looting lose the respect of some other people (I suppose some may think the looting is justified but do not think that is the majority opinion). Those who do the looting and are actually prosecuted will have their futures impacted negatively.

At this point in 2020 first we have the Coronavirus which was to overwhelm the health care system (which never happened outside NYC; hospitals and health care systems have been so under capacity they've been laying people off), the Coronavirus which overwhelmed various food and non-food supply chains at the retail level but still the shelves generally recovered even if it took a month, and now these looting incidents where a still unknown number of stores have been destroyed and there is no telling if there is going to be more looting again tonight or if it is over. And these stores, the services the stores provide, the jobs the stores provide to the community, will not return overnight. It will take months or years to bring the stores back, if they come back. To me this looting is a much more serious issue than the Coronavirus with longer-reaching effects.

Look at other places in the world where you have groups that "want something" and cause problems like this in an effort to overtake the elected governments in given countries. Maybe they want control over a certain territory/area of a given country, etc. I won't go into the groups that do this but retrace to 9/11. At some point a ring leader will come out who is behind all this looting and make demands to US politicians for, who knows what, in exchange for "peace."

Funny how we don't hear much of anything about the Coronavirus the past few days. Currently at a near record number of active cases in my area (I made that sound worse than it is- we are at like 630 cases and have been over 500 cases for the past 45 days or so).

[storewanderer]

Here is a story about a Shop Rite in PA that was supposedly looted for 15 hours straight.

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2020/ ... wner-says/

How, do you not get the police, National Guard, Military, or whatever else in to get these looters out of the place over a 15 hour period? 15 hours??

[veteran+]

"I do not think those thousands who are looting around align with "right wing groups" and risk arrest, etc. to promote that."

So the right wing group pretending to be ANTIFA that was recently ejected from a social media platform probably was not encouraging anyone to loot? Or, mysterious appearances of pallets of bricks strategically placed in the path of protestors?

Out of respect for this blog's proprietor and for your mostly valuable contribiutions, I will not dane to unpack your lengthy post.

Have a good day and be safe!

[klkla]

Just to be clear the protestors are not doing the looting. As Alpha said and people here have witnessed the looters are organized groups (probably gang related). Some have infiltrated the protestors and start it by breaking windows before their friends get there.

It is a reach to say that not even one person who participates in the protests is also not participating in the looting? No way to prove that is or is not the case.

We know who (rather, what organizations) is organizing the protests as that has been made public. We don't know who is organizing the looting as that has not been made public. Until we know who is behind the looting, it seems premature to conclude that the looting is or is not somehow related to the protests. Put another way, had the protests not happened, would the looting have happened? Again, no way to know.

It is a reach to say that not even one person who participates in the protests is also not participating in the looting?

Of course not. But it's irrelevant anyways. The protestors are there protesting the murder of Mr Floyd and others by the police. It's not even logical to think they are going to steal something during the protest and carry it around until it's over.

It's been clear that the looters generally 1) Pretend to be one of the protestors and either break the windows so others can do the looting or grab something for themselves and run or 2) Organized groups of people that are traveling together to the protests for the sole purpose of looting.

Put another way, had the protests not happened, would the looting have happened? Again, no way to know.

That sentence is incomplete because it is missing a major element of the entire problem. I'll correct it for you:

Put another way, had the Police not murdered George Floyd would the protests, riots and looting have happened? Again, no way to know."

We do know. It would not have happened,

[Alpha8472]

The conspiracy theories aside, it is clear that the looters are tracking where the protests are through the media.

Once protests are located, the looters send out their groups of cars to those cities. The police are distracted by the protesters, so the looters target the stores.

Cities where there are no protests have police who can respond right away. The organized looters are avoiding those cities.

It is time for a trap. Inform the media of a protest in one city. Have the police set traps: spike strips, limited access to cars, freeway traps, trackers, etc. They need to bust the crime rings and find out who is responsible.

[storewanderer]

That sentence is incomplete because it is missing a major element of the entire problem. I'll correct it for you:

Put another way, had the Police not murdered George Floyd would the protests, riots and looting have happened? Again, no way to know."

We do know. It would not have happened,

I agree with the addition you made as far as it describes things regarding the overall situation- has there been no incident in MN, this would not have happened. However, the sentence as I presented it was complete as far as my overall observation of the looting that has taken place and the question of whether or not it would have happened, had the protests not happened. Would the looting have taken place if the protests had been told to be off the streets by 2 PM (well before dark, since a lot of the looting seemed to happen toward and after dark)? Again, nobody knows the answer to these questions.

Again no way to prove a lot of ifs and maybes but now the consequences of these damages are done. How many more people have been killed or hurt due to the protests and looting? Piling more and more damage on top of existing damage only makes the problem worse, not better. At some point the high road needs to be taken and people need to stop causing more damage. Those engaging in the protests and looting need to ask themselves a serious question as to what exactly they are accomplishing and if the additional effects of what they are doing is actually making things even worse by causing more people to be hurt or killed, causing property damage, causing retail stores to take serious financial losses due to inventory theft and physical facility damage, etc. I know the protesters will not take responsibility for the looters but the protests have not been violence free either. Again I understand the publicized intention of the protesters is to engage in a peaceful protest but watch some of the videos and read some of the signs being held in these peaceful protests and, well, I guess the definition of "peaceful" has different meanings to different people. Add to that, as has been pointed out here, there are a lot of people who seem to be taking advantage of the situation and may not be involved in the protest but entering the protest and causing trouble and the protesters are disclaiming association with those people who enter the protests and cause trouble but the bottom line is if the protests were not happening would those people be going and causing trouble? Again who knows.

But none of that really matters in the context of this retail discussion forum.

What matters is the impact on the retail stores, the neighborhoods that depended on these stores for goods/services, jobs, as well as to provide a safe location for people to go. Maybe the store lit up a block that would otherwise be vacant blight that is pitch dark late at night and somewhat dangerous to walk through, lacking the store and its activity/lighting. There are so many positive things that come from having an operating store in a location vs. a looted vandalized store or a closed empty building. But now the stores are gone and some will come back while others will not. As you point out in Los Angeles it took a 5-10 years and various financial incentives for stores to return after the 1992 Riots. All those years without a store in place hurts the people who live in the neighborhood.

The store did nothing wrong to anyone. I am disgusted by the lack of respect for the retail stores.

[veteran+]

A deep understanding of over 400 years of pain, suffering, death, et al might explain some of the behavior of legitimate protestors.

How long would it take an average person or family or neighborhood or culture to act out (not always in the accepted or correct way)?

25 years? a life time? decades? hundreds of years? of constant, daily (from blatant to clandestine) mistreatment.

I don't advocate for violence and it is not how I choose to respond but how long does anyone of us expect someone (anyone) to refrain and control and prevent themselves from going postal while almost always being mistreated?

Unfortunately there are opportunists that feed on all this, in between the victims and the oppressors.

I don't know, I am just asking...........