The ones responsible for a crime will be prosecuted.
The policemen who died in the riots are innocent and were murdered as well. They also had families. How many more policemen will die before enough blood has been spilled? How can people think this is morally right?
It's not a moral dilemma or an exercise in logic and I don't see people arguing it's morally right. I think you are missing the scope of what's happening, things are out of hand. Also it was only the 1 policeman who was arrested this far, the other 3 who just stood by and watched are still on the loose though suspended. I don't think people have that much faith in the system as it is.
Just a couple weeks ago the police in another state broke into the wrong house and shot the couple who lived there. It was not the home of criminals, the woman was a first responder and was shot 8 times into her bed. There was no trace of the drugs they were searching for in that house and allegedly they were searching for a person they had already arrested earlier that day. The details around this incident are extremely shady, many witness reports claim the officers didn't even announce themselves or that they were from the police before breaking down the door. Imagine the police broke the doors of your house and killed you and your significant other just because they suspected you of something, or suspected someone they suspect of something might be in the house. Or imagine it happened to your brother, your sister, son, cousin, whatever. That kind of thing happens in the US pretty regularly. Going by stats and averages, the police in the US kill more people in 3 days than the police in Finland kill in 10 years. They have roughly 60 times as much people, trying to crudely adjust for that, it would still mean over 20 times as many fatal police shootings. But there's no video of that, but there is a video of a black man being slowly strangled to death by a police officer, while 3 other police officers stand by. Said black man is pleading for help, begging for mercy, crying for his mother, meanwhile 4 police officers kill him, slowly but surely. Let's face it, those 3 officers standing by doing nothing are just as guilty as the one doing the choking.
Some of the police shootings etc. you can probably rationalize and explain away, or at least somehow emotionally understand as a scared officer with a gun in a bad situation making a bad call, but there's none of that here or in many other cases, which come off more as massacres than anything else. I'm sure most of the police officers are good people, I only know 1 US police officer personally and she is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met, but that doesn't change anything about the deep systematic problems there. It's been like that for decades, nothing seems to change. The first responses to these protests and eventual riots were all wrong and it starts from the top down. There was no sense of hearing the people, Mr. President himself was just provoking people. It's not the police officers' fault but as it is, they represent the state and are the hammer that hits the nail. It's not fair to them. There seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel, local people rising up to turn away "protesters" who have come from elsewhere just to riot, some police chiefs etc. showing understanding and compassion instead of driving police vehicles into the crowd.
It's a lot of bent up emotion and anger set loose on the world, the COVID restrictions and tanking economy certainly play a part I'm sure, people have lost jobs etc. and seemingly have nothing left to loose, enough things pile up and some people go crazy, enough people go crazy and people get dragged into it just because of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. This far the authorities have handled things very poorly, they have not acted in ways to calm things down, they have needlessly provoked things further. Sometimes the use of force is necessary, but it's a fine line and use of excessive force in a situation that don't seemingly need any looks very bad. Just because people act like idiots, doesn't mean the authorities should act the same. It's reasonable to expect and hold the police, military etc. to a higher standard than a rioting crowd. That doesn't mean the crowd is 'right'.
Bottom line, it's easy for someone like myself, who isn't there, to act all sane and logical and high and mighty, but the reality of the situation is it's extremely complex and runs deep and there probably is no easy ways out at this point. I mean if it was my neighborhood that was burned down by rioting idiots, my post would probably look very different. Anyway, best case at least something good will come out of it all.
