Our nation is in Turmoil. A few days ago (5/25/2020), a black man by the name of George Floyd was, in my opinion, murdered in Minneapolis, MN by a local white police officer named Derek Chauvin, with three other officers standing there letting it happen. This is outrageous and a sad picture of what our great nation has been reduced to by many different factors - too many to go over in this 4 to 5 minute blog. I will address a few things: What happened, the protests as a reaction, the rioting as an amplification, the law enforcement reaction, and some options to identify and mitigate future issues as safeguards.
Chauvin and Floyd both worked, at different times and in different shifts, at a local bar as security. There's a good possibility that if they didn't know each other, they would have at least met each other. During a stop where Chauvin stated that Floyd fit the profile of a recent criminal action, the confrontation escalated, ending with Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck cutting off the air supply, and probably the blood supply, for more than eight minutes, leading at least to the conditions which caused Floyd's death, if not directly causing his death. At first the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) looked as though this was just another complaint to them, and would simply dismiss this. When protests broke out and it was apparent that this wouldn't just go away, the MPD fired the four officers and pressed 3rd degree Murder charges against Chauvin. However, to the black community across the country, this was just the last manifestation of a long history of organized, institutional racism against their community, and the protests continued.
These protests broke out in many cities across the country in an attempt to bring attention to not only this case, but to what they consider continual, institutional racism, as I already mentioned. Black Lives Matter (BLM) has been active for many years as a frontline grassroots organization to bring attention to this whenever possible. Sadly, rioting usually follows BLM when they start protests. While, I don't think BLM necessarily starts this rioting, they don't speak against it in most cases, but actually continue in the face of it, using the fear and hatred arising from this rioting to continue their directed focus on their targeted protest. In doing so, in my opinion, BLM condones this rioting, encourages it, and is guilty by association.
However, in this and a few other protest instances, it appears other bad actors are coming in and creating havoc for other, usually political, purposes. There have been instances when white supremacist groups (which I believe should be lined up and shot) and ANTIFA (which I believe should also be lined up and shot) join in to the fray to cause so much turmoil that police, National Guard, and even active military units are brought in to cause an altercation which they feel would allow them to garner more support from their base and increase their ranks with numbers of like-minded individuals. Typically, the black community has been aligned with the Left. Since ANTIFA is a far-Left leaning organization, centered on communism and socialism, which has deep ties to the Democratic Party (right AOC?), BLM and Democratic leaders have become apologists for ANTIFA, which I believe is another reason BLM doesn't only tolerate the rioting that ANTIFA does, but in many cases, seeks their involvement, since cameras are more in abundance when rioting happens, than when mere protests happen. White supremacist groups, which seem to favor more NAZI, or fascist ideologies (which interestingly enough are also socialist in design and practice - the NAZI party is The National Socialist Party in German), seek to fully discredit BLM in any way possible, and also begin rioting in their midst to that end.
Throughout this all Law Enforcement (LE) Agencies (LEA) and LE Organizations LEO) are faced with trying to stop the rioting and keep the protests from descending into more rioting. Due to the myriad of entities involved, violence begets more violence, leading people like me to load my shotgun and keep it ready, and organize my community into groups of citizens-at-the-ready to potentially combat armed and riotous actions in our communities in the suburbs of these large urban areas currently under assault. 7% of our great nation are veterans like me, skilled at the various arts of war, and ready to defend our nation and communities, but we're hoping it doesn't come to that. Our LEAs and LEOs are locked in combat with opposing but similar groups, both of which are taking advantage of a legitimate protest hoping to garner support and effect change to a real issue. They don't necessarily have time to deal with other crimes and community issues, evidenced by two to three car-chases last night in Los Angeles that resulted in the police returning to the front line without an end that could have improved the public's safety. They're trying to keep war from breaking out, and in the process it looks like war is breaking out.
Here is a great post that I think shows the problem that we have. Here's my addition to the post: The military is specifically under civilian control to disallow for a military takeover and to provide for objective oversight when facing the possibility of military malfeasance and other misconduct. Those serving in appointed Secretarial (Secretary of the Army, Secretary of Defense, etc...) roles must leave service before accepting this role because of this. Each branch has a Chief of Staff who is the highest ranking military member from their branch. The Secretarial Roles are the civilian connection to the Commander-in-Chief (The President) and have complete civilian oversight over their respective Chiefs of Staff and the branches they serve. Police chiefs, who fill a similar role as the military Chiefs of Staff, are usually the highest ranking active police member, with no comparable civilian oversight between themselves and the mayors they serve. Perhaps it’s time to change this. I hope and believe that by taking the control of the various police forces out of the hands of the police themselves, we could begin to have situations where more oversight and less "sweeping under the rug" takes place. Police that need to be held accountable would, in fact, be held accountable. If that lone step could keep us from descending into anarchy, where we have multiple factions actively waring against each other, I think we could all take a step back from the brink and begin to fix the issue.
Pray for our nation, and for each other...