Higher crime in black communities doesn't fully explain the disparities. A study by researcher Cody Ross found, "There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates even race-specific crime rates , meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.
But Thompson said it also takes years of neglect, despite peaceful calls for change, for discontent to turn into violence. In the s, people engaged in nonviolent protests as part of the Civil Rights Movement, filed complaints through the NAACP, complained to media, and threatened litigation, Thompson said. In Baltimore, locals complained to media , filed lawsuits over police abuse, and, finally, protested peacefully for weeks before the protests turned violent. In Charlotte, black communities have long complained about mistreatment by police — including, previously, the police shooting of Jonathan Ferrell , an unarmed year-old black man who was shot 10 times and killed by a white police officer after he crashed his car.
It was only when these attempts at drawing attention to systemic problems failed that demonstrators rose up in violence, including in modern-day Baltimore and Charlotte. But if you protest peacefully, they don't give a shit. A California police officer directs traffic around a shopping center engulfed in flames during the riots in Los Angeles.
Social justice riots are often depicted as people senselessly destroying their own communities to no productive means. President Barack Obama , Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake , and members of the media all used this type of characterization to describe the riots in Baltimore. It was a widespread sentiment online after the Charlotte protests, too.
But riots can and have led to substantial reforms in the past, indicating that they can be part of a coherent political movement. By drawing attention to some of the real despair in destitute communities, riots can push the public and leaders to initiate real reforms to fix whatever led to the violent rage.
The s unrest, for example, led to the Kerner Commission , which reviewed the cause of the uprisings and pushed reforms in local police departments. The changes to police ended up taking various forms: more active hiring of minority police officers, civilian review boards of cases in which police use force, and residency requirements that force officers to live in the communities they police. People would say that this kind of level of upheaval in the streets and this kind of chaos in the streets is counterproductive," Thompson said.
Sugrue agreed. Similarly, in Los Angeles, the riots led the Los Angeles Police Department to implement reforms that put more emphasis on community policing and diversity.
The reforms appear to have worked, to some extent: Surveys from the Los Angeles Times found approval of the LAPD rose from 40 percent in to 77 percent in — although approval among Hispanic and black residents was lower, at 76 percent and 68 percent respectively.
It's hard to say, but these types of changes might have prevented more riots over policing issues in Los Angeles. In the immediate aftermath, riots can scare away investment and business from riot-torn communities. This is something that remains an issue in West Baltimore, where some buildings are still scarred by the riots. In the long term, they can also motivate draconian policy changes that emphasize law and order above all else.
The "tough on crime" policies enacted in the s through s are mostly attributed to urban decay brought on by suburbanization, a general rise in crime, and increasing drug use, but Thompson and Sugrue argued that the backlash to the s riots was also partly to blame.
The "tough on crime" policies pushed a considerably harsher approach in the criminal justice system, with a goal of deterring crime with the threat of punishment. Police were evaluated far more on how many arrests they carried out, even for petty crimes like loitering. Sentences for many crimes dramatically increased. As a result, levels of incarceration skyrocketed in the US, with black men at far greater risk of being jailed or imprisoned than other segments of the population.
The irony is that many of these "tough on crime" policies led to the current distrust of police in cities like Baltimore, as David Simon, creator of The Wire and former Baltimore crime reporter, explained to the Bill Keller at the Marshall Project :. And they say, man, this guy had 80 arrests last month, and this other guy's only got one. Who do you think gets made sergeant? And then who trains the next generation of cops in how not to do police work? I've just described for you the culture of the Baltimore police department amid the deluge of the drug war, where actual investigation goes unrewarded and where rounding up bodies for street dealing, drug possession, loitering such — the easiest and most self-evident arrests a cop can make — is nonetheless the path to enlightenment and promotion and some additional pay.
By evening, stores and cars were burning. The Baltimore riots, preceded by the violent demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo. Ferguson did the same in In Ferguson, only 21 percent of those arrested in August were from outside Missouri, and 76 percent were from Ferguson or surrounding towns.
And of the 31 adults arrested in Baltimore as of last Sunday, only three were not Maryland residents. The main participants in riots are usually young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods that have been virtually occupied by police; they usually feel powerless in the face of police brutality.
When riots erupt, the balance of power momentarily inverts, and youths normally cowed by police experience a heady sense of efficacy and freedom. Activists, in contrast, rarely participate in riots. More confident in their ability to effect social change, experienced activists tend to channel community anger into nonviolent forms of collective action.
Their presence actually makes riots less likely. By Tuesday afternoon, 1, National Guard troops had arrived in Baltimore, along with armored Humvees and other military vehicles. Police frequently respond to protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets, as seen in Anaheim in , Ferguson and Baltimore.
But police violence, in particular the killing of unarmed minority youths, is often the trigger for urban riots, so police repression prolongs the conflict.
All rights reserved. How will the protests end? History tells us much depends on how government responds The long, hot summers of protest in the s offer a lesson in missed opportunities. In , during the protests in Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrators learned that holding onto each other allowed them to use their combined strength to withstand the blast of the fire hoses.
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