Posted on March 26, 2021

The Times Is Trying To Gaslight You About the Summer’s Riots

Jonathan S. Tobin, New York Post, March 23, 2021

{snip} Nine months after the death of George Floyd triggered a massive wave of riots and looting, The New York Times has issued a lengthy report about what happened — and blamed it all on the police.

In a recent front-page story headlined, “In City After City, Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests,” the paper predictably lays the entire blame on cops, rather than on radicals who wrecked commercial districts and caused at least 25 deaths and thousands of injuries.

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{snip} The report portrays police across the nation as “poorly trained, heavily militarized and unprepared” for mass unrest.

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Beyond the resources question, the Times narrative blaming the police for the summer riots is pure balderdash.

For starters, the summer uprising itself was unjustifiable: There is no statistical evidence of an epidemic of police violence; cops aren’t in the business of hunting down and killing unarmed African-Americans. Some cops screw up and overreact in difficult situations, with sometimes tragic consequences. But too often, journalists — the same ones now blaming cops for riots — misreport these incidents, creating martyrdom narratives that can’t withstand factual scrutiny.

The notion that cops brutalized the BLM protesters on a mass scale is equally false. In fact, in many cases, cops were ordered to stand down and let the rioters run wild, rather than risk the kind of mass casualties that might have resulted had they attempted to stop the burning and looting. {snip}

In some instances, police even abandoned police stations and other government facilities rather than defend them. Citizens who lost their businesses or jobs or were injured no doubt regretted the abdication.

Almost everywhere, it was the protesters who initiated violence. Cops showed heroic patience, as they were physically assaulted and subjected to vile, often-racist insults. {snip}

Cops aren’t perfect, but lawlessness is infinitely worse. The politicians and chattering classes abandoned the men and women who keep evil and chaos at bay. Liberals are using them as scapegoats to radically reorganize our society, so it conforms with the nostrums of critical race theory. It is that toxic ideology that is to blame for a violent summer.

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