Rioting and looting broke out around the country in response to 46-year-old African American George Floyd’s May 25 death at knelling chokehold of 44-year-old, 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department Derek Chauvin. Video recorded at the scene showed a very nonchalant Chuvin kneeling in the neck of Floyd for over eight minutes, leaving him dead-on-arrival when paramedics arrived on the scene. Violence flared in Minneapolis, then spread to other major U.S. cities expressing the collective outrage of another white cop snuffing out the life of a black man. Minneapolis’s 38-year-old Mayor Jacob Frey agreed with protesters that Chauvin murdered Floyd but was not arrested or charged until yesterday. When Hennepin County Prosecutor Mike Freeman didn’t bring charges against Chauvin, the violence spread like wildfire, torching some 170 businesses.
Chauvin was accompanied by three other officers, looking on while Chauvin choked Floyd to death. Protests around the country demand that recently fired Minneapolis police officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane also be arrested and charged with accessory to murder, setting the perimeter while their partner Chauvin administered the lethal choke hold Accessories to murder that aid-and-abet the primary perpetrator face the same penalty, in Chauvin’s case 25-years-to-life for murdering Floyd. Freeman claimed charging Chauvin with Third-Degree Murder and manslaughter happened in record time but not in time to stop violent protesters from torching 170 businesses, including setting a police precinct ablaze. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey sat idly by while his city was torched by an angry mob, mostly from anarchists from outside the area.
Frey and other Democrat officials slammed 73-year-old President Donald Trump fro saying that the anarchy and looting must stop. Minnesota’s 56-year-old Gov. Tim Walz considered Pentagon help for clearly a situation beyond the Minneapolis Police Department and National Guard. Maj. Gen Jon Jensen, the adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard, said the Pentagon was asked to station army troops ready for possible deployment, if Minnesota authorities can’t stop the rioting and looting. Placing several Pentagon units on high alert “as a prudent planning measure” responds to a potential request by the Minnesota Governor, should he request help. Defense Secretary 56-year-old Mark Esper and 61-year-old Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Miley said the Pentagon would stay on high alert, awaiting a call from Walz. White House officials denied that they ordered the U.S. military to Minneapolis.
Slamming Trump for raising the possibility of calling in the Pentagon, Minneapolis officials led by 38-year-old Mayor Jacob Frey think the African American community has a right to riot. On the West Coast, 49-year-old Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called 48-year-old Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom to request the National Guard deployed to the city. Garcettin called a 8:00 PM curfew tonight for the downtown area but realized the Fairfax area was even in more anarchy, with looting going up-and-town the tony Fairfax and Melrose Ave. district, where many upscale stores were looted by bands of roving anarchists. Garcetti, whose spent the last three months justifying the strictness coronavirus lockdown in Los Angeles, now faces a city potentially burnt to the ground by mercenary anarchists, having nothing to do with Floyd’s death other than giving rioters an excuse to run wild.
Floyd’s death has morphed from angry protesting into paid anarchy, with anarchists and looters deploying to major metropolitan areas around the country. While some civil rights leaders would have you believe it’s related to Floyd’s May 25 chokehold murder at the hands of a white Minneapolis police veteran, anarchy has spread to major metropolitan markets around the country. Trump’s suggestion that he could deploy the military to stop mayhem in the streets was met by more criticism in the liberal press. Yet watching thousands of U.S. business destroyed by anarchists adds insult-to-injury of the already decimation by the coronavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 global pandemic, shutting down businesses for months. Torching and looting businesses around the country makes an already bad business situation even worse for eventual economic recovery.
City officials have no choice but to deploy the National Guard or U.S. army to stop the spread of anarchy around the country. Floyd’s death says little about racism in America but only one rogue cop committing an egregious act of deadly police abuse. Everyone agrees that Floyd should still be alive but the African American community, 13% of U.S. citizens, cannot hold the country hostage by spreading violence on American streets. Charging Ofc. Derek Chauvin with third-degree murder doesn’t make up for generations of prejudice and bigotry around the country. Trump isn’t out-of-line calling for law-and-order on American streets, even if it takes the National Guard and U.S. army to restore order. No matter how righteous African Americas feel after Floyd’s horrific death, they cannot torch communities in the name of civil rights. African Americans must stop the anarchy if they expect eventual justice.
