What will be the result if a big city mayor uses the pretext of a black suspect ambiguously dying while in police custody to gin up racial hatred and animosity of blacks towards whites and erupting vilification of and violence towards law enforcement, accompanied by active "official" persecution of police officers? Answer: Baltimore, Maryland, where the all-out war of black-on-black and black-on-white pitched combat is reaching levels of bloody mayhem not seen in decades:
Baltimore reached a grim milestone on Friday, three months after riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody: With forty-five homicides in July, the city has seen more bloodshed in a single month than it has in forty-three years.
Police reported three deaths — two men shot Thursday and one on Friday. The men died at local hospitals.
With their deaths, this year’s homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July’s end in 2014 [a 59% increase]. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year [an 83% increase]. July’s total was the worst since the city recorded forty-five killings in August 1972, according to the Baltimore Sun.
During the height of public unrest and civil disorder over the Vietnam War. Which is indicative of how much worse the numbers are now, since there's no overarching national issue propelling the violence.
What is? (1) The local police have withdrawn, completely disincentivized from doing their core job of enforcing the law and maintaining "domestic tranquility" for fear of another "incident" and being demonized and prosecuted and ruined. And (2) the pharmaceutical "fruits" of the last round of rioting and looting:
Crime experts and residents of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods cite a confluence of factors: [blah blah blah; blah blah blah] and competition among dealers of illegal drugs, bolstered by the looting of prescription pills from pharmacies during the riot.
Federal drug enforcement agents said gangs targeted thirty-two pharmacies in the city, taking roughly 300,000 doses of opiates, as the riots caused $9 million in property damage in the city.
Perched on a friend's stoop, Sherry Moore, fifty-five, said she knew "mostly all" of the young men killed recently in West Baltimore, including an eighteen-year-old fatally shot a half-block away. Moore said many more pills are on the street since the riot, making people wilder than usual.
"The ones doing the violence, the shootings, they're eating Percocet like candy and they're not thinking about consequences. They have no discipline, they have no respect — they think this is a game. How many can I put down on the East side? How many can I put down on the West side?" [emphases added]
Of course, it's a game. Look what they're being told: "You have every reason to be angry at the 'pigs,' you have every excuse to steal and loot and maim and kill, we will never hold you accountable for anything you do because you are a member of the 'right tribe,' we will give you all the "room to destroy" that you want, so go 'have fun'". Why wouldn't they look upon it as a game?
And Mayor Blake's idea of public accountability? Firing her hapless (black) police chief who was only following her orders and policy to have the cops adapt a "lower profile" - a useless symbolic move that hasn't slowed down the record "Charm City" crime wave in the slightest - and accepting the presidency of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, from which post she will do
A true leader would have resigned in disgrace a long time ago. But then, a true leader would never have created this mess in the first place. The very pointing out of which is "racist," I suppose, but doesn't render it any less the brutal truth.
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