I had a band of wild horses wander behind the house. Saw a Jack Rabbit, too.
Closest one to me that I know of:
Police join in second Geneva protest
(in case there was any doubt: that’s Geneva, NY; population about 13,000.)
When driving home from work last night, I was really surprised to see a number of businesses boarded up on an apparently preemptive basis over the weekend. Big stores like Old Navy and Burlington Coat Factory. The Target and CVS I pass were both closed. These are all in border suburbs pretty close to Ohare but normally pretty low crime.
My dispatch zone covers the two districts at the top left of the map (minus the airport). Listening last night, there were many, many calls for shots fired and looting that turned out unsubstantiated. Some were oddly specific like looting at the gas station on the corner of X&Y Avenues when that intersection and the half mile around it are residential with no gas stations at all.
Would someone help me out with the big picture? Ideally, someone who remembers 1968. How bad are things, as a whole? How is the mood, overall? Is this losing steam or picking up steam?
I am seeing lots of good but atomized reports, but nothing that really captures the overall tableau of the state of the USA in early June, 2020.
I thought this would dovetail with the current threat*, but I don’t want to hijack, and if people would rather I start a new one I’m happy to do that.
*Thread, not threat. Stupid Freudian slips.
That’s an understatement. I happened to be in the city early Sun morning. Utter destruction. An ATM spraypainted, plate glass windows & doors smashed, mannequins on the sidewalk, some scorched & some spray painted.
3 story buildings, first floor was commercial & upper floors were residential. Notice the water pouring out of the door of Doc’s…& that’s when they were wrapping it up.
This.
I saw lots of looting in the past two days, a bit with my own eyes in the morning light, & a lot more from live TV helo footage from the safety of my home. Everything was hit from big box chains to mom & pop stores, from high value (jewelry) stores to low end (dollar) stores.
[ul]
[li]The Pleasure Chest was ransacked. Because dildos & lingerie is what every looter needs. :rolleyes:[/li][li]I saw one guy ‘shopping’ (albeit with a five-finger discount) & selectively taking what it looked like he liked & fit him - actually holding it up before deciding to keep or discard, while another guy just grabbed an armful of what looked to be kids sized baseball jerseys. [/li][li]I saw three people fighting with the security cable stealing NHL jerseys by the armful; walk away around the corner to get into a BMW X5, when I went to get a pic of the license plate, it was carefully covered up so they wouldn’t get caught. One actually opened up & leaned out of the back door to laugh at & taunt me - “Ha ha, you can’t get it”.[/li][li]In more than one place, I saw a collection of single shoes; two or three single women’s dress shoes (ie. all lefts of three different styles); I don’t know if there was a one legged looter in the bunch or what? 
[/li][li]I saw one guy walk out of a five & dime type store with a full set of pots & then stop on the sidewalk to put them down & try to stack them to make it easier to carry off. [/li][li]I saw one guy pushing his electric mobility scooter down the sidewalk. The reason he wasn’t riding it was the footwell area was holding whatever was in the boxes he stole. [/li]
[/ul]
ETA - as I’m typing this, a radio call went out for looting at the Sav-a-Lot. :SMH:
I’m not sure how well comparisons to 1968 will work. A lot of the underlying problems are the same – which is of course part of the reason for the anger – but the communications structure is entirely different.
I’ve known stores that were worried about theft to ordinarily put out on display only one of a pair of shoes. If/when somebody wanted to try them on, a clerk would go get the other half of the pair, and supervise; but the chances of somebody just grabbing shoes off a shelf were very much reduced because they’d only get half of the pair.
If that had been the store’s ordinary practice, then the shoes were separated to start with, and that collection of single shoes might either have predated the looting or have been the result of somebody realizing that what they’d grabbed wasn’t much use and dropping them again.
today is a stormy day in phila., no protests are planned.
yest. the protests were peaceful and the marching went all over philly. the Rizzo statue was removed in the wee hours of the morning. that statue was always a lightening rod.
last night around 11 a huge explosion jolted the cats and me. all of our heads swiveled to the window. turns out someone exploded the atm 1 block away. they said parts of it were found block away. the cats and I kept looking at each other and the window. a bit earlier there was a boom that was a bit quieter, that was an atm 7 blocks away.
the looting is down a bit, the atm attacks are the thing now.
According to Amy Klobuchar, an additional three Minneapolis Police officers will be charged in George Floyd’s death, and Derek Chauvin’s charge is to be upgraded to second-degree murder:
there is an unplanned protest happening, there is a break in the weather. got home before the protest, just in time for the announcement of the charges.
Here in Stockton the Chief of Police was quoted in the paper saying exactly that. Only in our case, so far no burning and very little looting. The paper said that the looters were coordinating on social media and that most of them were teens or a little older. I hope that means more will be arrested.
The protesters are coordinating with PD and it looks like PD may be facilitating. They announce areas where traffic may be slowed and city workers get notices to work from home if the protest is going to be downtown.
For those concerned with public meetings, Stockton NAACP held a virtual town hall meeting last night. Their demands look amazingly reasonable. Newspaper article here.
Sigh… I have one kid on the front lines doing surgeries in a Covid-ridden Boston hospital…
And one in SF, who’s spending this week in as many demonstrations as he can. He posts his wounds online like they’re medals.
(Lord, I can’t protect my “almost adult” kids… hoping you can)
IANAL, but isn’t it generally true that the more upgraded the murder charge, the likelier the cop is to get off scot-free? It’s harder to convict for 2nd-degree than 3rd-degree.
Protests remain peaceful in Hawaii. No rioting, no looting, no need for curfews and such.
More news from Lincoln, Nebraska.
Talks regarding the “Hold Cops Accountable” initiative leads to a mass breakout of…the Cupid Shuffle.
Saw recently that at a local church someone knocked over a lot of tombstones and spray-painted “George Floyd” and “Black Lives Matter” across others. This is an ancestoral church of my family (grandparents and earlier) and several of my relatives are buried there, but none of those graves were among the vandalized.
Protests in Hawaii remain peaceful but are growing. The one today in Honolulu alone numbered 10,000 protesters.
Seattle area curfews have all be lifted. The downtown seattle protests are going on but crowds seem smaller.
As pointed out many times, those out protesting are not the ones out to loot and destroy.
Bellevue area malls that were looted are all boarded up. As far as I know, there have been no protests here since Sunday, when criminal gangs ripped through downtown using the protests as a cover. I suspect a lot of the protesters were just as surprised and shocked as the rest of the population at the damage those gangs did, and didn’t want to unwittingly provide air cover a second time.
Atlanta diverted anyone thinking of protesting: they held a dance party. Complete with National Guard in full gear dancing the macarena. Atlanta knows how to protest — with dancing soldiers!
There have been closer ones since, in smaller towns. All of them have been entirely peaceful. In at least some cases police have joined in.
I haven’t been going because I’ve got four different covid risk factors and am about to be doing farmers’ markets, which is about as much risk as I can stand. But I’m glad to hear about them. Wish I weren’t also broke; would otherwise send money.
(I can sure vote, though – )
My town held a [del]demonstration[/del] community event today. Peace broke out. Lots of good feeling.
The local bar owner who had advocated on facebook (I did see some of the posts before they were taken down) … hmmm, how do I put this without truly offensive language?.. shooting and killing the offspring of dark skinned people before they grew large enough to lift and throw a brick is now facing a petition to revoke her liquor license, as well as a LOT of nasty comments (but no violence) from the local community of all colors. She may fondly remember when this place was a sundown town, apparently was surprised to find she is no longer among the majority.
Maybe change does happen?