Windows break on streets where people are being bullrushed. Windows break on nights with the most tear gas and most brutal arrests. If you want to prevent property damage you don’t add chaos to a crowd, or incite fear and anger. In short: the police are not protecting businesses. https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1298670770164465667

To be clear, whether property damage committed from understandable anger is *justified* is a different question. I’m speaking to crowd dynamics, which are simultaneously complex and incredibly easy to predict. If you provoke a fight or flight response, you get one of two things!

We have somehow collectively bought into the ridiculous notion that the burden is on civilians to keep their heads in an escalating situation where they are not the ones with the armor, the weapons, and overtime pay.

A particularly striking example of the things we absurdly take for granted: the common use of flashbangs. What is a flashbang good for, tactically? The ideal situation for a flashbang is to startle and surprise an adversary before you fire on them. It is not crowd control.

The police are running around throwing munitions whose sole purpose is to scare the fucking shit out of people, and then we act surprised when crowds behave exactly as crowds of scared people behave.

What will never fail to astonish* me is how people are so relentlessly "both sides are to blame" in every other arena of life cannot acknowledge how American police consistently escalate conflict.

*ok fine I'm not actually astonished

If the police were engaged in actual de-escalation, their treatment of Black Americans would still be an issue. As it is, it's all mixed up together — malpractice and malfeasance, with Oakley sunglasses avatars crawling around Twitter to infantilize the poor helpless police