Chapter 5
But what did I know about stuff, I was just a scruffy looking low wage, part-time night shift clerk at just another twenty four hour convenience store. What could a poverty level worker know about anything? I knew enough to watch the news daily because I felt things would come to head fairly soon and it might be bad times for almost everyone.
With the protests that were now often changing to riots the police were out in force to try and keep some order. Naturally there were many confrontations between rioters and those police officers. And there always seemed to be video of everything. Now video is a great thing but like everything else it can be used in a negative way. There were a couple videos showing cops using their batons on rioters. The whole video showed what led up to the use of those batons but often just the very short section of the video was shown where the police were whacking people and often the narrative was ‘police beating protesters’. Naturally this just led to more unrest.
The next escalation was when rioters threw Molotov cocktails at police and several of these police officers received severe burns. In that city SWAT snipers were placed on certain rooftops and the population were told that the snipers would indeed be used to protect the officers on the street from being shot, burned, or otherwise injured.
I don’t think anyone believed that those snipers would actually shoot anyone and most people believed there were no snipers to begin with. Less than a week later when one of the rioters lit a Molotov cocktail he was shot and killed. The shot that killed him went through the rioter after killing him and hit another rioter in the leg causing a severe wound. Only the one shot was fired and two rioters were down.
In the days that followed this shooting by the police sniper the act whipped the rioters and protesters into a frenzy. And it also made the ranks of protesters swell to amazing levels. There were now protests in just about every large city in the nation.
Many were shocked that the police would even have snipers. Even more were shocked that these snipers would be used against common citizens. More and more the police were being compared to our military Armed Forces. Often they were called ‘cowardly snipers’, I guess because they were located well away from the action on the streets.
And the more protests and more riots led to more and more confrontations. Police reserves were called up and police from outlying more rural areas were called in to bolster the big city police forces. When pictures of people hurt, arrested, or killed by police were shown on TV it was never mug shots but happy photos like graduation pictures or at birthday parties or whatever to try to show that they were innocent everyday people. Often the pictures used were from several years ago showing much younger people.
It seemed everything was done not to calm everyone down but just to enrage them even more. The rioters looted countless stores and burned many stores and cars in many different cities.
With just about every city in financial dire straits to begin with all these riots and protests were sapping what little money the cities had left. It cost a lot of money to have all those police on duty and to call in extra help plus pay the overtime hours. Then in many cases police cars were damaged or in many cases burnt up and ruined costing the cities even more money. The stores closing from being burned or looted or even shortening their hours because of the protests was costing the cities even more with the loss of the tax revenue. A surprising amount of revenue in most cities was from tourism and the protests and riots put an almost complete stop to that income stream.
Chicago was hit very hard in all of this and before it all started they had their credit rating downgraded to poor because of their financial situation. Now they were even way worse off and bankruptcy was being talked about. Many other cites were in very similar financial situations. The closed stores and businesses led to people to be either out of work or experiencing much shortened hours. The workers then had to apply for unemployment and often welfare and food stamps. Causing even more of a drain on the economy as a whole. And still there was no end in sight to this madness.
Everything said or done seemed to just lead to more unrest and more confrontations. Again and again the term ‘militarized police’ was used and the pictures of police in SWAT gear or riot gear were shown. The armored vehicles that most every police force now has were always prominently shown in just about every newscast.
And it was not just police that were targeted either. The firemen going out on calls were harassed, attacked, and sometimes fired on by protesters and rioters. Many times the fire trucks would wait for police escorts before they would drive to the fires. Often car fires never even got a fire department response.
With the riots expanding and becoming more violent that led to the National Guard being called out by several Governors to help maintain order. Now people were really seeing what militarization looked like. Many of these deployed National Guard troops had seen extensive combat in the Iraq and Afghan wars and they had all the same military gear that they had used in those foreign locations. They were real combat troops and they looked the part. Dusk to dawn curfews were enacted in many of the worst hit cities and now with the National Guard troops there they had the manpower to enforce those curfews. Again and again on the street and in the news there was talk of this being Martial Law or at least had the look of Martial Law anyway. Americans across the nation were not happy; whether they lived in those cities or not. This was not the America that anyone wanted.
Having protesters and rioters in cities being patrolled by well armed combat troops could only lead to deadly confrontations. It was only a matter of time.