Monday night in Ferguson offered a little glimpse of what that police-free world might look like. From local news station KSDK: Officers reported heavy automatic gunfire in the area of W. Florissant and Canfield, police said. A University City police officer was shot at the intersection of Canton Avenue and Lamb Avenue, according to police. Asst. Fire Chief Steve Fair with the Ferguson Fire Department said they found structure fires along the corridor of Florissant, West Florissant, and Halls Ferry roads. “We have been fighting approximately 25 structure fires tonight, along with a car dealership where we lost 10 cars that were burned up,” said Fair. The department had help from all over St. Louis and St. Charles counties, but said it was difficult to make offensive attacks because they were run out by gunfire. “Not just a little bit of gunfire, a lot of gunfire,” said Fair. “We do everything that we can, and we’ll continue to do everything we can, but we are limited to what we can do.” Around 3:30 a.m. Fair said crews were still battling five or six active fires. They were still putting out hot spots and mopping up the scenes at others. An elderly man was carjacked and run over with his own car in the name of “social justice.” Social justice was also pursued by burning and looting a variety of stores, including Little Ceasar’s Pizza, Federal Express, Toys R Us, the St. Louis Bread Company restaurant, a pawn shop, and a Metro PCS cell phone store, at which the looters paused to take a few selfies: looter_selfie Another cell-phone store owner, an Israeli immigrant named Sonny Dayan, stood in the ruins of his looted shop and expressed his disappointment in both rioters and the police to the L.A. Times: Looters shattered both of his front windows, he said when he got off the phone. “They took everything — phones, cases, everything.” Bystanders told him police had stood by and watched. Earlier, he said, “I talked to people on the street and they said not to worry. They said this time the focus will be on institutions, not businesses.” Unlike most merchants on West Florissant, Dayan didn’t cover his windows. “I didn’t want to be another boarded-up store on this strip,” he said, adding that customers had thanked him for staying open as the grand jury worked. Looters also ransacked a liquor store they also struck in August, during the last round of major vandalism. At least five major fires were burning along the street, including another cellphone store, a public storage business, an auto parts store and a title company. Dayan said police had promised him there would be more security this time, more protection. “They told us they would try to root that kind of violence out. I don’t know how much success they had,” he said Monday. “They had promised to eliminate this but it happened right across from them.” Dayan said he figured that by not boarding up the windows, he would demonstrate his trust in the community and not be targeted. As he drove to the store after being alerted to the looting, he said he realized he had underestimated the criminal element in the area. “An opportunity like that arises, they’re going to take it,” he said, his voice calm as he mused, “Maybe we’ll learn something from this. “It’s hard. It’s just a tough kick to your gut – you’re trying to do the right thing, and you know there’s so much good in the area,” he said. The good in any given area has no chance to flourish without the unapologetic and absolute defense of the law. Accept no substitutes, especially not vague promises from prospective rioters. The enduring image of the night for me wasn’t the images of buildings coming down in flames and looters running wild in the streets, but Natalie DuBose, the owner of a cake shop in Ferguson, weeping helplessly as her livelihood was destroyed. natalie_dubose Over the weekend, DuBose – a single mother with two children – begged the mob to spare her little shop: “If I can’t open my doors every morning, I can’t feed my kids in the evening. Just don’t burn my shop down. Don’t destroy it.” She shouldn’t have needed to plead with the thugs who ignored her. That’s what the “rule of law” means. That’s what real “justice” means. The government she spent her working life paying for was supposed to protect her, and Sonny Dayan, and the rest of them. But the ruling elite was too busy playing footsie with the rioters, feeling them out for useful political connections, playing into their paranoid fantasies in the hopes of goosing them to the ballot box to vote Democrat, preserving the influence of the organizers, and peddling an ideology of helpless victimization that relieves even violent assailants of responsibility for their actions. There were also violent demonstrations in California, plus a more peaceful march in Times Square that nevertheless violated New York City ordinances, which were of course waived without comment. What were any of those people “protesting ” for? The right of people with a certain skin color to assault police officers of a certain skin color, without repercussions? What they need, more than anything else, is for some people they respect to tell them they’re acting like fools. We’ll get plenty more of the lawlessness our ruling elite and their sensationalist media indulge (and, as the Ferguson prosecutor pointed out in his statement Monday night, cultivate.) Things were only hideous on Monday night because of all the indulgence and cultivation given to previous outbursts and false narratives. This thing was allowed to fester for a long time before it blew up. Whatever progress we might have made on various issues in America, our political and media class, and their favored constituencies, are still a long way from growing up. Many of them will spend the days to come showing us just how dangerously infantile they can be.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:56:06 +0000
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