Looting breaks out in California

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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by ZoWie »

News of the latest shooting is all over the papers, so I don't have to go on about it. The victim was a well known philanthropist who supported arts organizations. She was married to one of the giants of African American music. Magic Johnson and Bill Clinton tweeted about it.

It cancelled quite a few lunches in LA. Let's just let it go at that.

Motive is unknown, though it involved a home invasion and a possible shootout with a security guard. The head Beverly Hills Cop (sounds like a movie) says he's not sure it wasn't a targeted hit. With only my minimal semi-insider understanding of the issues, I personally think he's saying that to cover his own ass, given that rich smug Beverly Hills is in a panic state right now. They're paying big bucks to LAPD for things like helicopter support, then they bitch that the choppers are noisy. Not even Eddie Murphy's character can save them from the consequences of social inequality.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by ZoWie »

They got the bad guy -- maybe

Suspect arrested in shooting of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... line-avant
Aariel Maynor was arrested by Beverly Hills police on Thursday afternoon after reports of a burglary at another house

...

Maynor is currently on parole and was taken into custody early on Wednesday by Los Angeles police at a separate residence after a burglary was reported there, according to the Beverly Hills police chief, Mark Stainbrook.

...

Police recovered an AR-15 rifle that was believed to have been used in Avant’s shooting. Maynor accidentally shot himself in the foot with the gun, police said, and is being treated before he can be booked into jail.

Authorities do not believe there are any other suspects in the Avant case, and Stainbrook said there were no outstanding threats to public safety.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by ZoWie »

As expected, the primary effect of the smash and grab wave is a kneejerk call for higher bail and more incarcerations of first offenders who can't make the bail. I don't even try to argue with people, because I can see how upset they are. "Courts let THEM all out with no bail, you know, that's why THEY rob us."

Needless to say, nearly all of those to be imprisoned would be of color, since that's the mutually understood connotation of the "THEM." I could say something about failure to address racial issues, but it would cause inspired waves of outrage blasting in my direction from all sides. Much of this outrage would come from the same people who last year were all on about how mass incarceration spread covid faster and how prison overcrowding made all our problems worse.

I just stay mum on the subject. My response tends to be, "Yeah, we have problems," without any further reference to what the problems are. In a country that discourages thinking beyond this month's news cycle, it's just not worth it any more for me to try and educate anyone on underlying issues causing the social crisis du jour. You can't reason with terrified people. Thinking stops, and I don't know how to start it back up.

Next thing is that the righties will try to grab back the "law and order" issue. They always do. This could affect the next elections.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Number6
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by Number6 »

Fourteen arrests made in in Los Angeles.
Fourteen people have been arrested in connection with smash-and-grab style crimes at stores across Los Angeles over the last two weeks, officials said Thursday as they pledged to stop the organized sprees.

The 13 adults and one juvenile face charges in connection with six incidents, officials said. There was no mention that any were involved in more than one.

All have been released from custody, either due to their age, after posting bail or because of no-bail rules for some crimes put in place for by the judicial system to reduce jail populations in the Covid-19 pandemic, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said.
NBC News
I have no doubt many of those arrested will be looking to cut a deal with prosecutors in return for ratting out others. It would be interesting to see whether they could also be charged under RICO ( Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations).
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Motor City
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by Motor City »

ZoWie wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 11:31 am As expected, the primary effect of the smash and grab wave is a kneejerk call for higher bail and more incarcerations of first offenders who can't make the bail. I don't even try to argue with people, because I can see how upset they are. "Courts let THEM all out with no bail, you know, that's why THEY rob us."

Needless to say, nearly all of those to be imprisoned would be of color, since that's the mutually understood connotation of the "THEM." I could say something about failure to address racial issues, but it would cause inspired waves of outrage blasting in my direction from all sides. Much of this outrage would come from the same people who last year were all on about how mass incarceration spread covid faster and how prison overcrowding made all our problems worse.

I just stay mum on the subject. My response tends to be, "Yeah, we have problems," without any further reference to what the problems are. In a country that discourages thinking beyond this month's news cycle, it's just not worth it any more for me to try and educate anyone on underlying issues causing the social crisis du jour. You can't reason with terrified people. Thinking stops, and I don't know how to start it back up.

Next thing is that the righties will try to grab back the "law and order" issue. They always do. This could affect the next elections.
Its ironic though these same merchants lobbying for harsher laws and more militarized authority are merchants whos employees are often homeless and destitute in spite of working full time. Also that these merchants cheat their employees out medical benefits and living wages by the way that they staff their businesses. There is clearly a conflict of interest in criminal merchants advocating even more harsh conditions on people who are not other merchant criminals like themselves.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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That doesn't make it OK to break into a total stranger's house and kill them. That is the stakes in LA right now. All perceived solutions lead to a perpetually armed population with less racial and cultural understanding, not more.

Right on schedule, the LA Times today ran the inevitable think piece on how we will have to start holding burglars on high cash bails again. The problem that caused release without any bail needed at all was because the prisons had become covid factories unsuitable for human habitation. They were superspreaders and the threat was that it would incubate new strains and release them into the population. The guards all had it too, and the guards unlike the prisoners have a voice at the table through their union. So we dropped cash bail for burglary. (You didn't really think we did it for altruistic reasons. That doesn't happen in the big city. It was cya all the way.)

The crime is worse and the covid is still out of control here. And 60,000 people still live in the streets.

I've tried to keep this discussion rational. People in LA are in a panic. People who moved here from New York when it was at its worst there are saying they've never been so scared. Coming from real New Yorkers by birth, that's saying something.

The problems are fundamental to the social order of the United States, and I don't know of any fixes.

I can't even keep my cell phone from ringing 5 times a day with phishing robocalls telling me to press "one" now or the cops will come or my credit card will cost too much, or whatever the scam is this time. I know of a technology that exists now that would completely solve the cell phone problem. I don't know how we could ever pay for the phone company to convert its whole system. That's out of my hands. The situation seems similar for this culture.

I certainly can't stop a crime wave, or make white people stop thinking that the society owes them a superior social position, or much of anything really. I can't make people wear masks and get covid shots, when they're even worth getting. I can't fix a 400 year history of exploitation, discrimination, pain, and periodic ethnic cleansing. I can't do anything.

It would be hard for me to explain why I'd consider moving to New York to get away from crime and fear. Sounds like moving to hell to avoid going to hell to those who aren't up on what a mess LA is right now.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
Motor City
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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We cant fix the problems by ignoring the biggest and most sweeping injustices while hyper obsessing over the smallest, is it really any wonder that balancing all of our social order upon the vulnerable living up to corrupt systems and keeping corrupt systems afloat leaves it severely lacking?

https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status ... 4870623242
Inflation is being blamed on workers and government spending. The real culprit? Corporate greed.

In our new episode of The Class Room we dug into financial reports to investigate the REAL reason prices are going up.

Hint: corporate profits have never been higher.
perhaps the chaos is coming from the same place that insists for their own benefit that we need militarized and violent authorities and authority to keep up the status quo.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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We need to be safe in our own homes, regardless of race, income, or anything else. If people have no homes at all, then the problem becomes getting them housed, then the problem becomes getting them safe. So we have two problems in LA.

We have evidence that turning homes into forts is no solution. The dead philanthropist had an armed security guard on duty. She's still just as dead.

Right now, it's hard to see any solution at all.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Libertas
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by Libertas »

ZoWie wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 3:59 pm We need to be safe in our own homes, regardless of race, income, or anything else. If people have no homes at all, then the problem becomes getting them housed, then the problem becomes getting them safe. So we have two problems in LA.

We have evidence that turning homes into forts is no solution. The dead philanthropist had an armed security guard on duty. She's still just as dead.

Right now, it's hard to see any solution at all.
Unfortunately this will only get worse. I dont know who is safer, my wife and I living in a middle class neighborhood or our very wealthy son and daughter in-law and grands living in neighborhood of wealthy people.

While MAGA will kill innocent people, the killing coming up will be organized crime (surely by now people know this does not mean Mafia.)

REAL bad days ahead.
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Motor City
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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LLP reminds us of how the social contract that we as a people subscribe to have a civil society matters in all this.

Why are flash mobs looting stores? Because today’s America gave them the go-ahead
For some, the search for answers will be an invitation to uncork pet theories about poverty, permissiveness or punishment. But none of those things is unique to this era. Think about it: This model for robbery has always been available to enterprising thieves. It’s simple math. What can one or two security guards do if 60 people decide to just walk in and loot the place? Granted, advances in communications technology make that easier to organize now than it once would have been, but still, a crime wave like this theoretically could have happened in 1985 or 2002. It makes sense to wonder why it didn’t. What is it about this particular era that has inspired this particular trend? Here, then, is another pet theory: The social covenant has shattered.

Meaning the thousand unspoken understandings by which a society functions, the agreements to which we all sign on without a word being spoken. Some are encoded in law, others just encoded in us. Either way, they are rules — “norms” might be a better word — people usually obey even when they could get away without doing so. You don’t stand facing the back wall of an elevator. In heavy traffic, you take turns merging. You stop at the red light even when the street is deserted. And, oh yes, you don’t join a mob to ransack a store.

While there is almost certainly some hardcore criminality leading this crime wave, one suspects that many of its foot soldiers are people with little in the way of serious police records. How much do you want to bet most of them will turn out to be ordinary, workaday folk who got the word there was free stuff to be had, and all you had to do was take it, like some giddy holiday from social norms?

Where would they have gotten the idea such a holiday was even possible? Surely the opportunistic looting that marred last year’s largely peaceful protests for racial justice helped influence them. But that’s hardly the only — or, arguably, even the most corrosive — transgression of social norms we’ve seen in recent years........
Authorities have already become an arm of violent militarized austerity and deadly violent force and it just helps create more disorder. Increasing that will only sour more against the social covenant. We know from the riots in LA and Detroit that peace and prosperity and law and order are a precious thing and once they are gone they are gone. How do you convince people to enter into social covenant with each other, equal rights and treatment under the law of course and humane policies and laws balanced with human rights.
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ZoWie
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

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More cops in tanks busting down doors with battering rams, killing unarmed people of color, and shooting "less lethal rounds" at crowds that don't disperse fast enough is like putting out a fire with gasoline. It guarantees more and worse trouble down the line. Overpolicing makes problems worse.

Agreed that any city only functions even close to optimally when what academics call the social contract is recognized by a vast majority of all the various groups comprising a population. We stop for red lights even when there are no people or cars around. We line up for things. We don't shoot people and take their stuff.

It's a system based on give and take. Ray Gun Republicans made it fashionable to do the take part without the give part, all the time blaming liberals and communities of color for the damage. We started seeing homeless in the streets. Minimum wages stagnated. Unions were busted. Sources were moved offshore. Education deteriorated, and the class/race gaps got worse. Daily social interaction became meaner. Overt racism became socially acceptable again. Guns became fashionable.

Everything since has felt like a slow decline into chaos.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Re: Looting breaks out in California

Post by carmenjonze »

The Los Angeles area has always had a longstanding white-supremacist/white-nationalist problem. Like other places in the country, these racist antisemites are getting more and more overtly violent.
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At least 50 overtly fascist stickers have been removed from the Pershing Square area along with one banner on the 101 overpass

Some read "Black Lives Murder White Children" while others read "Useful Idiots of the New World Order"

Banner claims "BLM supports Pedophiles"

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