Reckoning With the Riots
The people’s enemies must be dealt with by measures of whatever severity is required to end this intolerable state of lawlessness.
By Conrad Black • July 27, 2020
The showdown is coming over urban violence in America. The continuing rioting and destruction erupting in new cities every few days is almost certain to provide yet another profound demarcation of opinion over how to govern the United States and address the problems that have so stirred the country since the killing of African American George Floyd by a white Minneapolis policeman on May 25. America’s toleration of a completely unjustifiable level of general violence compared to anything in its past demonstrates considerable progress in civility and restraint in the past 50 years.
In 1968, the legendary mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, attracted great controversy but not majority disapproval when he publicly told his police not to hesitate to fire live ammunition at violent demonstrators and rioters. As the immense disturbances surrounding the Democratic National Convention in that city evolved, the mayor indicated that he was not exactly urging his officers to shoot to kill but to shoot to stop the rioting, and implicitly, not to be overly concerned if some lawbreakers died as a result.
There was widespread support for this position. Eleven people were killed, about 500 injured, and more than 2,150 arrested in Chicago; four months earlier, in the riots in at least nine major cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King, 43 were killed, more than 3,000 injured, and over 20,000 arrested.
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