Politics_Observer wrote:@wat0n
I am sure the cops were making a calculated move to retreat. They probably thought their presence would have made things worse which was why they retreated. You need to be careful about when it's time to show force as a governor. Having the National Guard handy and ready to go is a smart move, but at this point I would only want to see them with tear gas to disperse crowds and not be armed with any weapons.
Things haven't gotten so bad as to where you would want to impose an Iraq War style curfew on the communities. That would be overkill. Besides, these are Americans rioting, not Iraqis waging an insurgency. But having them ready for any contingency would be a good idea in case things for some reason REALLY escalate. However, at this point the only thing those guardsmen should get is tear gas for crowd control and to act as back up to law enforcement. The rest has to be resolved politically by the communities and the people who represent them.
No disagreement with that, but things can escalate quickly. As such, they should be ready.
Since I don't think the military is well prepared for riot control, my guess is that the first step (already taken) is to have them take control over the critical infrastructure and other key buildings (which I guess implies controlling the downtown area). The cops should have the first responsibility as far as crowd control goes. PS: By "well prepared" I don't mean that they lack the equipment, but that their training in riot control tactics shouldn't be as good as that for the police - at least as far as using non-lethal force goes - and that they aren't supposed to be doing that, and shouldn't ideally do it. Ideally, they would operate jointly with the police and the latter would be carrying the actual arrests out while the soldiers would act as backup.
There are actually some military manuals for these situations, so they should generally know what to do. But there also needs to be a willingness to use more force if the violence escalates, and deal with whatever political fallout that may come later.
Either way, this is a harsher policy than the one you mentioned earlier.