Why don’t you ask the owners of the businesses burned, looted and destroyed...do you think they would rate the riot “wimpy?”
Of course they don't think the riot was wimpy. But there are very few of them. And that is the reason that the riot was in fact small and weak.
Ask the French, who see muslim riots that last a week at a time, with thousands of cars burned every night, if it was a wimpy riot and they will tell you it was almost a non-event.
Compare it to the riots of the 60s and it is just a little blip.
There is a delicate line here, where too much civil disturbance repression is going to lead to future problems, and too little is going to lead to problems right now. I think it was very close to the correct response.
Sure, some business owners were burned out, OTOH if they have insurance they were the lucky ones. They can take the insurance money and move out of town.
The people who really got taken were the ones who owned business in Ferguson that are still standing. They are going to have huge problems from the fact that the town has been poisoned economically. We are going to see boarded up stores in this town for years to come and what sane business would ever locate there?
Essentially innocent people who had no way of ever foreseeing this kind of thing are definitely going to be hurt. But this was set in motion by the first riots when MB was shot. The economic death of the business community in Ferguson was sealed at that time.
I have businesses. I do not locate in areas where there is even a remote chance of a riot or other type of civil disturbance. This doesn't mean I am racist, it means I don't want to take a chance on losing my investment. Too high a percentage of Blacks, Hispanics, Afghan immigrants, Sikhs, or muslims and I get very nervous about the safety of my investment.
I view this as leaving the opportunity in those areas to people who understand the culture better than I do.