[Usagi_yo]

Clarence Page -- a respected and very experienced journalist pens an OP-ED piece with some uncomfortable facts for the Baltimore Police Department.

[WayneS]

...the Baltimore rioters who some news reports described as “protestors [SIC].” The label falsely flatters the thugs and hooligans

Exactly. I am so sick of hearing most reporters refer to these a--holes as "protesters".

[RedStateRocker]

It won't matter. There will be jack boot lickers who try to use the reprehensible behavior of the protesters to divert for the real point which is that the Police Department screwed up.

Just because other people commit a crime protesting something that happened does not mean that citizens of good conscience should not be MAD and demand immediate and drastic change when government is doing something wrong.

I wonder what the actual numbers of peaceful protesters to rioters were.

As with the Eric Garner case, I really have little sympathy for anyone who doesn't comply with a police directive in public; if the say put your hands up or ‘STOP’, no doing so is very dumb and dangerous. However that has *NOTHING* to do with the fact that some cops are out of control and the bigger problem that supposedly ‘good’ cops won't stop them or report them.

Rioters should be shot, but we citizens have every right to demand that each and every use of force against a citizen by any government agent, anywhere in the USA be independently investigated by some entity that has no connection to the police or any motivation to whitewash facts.

Just a cranky .02

[JoeFromSidney]

This is the second time in my life when I've agreed with Clarence Page. Normally he looks at everything through the prism of race. Every problem of Blacks is Whitey's fault. This time he seems to have gotten it right. Let's hope this is the start of a trend.