Comparing it to cases involving one or two people and he-said she-said cop malfeasance, is wrong headed.
This was CLEAR mass abuse of police power, wherein 117 people without any criminal histories at all, and another 60 with criminal records ranging from misdemeanor arrests many years old to a small handful individuals with convictions on serious violent charges -- ALL of those people were immediately and harshly punished without due process, their financial, professional, and personal lives SEVERELY harmed and damaged permanently with a now-existent "criminal record" and felony charges of murder and "gang" conspiracy to commit it.
That is not opinion, it is not speculation, IT IS A FACT ALREADY IN EVIDENCE.
You can afford to wait for the Courts to "sort it all out." This time. But if you are at all active in any clubs, then next time or the time after that, you may be the one languishing in jail while your reputation and income-earning ability is "legally" destroyed, while "sensible, level-headed" people tell you to be "open minded" in case the cops were wrong and arrested you wrongly.
WHY? Because Waco has already established that Civil Servants can get away with mass abuse of power SCOT FREE, and only risk paying any consequences YEARS down the road. Those Civil Servants apparently have very different rights that thee and me, Sherman, and it is VERY dangerous to thee and me.
Wake up.
I don’t disagree with most of what you say.
One relatively minor caveat.
When massive numbers of people are engaged in a fracas, it is generally quite impossible to determine which individuals committed which crimes.
So does everybody walk? That would seem to encourage people to get together in large numbers to commit crimes.
My comments otherwise were in general aimed at the shootings and arrests themselves. IOW, what happened that day.
It does seem that the cops, prosecutors and judges have mishandled the situation, though to be fair I’m not sure it would have been possible to do it “by the book” in this situation.
Also, if I walk around in a uniform intended to intimidate others by proclaiming that I’m dangerous and an “outlaw,” I really shouldn’t be surprised if others treat me accordingly. Does doing so remove my civil rights? Of course not, but I can assure you it will definitely impact other people’s presumption of my innocence. Whether it should or not.