It’s time to challenge America’s repressive anti-riot laws (Wapo editorial)

Anti-riot laws generally define a riot as a gathering that creates an immediate danger to property or people — which leaves room for interpretation on what constitutes “an immediate danger.” In Texas, the threshold for a riot stands at seven or more people.

When police officers have sole authority to make the call on whether there’s “immediate danger,” they can — and often do — exaggerate the circumstances, giving them wide latitude to arrest nonviolent protesters. Worse yet, if even one person throws rocks or a water bottle, then anyone in the general area can be arrested for riot participation. These unjust arrests, as with all arrests, fall hardest on people of color.

From every video I've watched of Portland and Seattle, the police very clearly give 2 and 3 warnings of an illegal assembly and very often gave over an hour of warnings for people to disburse. You'd have to be a real moron not to get a clue. After those multiple warnings and extended timeframes, they use smoke, pepperballs and tear gas to clear the crowd before they resort to physical force. Their strategy has been on pushing back to a perimeter and then withdrawing, rather than direct confrontation.

The ones at the back ordering (hetero) ‘white bodies to the front’ are getting a bigger kick out of seeing their 'allies' gassed and arrested than they are in actually throwing things. Unfortunately, both Portland and Seattle judges are releasing the arrested with nocharges and they are back on the street within hours even more emboldened, which ticks off the delinquents who become even more determined to see them arrested again. The mistake the police are making, is they are only addressing the front of the crowd instead of flanking and sandwiching them and getting the true troublemakers in the rear.

I have to compliment the Portland and Seattle police for the patience of Job. Their battlefront is not just the protester/rioters, but also the local DA’s who refuse to prosecute and the local politicians who vilify their department. As they work under demoralizing conditions and utterly vicious personal and racial insults you'd not expect to hear out of any civilized person's mouth, the wormy little keyboard warriors, many identifying as psych cases, are stalking and harassing their kids and wives - encouraged by shady twitter figures presenting as militant sexual deviants with names such as 'ops' 'oracle', 'comm' 'revolution' etc in their protest forums - which the FBI should already have been crawling all over. But it all seems to be ignored - most especially by Twitter.

>>Worse yet, if even one person throws rocks or a water bottle, then anyone in the general area can be arrested for riot participation.

If one person riding in a car shoots people everyone in the car can be arrested for the drive-by hit.

When the police give the order to DISPERSE, do it.

When some are throwing bricks, beatdowns, and explosive devices it is unsafe to be there. You are patsies for the militant leftists.

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