In the wake of the Charlottesville, Virginia riots, Fox’s Tucker Carlson has some very good points to make. He’s joined in this clip by Dan Bongino, a veteran of the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service. Both men bring up an excellent question: why is it that the police in riot situations such as this one or previous incidents in Ferguson, Missouri or Berkeley, California or any number of other cities are nowhere to be found when different political factions start physically battling each other in the streets?
As Bongino says, it’s usually not for want of officers who are capable of doing their jobs; instead, in almost all cases, local or state politicians are to blame for giving “stand down” orders to their police forces.
In 2015, while riots were going on in her city, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake came under fire for saying that some dangerous protesters there should be “given space to destroy” structures or vehicles or commit arson. In some situations, police, are fleeing the scene of confrontation rather than taking action to separate the belligerents from each other and/or making arrests. It’s not a question of whether they have the training or the tools (many forces now have a surplus of former military equipment at their disposal) to deal with such scenarios; instead, they’re being forced by superiors to let the left and right factions battle it out—no matter the consequence to safety or life.
This is not the hallmark of a civilized, ordered society; it’s evidence that civic leadership has tragically failed. Bongino additionally makes it clear that there’s a difference between “free speech” and the freedom to commit violence; the former is protected in this country, while the latter is criminal. Watch as Bongino and Carlson debate how all this played out in Charlottesville.
