Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
So what was their intent?
People were rioting, looting, and burning down buildings.
They told police to stand down. What was their expectation? That the buildings would stand up and defend themselves?
These city officials chose chaos and destruction over enforcing the law. Now it's time for them to deal with the consequences. They don't get to send the bill to Minnesota or Uncle Sam.
You could've just looked up what their explanation was for yourself. They thought the risk of life was too high to justify stopping the chaos and destruction.
You'll prob respond "but that's why we have police, to enforce the law. They sent a message that it's ok to break the law now there's even more chaos".
That's a fair opinion, it's tough to quantify the value of human life or how many lives were actually going to be at risk. I assume you'd place the value of a rioters life at zero, but I'm sure other people would disagree, including the elected officials. If the Mayor of Minneapolis thought it was very likely that several cops would end up dead, would you be ok with the decision to stand down? What about 10? 50? What if he thought there were a decent chance that sending in the cops would only escalate the situation and prevent them from containing the riots which allow the chaos and destruction to spread.
What isn't fair point though is to accuse them of making the decision because they wanted all the destruction to happen. There were valid pros and cons to having the police stand down and sending them in.