Anti-police protesters have found their enemy, and it is commuters and shoppers.
The protest movement that has sprung up in the wake of grand-jury decisions not to indict police officers in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases is the anti-police version of Occupy Wall Street. It represents the same free-floating critique of “the system,” with the same strong whiff of lawlessness.
Even when protesters aren’t burning out buildings (as they did repeatedly in Ferguson), even when they haven’t broken windows (as they have in Oakland and Berkeley), they have closed down intersections and bridges. In other words, even when they have been “peaceful,” the protests have involved coercion and illegal acts.
Given the events of the past two weeks, you could be forgiven for thinking that the reason President Barack Obama says there is an infrastructure crisis in this country is that there aren’t enough bridges and tunnels for anti-police protesters to block.