{"id":3268,"date":"2012-10-09T09:55:14","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T13:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2013-08-14T21:31:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T01:31:33","slug":"blowback-in-our-innercities-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=3268","title":{"rendered":"blowback in our innercities"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(read the book free online<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0read the Reddit AMA<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>)<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0From Anaheim to the Windy City, America’s urban centers are steadily and relentlessly beginning to rotate into the gyre of violence and\u00a0retribution that all too often serves to foment revolution and unrest. And with poverty levels\u00a0surging to the highest levels since the ’60s,<\/a> the era of America’s last widespread innercity riots, avoiding more violent demonstrations and protests seems increasingly unlikely.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend in Anaheim, California an officer involved shooting devolved into an intensely troubling scene which saw police officers firing rubber bullets and beanbag rounds into an already dispersed crowd of civilians and a police dog attacking a mother and child.<\/a>\u00a0And then over the next few hours the situation devolved into further chaos:<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout the night, police in multiple marked and unmarked squad cars attempted to control an unruly crowd gathered near the shooting scene. Some cordoned off the intersection at East La Palma Avenue and Anna Drive with the same yellow crime-scene tape used by police where the shooting happened.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some moved a Dumpster into the intersection and set its trash on fire on at least three separate occasions only to be met with multiple officers who kept responding to move it out of the way of traffic.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 9:30 p.m., an Anaheim helicopter hovered above the crowd while police on the ground brandished batons and other weapons at the crowd, attempting to keep order.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

And then the very next day another resident was shot to death by police. Manuel Diaz was\u00a0unarmed as he fled from police on foot, once caught he was shot in the head.<\/a>\u00a0Witnesses claim that Diaz was put down only after he was secured in handcuffs, and although this allegation will be hard to prove one thing is clear from video of the encounter:<\/a> police didn’t make any effort to preserve Diaz’s life after he’d been apprehended and shot.<\/p>\n

These incidents sparked four consecutive nights of protests in Anaheim, with\u00a0protesters\u00a0swarming police headquarters demanding answers and an end to the injustice, before turning their ire elsewhere:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0As many as 1,000 demonstrators surged through downtown in the\u00a0Southern California<\/a>\u00a0city Tuesday night, smashing windows on 20 businesses and setting trash fires. Police and patrol cars were pelted with rocks and bottles. Hundreds of police used batons, pepper balls and beanbag rounds.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The full story of exactly how events managed to spin so\u00a0horribly\u00a0out of control so quickly hasn’t yet been formed, and may never be – following the incident four\u00a0separate\u00a0individuals approached a CBS reporter and claimed that police officers had attempted to buy footage of the riots off their cell phones.<\/a>\u00a0This virulent tension, between police officers and the communities they’re meant to serve, is far from unique to Anaheim – within American innercities it’s much more often the rule than the exception:<\/p>\n