A smelly solution to riots

May 30, 2020 20 Comments

I stayed up later than planned Thursday night into Friday morning, watching a mob attack Minneapolis’ 3rd police precinct building.

Rioters celebrate burning precinct. (Photo: Andy Svenson)

Earlier, at least five officers were seen on the roof, firing flash bangs (loud explosive devices) and tear gas. 

Sometime before 10 p.m., the mayor ordered police to abandon the precinct to the mob. To me, that was as shocking as if Texans had abandoned the Alamo. It was a surrender, but it was a strategy that I’ll discuss in a minute.

In addition to the precinct, several other buildings had been set ablaze, and MSNBC’s Ali Velshi reported from the ground that mobs prevented the fire department from reaching the blazes. 

As Velshi reported, there was no police presence at all and mixed in with the peaceful protestors with legitimate grievances were criminals taking advantage of the situation by looting stores and arson.

At 2 a.m., the mob controlled the streets and even Velshi wondered where the hell was anyone in authority.

There are, basically, two tactics in crowd control.

First is to confront the rioters, to take control of the streets, and to disperse them or take them into custody.

Second is to have the police stand down for fear that confrontation will provoke violence and lead to bloodshed. However, Minneapolis had the violence absent the provocation.

In Minneapolis, some in the crowd were armed with fireworks, which were shot off during the evening, plus bottles and rocks.

Friday morning, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz revealed that police moved in around 3:45 a.m. Friday and cleared the streets with no fatalities. By that time, the only ones on the streets were trouble makers.

My feeling is that you don’t let a mob control the streets, and especially you don’t abandon a police station.

Why did the authorities do that?

My educated guess is the mayor felt if he ordered police to hold the precinct, if rioters were busting through the windows and doors, cops would have been forced to shoot them.

That would have led to deaths and a huge publicity black eye.

What else could the cops have done?

Tear gas doesn’t work all that well because professional protestors often have gas masks and it is subject to winds. Rubber bullets and bean bags can accidentally kill.

Police dogs are extremely effective, but they recall memories of southern sheriffs using them against civil rights marchers, something that has given German shepherds a bad reputation among some African-Americans that lasts until today.

Here’s my idea: Bring in the water cannon.

Fill it not with water, but with sewage. If you don’t want to handle or shoot sewage, use a chemical with a very foul odor, like hydrogen sulfide. Spray the rioters and watch them scatter. They will smell so bad they’ll speed home to jump in the shower.

The technology exists. For several years, Israel has used a nonlethal hand grenade named Skunk.

Skunk’s odor is so overwhelming, it was reported, it drives rioters or insurgents away — and they will stay away. In an escalating riot, Skunk could be unleashed to bring it to an immediate halt.

Saving both the cops, and their precinct.

20 thoughts on “A smelly solution to riots”

  1. HAPPY SATURDAY !!!
    Stu,
    Nice job with the skunk. Not so much the water canon ( do they still exist ? )
    We from the big city see things a bit different than the country folk. Experience tells us not give ground, much less a precinct house ! That’s knowledge gained from the military ( why pay for real estate twice is the old saying )
    Tony

    1. Tony, I believe each Engine Company carries a deluge gun as part of their equipment. Don’t know if the S-99 is still active? That’s the Giant Deluge Pumper!
      Tom

      1. HAPPY SATURDAY Tom !!!
        I would think that the deluge gun has seen it’s day. Other than knocking down a failing wall, etc, you don’t want to hit anybody with water at a high volume and high pressure. ( lawsuit )
        About the only places that you’ld need quick response and volume is high hazard facilities and airports.
        see you later today,
        Tony

  2. Stu,
    Like the Skunk method, but will MSNBC approve? Or CNN and most of the media? They can’t even say riot. Just like they couldn’t say Islamic terrorism.
    And who the hell pays the professional rioters? We know that is how peaceful protesting escalates. Will we ever learn? As long as there are people who want to keep racial division and there are voters who keep voting for left idealists’ dreams, the answer is no.
    Tom

    1. it is what it is…you can call it a picnic or radical WASP terrorism(Tim McVey et al)

  3. Hey Stu how bout this solution stop killing black people unjustly and then making excuses while the criminals get protected by the “good ole boys”….,including corrupt District Attorney’s. Let me “knee” a white person to death and get filmed doing the crime I’ll be locked up in a New York minute. We don’t need more aggression we need justice!
    #where there is no justice there is no peace!

  4. “…… Let someone come run in your home and loot for the cause then and let’s see you be ok with it! This is your neighborhood and if you have children you couldn’t even walk them down the street because everything is burning or destroyed. You wouldn’t understand unless you was in this position! Justice for George Floyd but not this kind of justice.”
    The above partial quote of the wife of a Minneapolis firefighter. Their real dream, a sports bar scheduled to open June 1, burned to the ground by rioters. Sickening.

  5. I get really pissed-off when I hear law enforcement complain of the “no snitch” code in high crime areas. Policeman adhere to the same code. The majority of the killings by police were perpetrated by officers with a record of questionable professional conduct. Where were the upstanding officers? Do they stay silent as well? We know the answer and it’s time this was addressed! FYI-I don’t condone rioting and looting. When people are angry they tend to do dumb things.

  6. last night in philly alone 5 people were killed.The paper did not name them.The paper didn’t reveal their race. the paper didn’t reveal their motive.the paper didn’t reveal the perpetrator.nobody knows and nobody cares- the ashbin of history.there will be no “protests”.my Antifa neighbors(21 year old white kis from the burbs) will not scrawl death to all pigs all over town.Their deaths are inconsequential to the false narrative.

    1. Remember the protestng just this past Memorial Day Weekend in Chicago for the 10 murders and countless shooting victims? 🤫

  7. folks,
    As usual ( most of the time), Stu’s blogs draw a following. Why this one particular blog, rather than “it looks like a strike….”which only drew two replys ? Since I’m on a roll here, asking 40 questions:
    1) When did it become okay to shoot anyone?
    2) When did we allow the little league treasurer to steal the funds?
    3) When did we condone volunteer Fireman/woman to set practice fires – commonly called arson ?
    4) When did we start accepting shoplifting ?
    You get the idea. We stopped caring about the people. We stopped having neighborhoods were you grew up with a hundred people keeping an eye on you and your house and family. Somehow, we confused the rights of the individual with adhering to the laws of the land.
    Somehow, we have to turn it back around. Maybe we need to believe in God once again.
    Tony

  8. A GREAT idea! Spray them with s**t! Disgusting, but perhaps effective.

    My take on all this is the pols see rioting as a safety valve: the tensions build up to an explosive level, the people take to the streets and vent their rage on each other, on buildings, on cars, etc. Then, in a week or so, the blood cools and saner heads get together and say, “Hey, what are we doing here? We’re burning our own neighborhoods! Let’s re-think this thing.” So…the riots will continue because that’s what the pols want: let it run its course. With all of the covid-19 impositions on our freedoms, this was bound to happen. All it took was one cop — a bad cop, from what I gather, hearing his record of past abuses — to provide the match to the explosive. And the best sign I saw being carried by the rioters: “Good cops must get rid of bad cops.” Amen to that.

  9. How about this: black folk respond to their 200 years of slavery the way we Jews respond to our 3,500 years of crucifixions, whole communities being burned alive in synagogues, rapes, murders, blood libels, gas chambers and ovens, Tsarist pogroms, etc?

    1. A good friend of mine (Jewish) who lived in the projects in Brooklyn were talking one day, and when I asked him how it was he got out of the projects and became successful while so many black kids didn’t, he said “I went to the library every. On the way I had to pass the basketball courts, and they were always loaded with kids shooting baskets. The library was free to them, too.” I’ve never forgotten what he said, which is why it is so discouraging to consider the state the Philadelphia schools are in.

  10. It’s as if we’ve leaned nothing in the last 60 years. In the 1960’s we had these same riots in Watts, East Brooklyn and ,yes, Philadelphia. We’ve seen them happen after that as well.The long term damage to the communities suffered was permanent, none of these neighborhoods ever revived.
    These riots solve nothing, the rioters are criminals not “protesters”, and their victims will be the residents and business owners of these neighborhoods, who, by the way are racial minorities. Is justice is served?

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