@EvilDragon some guy shot a police officer who died, in retaliation the police shot and killed the gang member and then everyone went skitz, or at least thats what I heard.
What happened was a known coke dealer was murdered by the police. He was carrying a weapon, but there is currently no evidence that he fired it (he had it hidden in a sock). Two shots were fired by the police. A bullet was found lodged in a policeman's radio, but has been found to have been fired by the police themselves.
The problem was that the police refused to talk to the family about why they shot the guy. The family organised a peaceful protest outside the police station, which quickly turned ugly when outsiders - that is, people with no actual interest in the event - turned up and started burning things. What followed that was widespread rioting and looting.
The rioters and looters belong, as has been explained in this thread, to the underclass - a class that has been growing without check for the past couple of decades. These people have nothing, but are constantly told by media and marketers that they have to have nice things. They can't have them, and with the current economic situation there's no way they'll ever be able to afford them. Yes, they generally refuse to get jobs - but there's also a problem that in the areas they inhabit there's no jobs available. They have been ignored for a long time, and they've been getting more and more angry at society at large, blaming them for their problems. "Community workers" have been targeting them specifically, reinforcing their status as the underclass.
These people have no political goal in mind, in fact they have no mind to speak of, they have just all of a sudden let their anger take flight and this is the result. They have little to no education, and no clue as to what the results of their actions would be. You cannot reason with them, and now they've started fighting. I wouldn't be surprised if they start fighting amongst themselves.
So in a way, Craig (and others) are right - they're antisocial little oiks that contribute nothing and care for nobody but themselves. But it should be borne in mind that at worst, we created this class and at best we ignored their development.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of anything we might have done differently that would have reduced this threat - and we're certainly far too late to do anything about it now. They're everywhere.
D.
