> its more extreme than that

If you're trying to convince a majority to change its views, labelling them as "extreme" is unhelpful.

Many New Yorkers are within living memory of the Cold War-era crime peaks that almost destroyed our city. 9/11 and the Boston Bombing normalized a more-militarized police, as well as the NYPD building up an intelligence agency that rivals some countries'.

Looting isn't terrorism. And we have had zero mass violence from protesters. But there are good reasons for an island as dense as Manhattan to be hyper-sensitive to incipient lawlessness. (There are also bad ones.)