"the police said some firefighters were reportedly having cinder blocks heaved at them as they responded to emergencies."
That's pathetic.
That's pathetic.
Unsurprisingly these places are full of immigrants.
You can pooh-pooh over how they have lousy conditions and are poor and riot because of that, but the fact is that they get everything they need from the state (food, shelter, spending money, schooling, healthcare), and also there has always been poor people in sweden and they haven't had problems with eg. cops or looting and rioting.
So it's probably some kind of cultural thing for people from some places.
From the video on the link you referenced, it looked like the cops were in full retreat from a wild crowd throwing objects. One of the cops half-heartedly tossed something back... inappropriate response on his part, but hardly evidence that he was the instigator in anything.
Protesters do a bad thing: "Pathetic rioters! Ungrateful youths! Sit down and do as you're told!"
The poster to whom I was replying stated that the cops "helped start the riots" by throwing objects. I pointed out the problem with that argument, but I'm not excusing the police categorically.
Over the past few days, there has been a massive uptick in the use of social media to spread propaganda and incite further unrest. The most striking examples I've seen are the (seemingly) organized campaign on Twitter called #baltimorelootcrew. This tag is allegedly being used by looters to post images of people they assaulted and of items they stole. If you look at the accounts of the posters, their tweet histories often go back a few days with some really nasty racist stereotypes that would have probably fallen under Poe's Law if not for the fact that earlier Twitter history is loaded with nothing but "gamergate" and other social-justice-trolling stuff. So far it would seem that quite a few of these troll accounts are trying to fan the fire of racial tension.
Then there is the /r/baltimore subreddit. Non-residents from racist and troll subs have piled in and begun posting false "eyewitness" accounts under fake names as well as downvote brigading anyone who is trying to set the record straight (from right there on the ground). While the world is watching the baltimore subreddit, the most upvoted info is often completely fabricated to piss people off.
And then yesterday, there was the reddit live blog which was viewed by at least 10k people at any given time. A few folks who claimed to be transcribing the police scanner logs were in actuality posting false reports of incidents all over the city (which were not actually happening). At one point I messaged the account that was running it and somehow got replies from multiple accounts. When I mentioned that a lot of the info being posted was erroneous, the main poster replied "it's only fake until it's real".
This was also where they kept spamming the alleged flyers advertising more planned riots later in the day. As far as I can tell, these flyers did not originate in the community but from online trolls.
People all over town and around the nation are following Twitter, Reddit, and other social sites but so much of the information is either malicious or part of the dangerous rumor mill that makes claims without verification and only serves to agitate people in a tense situation.
http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images-highlight-...
Part of the double standard is that even when it gets called a riot, we don't get the same hand-wringing about "where were the fathers", dog-whistle terms like "urban thugs", etc.