I should give this a little bit more of a response. Please correct me where I am misunderstanding. You seem to be assuming that this is a simple matter of law enforcement - that the police are able to catch and charge the protestors who have broken laws, and that if they simply did that the problem would be solved.
They are certainly able to catch and prosecute more of them they currently do in faux-liberal bastions like Portland or Seattle. And even when rioters are caught their charges are often dismissed by left-wing DAs which emboldens them to do it again and again and issue more and more outlandish demands.
You also seem to assume that Wheeler is actively protecting the law breaking individuals involved in these protests.
Protecting them though inaction, or insufficient action, i.e. passively, not actively. But either way he is making the problem worse.
And finally, you seem to be assuming that the demands of the protesters are secondary in importance to the maintenance of what you are calling law and order.
Not just that, but those demands, if implemented, would harm the people. I have already mentioned the recent protests for Patrick Kimmons, a Rolling 60 Crips member, who was shot and killed almost 2 years ago. Well, we are not talking here about some unarmed black men unjustly shot down by police. We are talking about a
gun-wielding thug who shot two people before police shot him. These "protesters" want police officers railroaded for doing their jobs!
But that's not even the worst thing! The "protesters" are part of far left groups that want nothing else than to dismantle the entire US economic and political system.
Meet the Youth Liberation Front behind a militant marathon of Portland protests
Seattle Times said:
For the Youth Liberation Front’s anonymous leaders, these protests are part of the revolution. They are resolutely anti-capitalist and anti-fascist, and express disdain for those who work for reform within what they view as a failing political system.[...]In social media posts, Youth Liberation Front leaders portray acts of vandalism as part of the broader struggle to make big changes in America. They reject any effort — by police or other groups — to divide the protest movement into those who are peaceful and those who turn to violence.“The Pigs are in a PR battle so they say there’s a difference from ‘peaceful’ and nonviolent protesters. When in fact what we are fighting is the ultimate form of violence, making any and all resistance self and community defense,” the Youth Liberation Front tweeted.[...]On June 26, protesters set a Dumpster on fire and pushed it up to the side of a northeast Portland building that housed minority-owned businesses and a police precinct station, where people were inside and had to contend with an exit door barricaded shut from the outside. Two suspects, an 18-year-old white man and a 22-year-old Black man, have since been arrested.
As an aside, note the racist practice of capitalizing "black" but leaving "white" lower case. What the fuck is that about?
The next month, three of the leaders — two young men and a young woman — spoke anonymously in a podcast produced by It’s Going Down, a “digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist … anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements.”
First, law enforcement is an agreement between and among citizens to grant the state the sole legitimate use of force.
Which means violence by extremist mobs is illegitimate whether that mob is right or left. I see a lot of apologia for left-wing violence on here.
Basic Hobbes there. It avoids the nasty brutish and short bit about the state of nature. If that agreement is not shared, law enforcement stops being the activity of police. At that point, suppression becomes its function.
Suppression of lawless elements of the society is a part of law enforcement.
The agreement has broken down. Many of us do not grant the police legitimacy under the current conditions and therefore arresting the few people who refuse to grant that legitimacy is no longer possible because it is not a 'few'.
The rioters are still a small minority of all people even in a lefty town like Portland. I doubt too big a percentage even there support people like Patrick Kimmons or goals such as dismantling capitalism.
It is a wide majority in PDX.
[citation needed]
And even if true, what is your solution? Turning Portland into some sort of an extremism sacrifice area and allowing extremists to run is as an anarcho-syndicalist commune or something?
I , and most of the people I know, do indeed understand that police are necessary but the legitimacy of the specific structures of that policing as it exists is gone and so we effectively have an occupying army who, by the definition of the social compact, are not protecting and serving 'the people' but rather enforcing the dominance of a select group.
I agree with you on the first part, but disagree with the second. And note that even reforming police the way you probably want (what would that be, btw? How should police respond if they witness a two people getting shot?) would not appease these extremists.
Who do you call when the people that answer the phone are the ones attacking you?
If you don't want police attacking you I suggest you stop shooting fellow gang members (Patrick Kimmons) or stop setting police precincts on fire (recent "protest" activities in Portland).
Blaming police for "attacking" criminals is not productive.
We do need police. We do need to protect individuals from violence.
Shooting people is violence. And yet the "protesters" are on the side of a gang banger who shot two people.
Arson is violence. And yet these "protesters" are actively engaging in it.
But when that violence is part of the citizen response to those who pretend to protect us, the structure has broken down and there is no good recourse but to join whichever side seems to offer the most security. The entire premise of law enforcement is erased and all that is left is us against them. I definitely know which group I see as them. And, as it turns out, I am not alone in that view.
Funny, I see it the exact opposite way. I see those who celebrate a gang member who shot two people as "them". I see arsonists, looters and rioters as "them". I see those who want to dismantle the US political and economic system as "them". And I hope "us" win, because otherwise US is doomed!
Second, Wheeler is actually being a decent politician.
Hardly.
The police have effectively insulated themselves from mayoral (or really any) oversight through a series of administrative actions and contracts. He is dealing with the police as an entity with their own power structures and the various citizen groups as their own entities with their own power structures and trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution.
And that's the problem. Police are part of the city government. They are not an outside group on par with the extremists. A mayor should be in support of his own police force, not opposed to them.
That is his job and he's got an immensely difficult task. If he were to side with the police and enforce a crackdown in the name of 'law and order', he would immediately face pushback from other groups who also have expressed willingness to exert power.
Pushback by extremists is not something to avoid. Appeasing them is.
Take Mayor Jenny form Seattle. She took the side of CHAZ for the longest and when she was finally backed into a corner and dismantled it, way too late, the extremists came out against her.
There is no use appeasing the extremists as they have a purity test. Unless you agree with them on all things, you get canceled. Jenny should have shown resolve, acted forcefully and dismantled CHAZ as soon as it sprang up. Instead she called it a street fair and "Baghdad Bob"-level nonsense like that.
The law isn't a magical edict that automatically grants legitimacy to one group. It is an agreement among the groups that the law is legitimate. At the moment, that agreement does not exist.
And I reiterate that it is a mistake to give even an inch to the extremists. Ted Wheeler will learn it the hard way just like Mayor Jenny did.
Michael O'Hara 
))) on Twitter: "@AOC This should not be a controversial statement." / Twitter
