Not even the nicest parts of the American city is safe. The riots have come to Georgetown, the picturesque enclave of some of D.C.'s most decadent denizens, on par with Brentwood or the Upper West Side.
According to the organizing group, Saturday night's Totally Peaceful Protest was predicated on criminal behavior. The rioters planned on obstructing Georgetown traffic, a feat explicitly forbidden by D.C. law, while engaging in a "noise pollution" campaign. Because George Floyd, or something.
That the rioters could have obstructed emergency vehicles was bad enough, but soon the demonstration escalated as rioters climbed on top of and beat the car of a woman who, according to one of the rioters, had simply tried to avoid the riots by driving through a gas station.
Apparently, this needs to be said, but there is no "Karen" in this situation. There is an innocent victim who initially tried to avoid the riots and then tried to escape them as peacefully as possible, and then there are violent criminals who deserve prison time.
It goes without saying, but this is getting out of control. The violence isn't just in CHAZ or on the footsteps of a Portland federal court. It's slowly percolating across entire cityscapes, and unless these criminals are treated as such, there is zero incentive for this to end.
It's time to throw the book at individual offenders instead of waiting until mobs grow to the point the cops resort to using tear gas. Nip these escalations in the bud, lest we become Seattle, where law enforcement is so restrained they're warning property and business owners that they can no longer...