Did Left-Wing Rioters Get the Kid Gloves Treatment?
There has been a canard of sorts that left-wing protestors/rioters have been intentionally ignored by prosecutors throughout 2020. If true, this would undoubtedly frustrate efforts to restore law and order, and also would be a tacit encouragement of law-breaking behavior (so long as it's done under the BLM banner).
The problem is that there just isn't a ton of evidence to prove this, aside from anecdotal accounts. Admittedly, this is also a very difficult thing to prove conclusively. I wrote about the difficulties before inherent in dealing with court records, and discussed it in other parts of a thread.
To set the stage, local prosecutors in America are typically elected officials. And they are equipped with virtually unimpeachable discretion in terms of which criminal charges to pursue against which defendants. The law as is written offers prosecutors a near limitless laundry list of penalties to threaten defendants with, and consequently it's an extremely powerful and consequential position. Forget the judge on the bench, the prosecutor is the real powermonger in the courtroom. Prosecutors by necessity also form a very close relationship with local enforcement. Cops and detectives do the grunt work and forward reports and charges to prosecutors to formalize them. A prosecutor can then choose to ignore or pursue charges, but the combination of laws, regulations, contractual terms, and even political considerations means that prosecutors give a great deal of deference to law enforcement (incidentally, the close relationship is specifically cited as a reason to have 'special prosecutors' in cases of police misconduct).
The near limitless discretion afforded to prosecutors would lead one to reasonably assume that the field of prosecutions is a complete and total shitshow of randomness. Yet, it's surprisingly stable and uniform. A DoJ funded study found that prosecutorial decisions largely boiled down to "Can I prove the case?" and "Should I prove the case?" The study was from 2009, and ever since Ferguson MO there has been a distinct shift by the voting public towards "progressive prosecutors", ostensibly much more mindful of police abuse and judicial system oppression. They have been making steady electoral gains, often coupled with explicit policy proposals. Chesa Boudin for example, SF's prosecutor, used to be a public defender and his parents were both Weather Underground members. He ran explicitly on a platform of decarceration, and in direct opposition to the SF police unions. Nevertheless, the "progressive prosecutor" is by no means representative and is still relatively rare.
So are left-wing rioters given carte blanche? I see no evidence to prove this conclusively. The unprecedented 2020 summer of unrest happened during yet another unprecedented pandemic. Jails have consistently been one of the most dangerous places for COVID-19, in terms of both spread and impact, and consequently a bunch of people were released. Simultaneously, courts virtually shut down operations. I wrote about what a huge mess this was a year ago. So even before the Floyd protests/riots, things were a complete and unprecedented shitshow. Baltimore's prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, acted proactively in March 2020 and announced widespread dismissals of petty crimes like drug possession, trespassing, open container, etc. (Curiously, violent crime in Baltimore dropped 20%, enshrining this policy for the future.)
I was assigned a case recently, and it was notable because it happened on the first few nights where my city exploded into widespread civil unrest. The bodycam footage is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It paints an extremely bleak picture of desperately exhausted police officers trying to do their best to respond to every call and process every person they catch. It's hopeless, because by the time they arrive to a scene there are a dozen of other calls to answer. One particular moment drove the point home for me. I saw a handcuffed and extremely agitated individual pacing back and forth in the back of a police van. He was yelling at the cops to shoot him, and at one point he spits right in the eye of a cop who stood near the door. The cop winced and wiped his eye, but literally not a single cop reacted to what normally would have been responded as a serious felonious assault.
The scene at the precinct was wilder. One cop was trying to count and document the contents of a backpack where they found literally tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry and cash. Another cop was trying to figure out how to disarm a "slam-fire" shotgun made out of pipes (with a laser attached, of all things). Meanwhile, this middle-aged white woman who likely has never been arrested before started yelling at the other inmates to "Make sure you ask for a lawyer!". As if she knew more than them.
Point is, the social fabric was trivially overwhelmed. There is a baseline level of crime that is anticipated on any given night that the authorities in question can anticipate to address. Go just a few points over that, and you start this uncontrollable upward spiral where crime begets more crime as opportunistic individuals realize that "they can't stop all of us".
And lastly, there is yet another confounding variable, and the impetus behind this post. There is reason to believe that the cops responding to the protests ended up using mass arrests as a crowd-control tactic. The Guardian ran some tests and found that 90-95% of cases were getting dismissed or dismissed in some cities. This could be interpreted either way. We know for a fact that some prosecutors gave explicit statements they would not pursue charges against protestors (I can't link it directly because reddit is dumb, but just search for 'Portland DA rejects over 540'), and for those its fair to ascribe motivation to their actions. But absent a clear mission statement, it's difficult to just read the tea leaves and assume a conclusion.
So in summary, 2020 was fucking weird.
You had a worldwide pandemic where people were paid to stay home and do nothing. Jails had to release a fuckton of people. Courts ground to a halt in operations. Prosecutors immediately had to shift attention towards more serious crimes. Then the country exploded into unrelenting and nonstop looting and rioting and quickly overwhelmed law enforcement efforts. The protests against police violence were met with police violence, and they encouraged even more protests against police violence. The cops, maybe out of malice, or maybe out of having no other options, resorted to mass arrests to control crowds and to serve as a deterrent for others.
With this dizzying amount of confounding variables, it's impossible to come to a solid conclusion. Personally, I don't believe that rioters/protestors have gotten the kid gloves treatment. I know for fact that people are getting prosecuted. I also see no reason to believe that prosecutors, who largely rely on the normie and cop crowd to get elected, would get a sudden change of heart (absent the explicit exceptions I mentioned). Just to give one piece of anecdote, the bodycam footage I talk about was from a petty theft case where my client is accused of trying to steal from a store during civil unrest. It took prosecutors several months, but they are indeed prosecuting petty theft during a riot, despite the backlog.
My position is primarily agnosticism leaning towards 'no'. Do you agree? If not, what is the most compelling piece of evidence you can muster?