Thank the Lord cooler heads prevailed but even so - tear gas?!?
Yes, tear gas. When people start throwing things, the police deploy tear gas. Nobody likes the visual (or the effects), but it stops the throwing.
What you don't see in these micro-videos that are carefully selected to show the worst moments are two things: a) the setting, and b) what happens afterwards.
The setting here was the parking garage being used by the Ft. Lauderdale police as a staging area, with lots of police vehicles parked there by the officers who were on foot in the area. The previous night, in Miami, someone got access to the Miami PD parking lot and set fire to several vehicles. Ft. Lauderdale rightly was not going to let that happen.
My DD and I were watching live, so I can tell you what happened after the micro-video. The crowd stopped throwing things and fled the immediate area. They went about a block away, and there were no further confrontations. Curfew was approaching, so the police forces were reinforced and they began clearing the streets for the evening. There was a Black Lives Matter organizer on a hoverboard who kept going back and forth between the police commander and the retreating crowd to encourage people to leave. It went fairly smoothly and I don't believe there were any injuries and there were minimal arrests. There was some vandalism and looting in other areas, but not in this area.
(While all this was going on, incidentally, there were restaurants open and people dining and shopping on E. Las Olas Blvd just a couple of blocks away! Until curfew time, presumably...)
Presuming these abusive and dangerous cops are the tiny, tiny minority, how do they get weeded out? How can this be prioritized especially in light of the fact that it only takes such a small spark to blow everything up?
Specific to this incident in Ft. Lauderdale, there are several things in progress. First of all, the officer who shoved the woman has been relieved of duty pending an investigation of his actions. There are two investigations. The Florida Dept of Law Enforcement is investigating any criminal violations. He clearly committed the misdemeanor of Battery by touching the woman without her permission, so it's possible he could face criminal charges. The Ft. Lauderdale Police Dept is also conducting an internal investigation into whether he violated orders, departmental policies, etc. Clearly he did, so he will probably get some discipline within the parameters of their policies, disciplinary procedures, and terms of their union contract. That could result in termination, and could even result in his decertification as a law enforcement officer anywhere in Florida.
Regarding the global problem of weeding out unfit officers, it will never be accomplished by rioting, looting, and other criminal activity. It also is not something that can be fixed with peaceful demonstrations.
Peaceful demonstrations can illuminate the problem and create pressure for change, but the problem has to be
solved internally by the department.
There are lots of models around of systems that have been in place for years that actually work. It ain't rocket science.
Rioting (and there is nothing "civil" about rioting...e.g. "civil" disorder) drowns out the worthwhile message and provides excuses for doing nothing. In those places where there has been widespread looting and burning, "the cause" LOST ground, not gained ground. The rioting vastly outweighs anything positive from the peaceful demonstrations.