The Baltimore Riots

No society is perfect and even the most advanced societies like the United States have major conflicts. When citizens feel that the government isn’t doing their job or doing too much of their jobs, the people will fight for their rights. Sometimes people revolt peacefully in the form of organized protests and march’s, but other times people want more immediate results so they take the more violent course of action and start riots. A riot is defined as “temporary unruly collective behavior that causes damage to persons or property. Until recently the last major riot was in Los Angeles in 1992, which was a reaction to the controversy surrounding the Rodney King case since then there have been major riots in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, …show more content…
In this case Freddie Gray was arrested in good condition, but while being brought to the station in a police vehicle he suffered many injuries to his spine and neck. These injuries caused him to fall into a coma, which eventually lead to his death. Eventually the news spread of how another African American was killed by police officers and people in Baltimore were outraged that something similar to Ferguson had happened so soon. Once again a riot ensued causing the people and the city to suffer and deal with the destruction left in the aftermath. The riots ended shortly after the court ruled it a homicide and the officers involved were arrested. It’s proven that enough outrage will cause people to riot but do these riots achieve …show more content…
The riots were simply the respective communities expressing their feelings that black men are often mistreated by police officers. I think that both riots had the positive intention of bringing more awareness to this issue and trying to get the national media talking about the issue but I think that there are better methods that might lead to better outcomes. At the time a riot can seem like a good way to show the government that people are seriously upset about an issue, however the aftermath can leave a city in shambles. Many businesses are destroyed during riots, some of them are small businesses where the owners don’t have the financial backing of a major corporation and it can be incredibly hard for them to rebuild and restart their business. Many riots may start out relatively peaceful, considering it’s a riot, but often they have no leader and people feel that they can do whatever they want because a riot is going on then the city is forced to recover which can take years sometimes. Riots can have some good results, in this case the Ferguson and Baltimore riots spawned the peaceful #Blacklivesmatter movement to draw awareness to the police brutality that is occurring across America. There are always more peaceful solutions that can still lead to the same if not better outcomes in the long