Prosecutors should show no mercy for Atlanta rioters. None.
Quin Hillyer
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We eagerly await the sights and sounds of Democratic politicians rushing to denounce the violent, antifa-linked protests in Atlanta last night.
Wait — what’s that? You say you haven’t heard any outrage from the Left? You say you haven’t seen President Joe Biden call for calm? You say left-wing street violence gets excused by the liberal media, but disturbed mass shooters are always blamed on conservatives, even when the shooters write left-wing social-media posts?
GROUP PLANS TO ATTACK POLICE IN ‘NIGHT OF RAGE’
Well, you’re right. As seems to have been the case for some 60 years now, the most the Left can do in response to most violent street protests is some mild tut-tutting along the lines of “understandable rage boiling over a bit too far.” One CNN guest, “freelance journalist” David Peisner, even said that “this idea that breaking windows or other acts of property destruction are the same as actual violence against humans, it’s kind of a dangerous and slippery concept.” The worst he could say about the rioters was that “a small group” of them perhaps didn’t make a “smart move.”
And neither the CNN host, nor other guests, interrupted with incredulity at the moral monstrosity coming from Peisner’s mouth.
In case you missed the news, increasingly agitated self-styled eco-warriors illegally have camped for more than a year to protest the planned construction of a new police-training facility in a largely forested area. When officers tried to clear the site last week, one of the protesters shot an officer in the pelvis, and the protester was killed when police, for obvious reasons, returned fire.
Memo: Sometimes if you shoot a police officer, you get killed. Officers have the right to self-defense, too.
Anyway, protesters furious at the death of one of their own went nuts Saturday night. After openly calling for a “night of rage,” they smashed windows of nearby businesses, set off explosives, and attacked police cars, setting one on fire. Only the prompt and effective response by police — without firing weapons, by the way — kept Saturday’s riot from doing more damage. A group called “Stop Cop City” later released a statement justifying the violence as a mere expression of “a community in grief seeking accountability against the financial backers and goons of the Atlanta Police Foundation,” which supports the training center.
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Nowhere did the group express “grief” for the officer trying to recover from a gun wound to his pelvis. Enough is enough is enough. There are legal ways to protest, but occupation of land, attacks on police, and violent riots are not among them. Our cities should be free from such acts of wanton destruction. Our citizens need to be safe, and police just doing their jobs should not be fired upon.
These weren’t peaceful protesters; they were domestic terrorists. They deserve no leniency. Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, please, and plop them in prison for a long, long time.