People who don't enjoy the benefits of the social contract have no obligation to abide by it.
This is kind of a fundamental point. Riots aren't
just acts of random destruction for the hell of it. They're a direct (and, collectively speaking, rational) response to events. They're an active rejection of the expectations of a society that has refused to produce the fairness and justice that's expected of it. Unfortunately, "society" is a pretty vague abstraction, so when people attack it there's a lot of collateral damage. That's one of the consequences of collective reciprocity, but unlike the people on the ground who're being robbed by rioters or beaten by police or insulted by armchair critics, the police and government have accepted responsibility for managing that relationship.
That's why I'm a lot angrier at the people in power here. Yeah, maybe almost all of you are in an unfair position. Nobody gives a shit - that's what you signed up for when you ran for office or joined the police force or whatever. That's why we're supposed to trust you with authority. That's why you have to take the steps, however unfair they might be to you, to make things right.
NINJAS: Actually I'm pretty sure whether he attacked an officer
is in dispute, and that the robbery is confirmed to have been irrelevant to why he was questioned by the officer in the first place. Everything I saw in the past few weeks described the recording from the convenience store as a red herring thrown in to paint the black guy as a criminal who deserved to get shot - and even from people who thought he did, there was no attempt to actually connect that particular crime to the shooting.
Moreover, keep in mind that this was an indictment hearing, not a trial - "reasonable doubt" wasn't the standard. They were supposed to be deciding if the evidence even merited a trial in the first place, and even what's available to the public suggests that the answer is "hell the fuck yes", even if the public also certainly doesn't have adequate evidence for a conviction. The only snag in getting the trial going should have been finding a neutral jury, honestly.