This is what it looks like when the barbarians take control of what was once a civilization. Looting of law-abiding businesses is tolerated, and taxpayers are forced to pay the Danegeld to violent invaders.
A jury awarded $3.75 million in damages this week to a protester shot twice with hard-foam projectiles fired by Los Angeles police during demonstrations in 2020.
Jurors on Wednesday ruled that the LA Police Department was negligent when one or more of its officers fired the so-called less-lethal devices at Asim Jamal Shakir Jr., the Los Angeles Times reported.
Shakir had been filming a police skirmish line when he recognized his LAPD officer uncle among the formation and confronted him, shouting, "Our ancestors are turning over in their grave right now!" Shakir alleges that his uncle, Eric Anderson, then directed other officers to fire a hard-foam projectile at him.
Civil rights attorney Carl Douglas, who filed the suit on Shakir's behalf, said he hopes the sizable damages awarded will signal that similar acts of police violence cannot be tolerated. The award must still be approved by the City Council.
$3.75 million. For... foam "bullets."
And frankly, this smells like a fix-up lawsuit ginned up in a conspiracy between this uncle and his nephew. "Shoot me, uncle. Then I'll sue and we can share the proceeds."
I imagine the uncle failed to make a strong showing on the witness stand.
...
Shakir was struck once, then a second time while he was bending down to pick up a phone that had been knocked out of his hand by the first projectile, according to the lawsuit.
Shakir had to go to physical therapy for a year because of the injury to his hand, and he still suffers pain, his attorney said.
Uh-huh.
...
The incident occurred during mass protests that rocked the nation in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
The city is still facing a large class-action lawsuit by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles and other groups over its handling of the 2020 protests, according to the Times. Several other suits have already been settled.
Of course they are.
And meanwhile, California voters have voted to steal from the citizens who do the work of bringing food and necessities to them.
Smash-and-grab robberies are happening in broad daylight at stores throughout California and no one seems to be doing anything to stop them.
Two weeks back, a Nordstrom store in the west San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles was attacked by a flash mob of 30 to 50 masked thieves.
They made off with armloads of designer merchandise valued at an estimated $60,000 to $100,000.
Online video of the robbery showed metal-and-glass display shelves sliding along the floor as the thieves dragged expensive handbags, still attached to anti-theft cables, toward the exits.
The previous week, a gang of thieves helped themselves to about $300,000 worth of goods from a Yves Saint Laurent store in a shopping mall owned by the recent candidate for LA Mayor, Rick Caruso.
And last Sunday, two robbers carrying trash bags ran into a Nike store in East LA and strolled out with shoes and other merchandise.
From store employees to police to prosecutors, the response to these smash-and-grabs seems to be, "Not much I can do about it."
California's criminal-justice system is broken and state voters helped to break it.
But voters had help from deceitful activists and politicians who tricked them into thinking they were voting for greater public safety.
One of those deceivers is George Gascón, now district attorney of Los Angeles County, where nearly 10 million residents in 88 cities are living with the full consequences of the 2014 initiative Gascón co-authored, Proposition 47.
The authors named the proposed law The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.
It promised to save money on costly incarceration and spend the savings on mental health and education programs.
With a favorable ballot description written by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, it passed 60% to 40%.
Under Proposition 47, property thefts valued at less than $950 became an automatic misdemeanor, even if the stolen item was a handgun.
The measure also made incarcerated felons eligible for resentencing and release if their past crimes retroactively qualified as misdemeanors.
Californians quickly discovered that the promised "Safe Neighborhoods" had a lot of car break-ins.
The article further recounts successive "reforms" that have put more and more criminals back out on the streets, and legalized more and more crimes.
By the way, I don't believe this crap about Californians being "tricked" to vote to unleash waves of criminal anarchy and violence on themselves. They understood what they were doing.
They just thought they would be protected by the power of Unicorn Farts.
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At a news conference last week, reporters pummeled Gascón with questions about whether his policies were contributing to the wave of smash-and-grab robberies.
He glared at them and snapped that they didn't have the facts.
Still, the facts are on the ground. "We feel like we can't walk in our own neighborhoods anymore," one former supporter of Gascón told The Post, "These criminals are not getting prosecuted -- and they know it."
We'll see how California voters voting to target those who sell food, clothes, medicine and other necessities works out for them.
I foresee some very intense whining about literal "food deserts" in California's future.