It's being incredibly overhyped.

I went to Mondawmin mall about 4 years ago, and was literally the only white person I saw in the mall on all 3 floors. It's not the worst part of the city, but it's certainly not in an area you'd want to venture to on foot. So to hear all these people that I grew up with in the nicer parts of town talking about "They're destroying my city" is complete horse shit. The whole incident today was isolated to a small, Northwest, part of the city that most people try to avoid/ignore anyway.

The media coverage is disgusting. CNN literally used the headline "Warzone in Baltimore" by 4:00pm. This is to describe teenagers and police confronting each other outside a mall. Most networks were literally just showing the same images of looting/fires for hours after the fact. It was the most blatant attempt to scare people into watching the news that I've ever seen.

Not helping matters is the mayor CANCELLING SCHOOL tomorrow (let's send these unsupervised children back on the street tomorrow), and instituting a week-long city wide curfew of 10pm (not just for children, but every single person in Baltimore). It would seem to me that this will only agitate people more and ensure this conflict only continues.

Finally, it's awful how both "sides" use events like this to justify their beliefs. It drives me insane how people can refuse to be rational in situations like this. Not every cop is a hero, and unjustified lethal force should always be punished. Not every protestor is a revolutionary, and violence and destruction are always counterproductive to moving a community forward.

But other than that, I have no real opinion on the matter.