[Rivière]

Back when I was at college studying Psychology, the 2011 England riots had happened. We ended up using it as a case study and it was actually quite interesting to understand the dynamics of how a riot emerges, develops, and ends.

They're often started with a catalyst, such as the murder of Mark Duggan in the UK, and now George Floyd in the US. The catalyst is an issue related to something many people have had a problem with for years and years, yet goes untreated. It's like when someone is being bullied at school and they bottle up their emotions for so long, and eventually they just can't take it anymore and they end up reacting in a certain way, sometimes violently, towards their bully. This is similar to what happens in a riot, but on a far larger, more violent scale.

What started off as a smaller group of people targeting their anger towards their bully (in this case, law enforcement, even if they're innocent) becomes more and more violent. More people join the 'cause' and more violence ensues. Soon, even more join in, but it's at this point that not all of the rioters are actually rioting because of the catalyst in question, but because they see the riot as an opportunity/excuse to loot, vandalise, steal, and whatever else. They're the ones that are the most dangerous because they're the ones who care not for the cause, but for the chaos the initial cause ensued.

Unfortunately whenever there's a riot, everyone is tarred with the same brush. Rioters = bad. However, not all people who begun the riot were bad. They were angry because they've been facing a problem, the same problem, for years and years, no one will do anything about it, so they took matters into their own hands. Would anyone really like it if their family members were killed the way George was? I doubt it. You would feel angry. You would want justice for the person who brutally murdered your family member in such a disgusting, twisted manner.

There's an endless cycle between people being unnecessarily being killed by police officers (even when the suspect has surrendered and is on the floor bawling their eyes out) because they tarred individuals all with the same brush.. and innocent police officers being killed because of the minority law enforcement who took things too far.