The Wall Street Journal:

The “bro­ken-win­dows” school of polic­ing says that you can help main­tain pub­lic order by tak­ing care of even small ex­amples of dis­or­der—such as fix­ing broken­ windows. Lib­er­als scorned that pol­icy in the last decade as somehow racist. Well, in re­cent days we’ve learned that Amer­ica’s left does have a bro­ken-win­dows pol­icy: Let ri­ot­ers break enough win­dows and loot enough stores and maybe their right­eous anger will be sat­is­fied.

That’s cer­tainly how it looked when the June sun rose Tues­day over the bro­ken glass, looted store­fronts, burnt-out cars, and van­dal­ized build­ings in New York, Phil­adelphia, St. Louis, Madi­son and other Amer­i­can cities. Pub­lic of­fi­cials let ri­ot­ers exploit­ing the mem­ory of George Floyd run wild in the streets. Even af­ter nearly a week of violence, these and other lib­eral Demo­c­ra­tic cities let law­less radi­cals ha­rass and plun­der al­most at will.

In down­town St. Louis, four po­lice of­fi­cers were shot af­ter mid­night. “I be­lieve some cow­ard ran­domly shot at the po­lice line,” said po­lice chief John Hay­den. A 7-Eleven was looted and set afire, but fire­fight­ers were de­lib­er­ately slowed by protesters in re­spond­ing. “We had peo­ple ly­ing down in the street” and trash cans were placed as obsta­cles to block fire trucks, said fire chief Den­nis Jenkerson.

In Phil­adelphia, city of broth­erly van­dals, gangs of ri­ot­ers rolled through sev­eral neigh­bor­hoods Sun­day burn­ing businesses and cars. They re­turned for more on Mon­day, shut­ting down the high­way that bi­sects the city at evening rush hour.

Po­lice Com­mis­sioner Danielle Out­law said a crowd of more than 100 sur­rounded a lone state trooper in­side a ve­hi­cle and be­gan rock­ing it. When two SWAT teams ar­rived, the crowd pelted them with rocks from the road and above. Po­lice had to fire spray pel­lets, bean bags and tear gas to es­cape.

At first Mayor Jim Ken­ney backed the po­lice. But by Tues­day he was tweet­ing that “there may have been ad­di­tional uses of tear gas. I am deeply concerned by this de­vel­op­ment. All of these in­ci­dents will be investi­gated by In­ter­nal Af­fairs.” Po­lice are threat­ened by a mob, the of­fi­cers de­fend themselves by non-lethal means, and the mayor wants to in­ves­ti­gate the po­lice. No won­der ri­ot­ers feel they can do what­ever they want.

In New York City, hood­lums ram­paged through Her­ald Square and the flag­ship Macy’s store, Ford­ham Road in the Bronx, Times Square and SoHo, among other places. Nearly every store­front on lower Fifth Av­enue was van­dal­ized. A cop was struck and in­jured by a hit-and-run dri­ver in the Bronx. This isn’t protest. It’s anarchy.

Gov. An­drew Cuomo had set an 11 p.m. cur­few but some­how man­aged not to en­force it. TV cam­eras showed gangs of youths work­ing as teams to loot one store, then move on to an­other. Over­whelmed po­lice could do lit­tle more than wave their clubs and hope to catch one or two as they sprinted past on their way to their next tar­get.

The NYPD has some 36,000 of­fi­cers. How could they not be de­ployed in enough num­bers to con­tain this ram­page? And how can these pub­lic of­fi­cials not de­ploy the Na­tional Guard to as­sist the po­lice in restor­ing pub­lic order and pro­tect­ing the in­no­cent? This wasn’t the first night of may­hem. It was the fourth in a row, and the po­lice clearly knew what could hap­pen. The only explana­tion is that Messrs. Cuomo and de Bla­sio lack the po­lit­i­cal will to stop it.

This isn’t merely about dam­age to prop­erty. It’s about de­stroy­ing the or­der required for city life. Non-criminals are afraid to go into these cities to make a liv­ing. The po­lice pull back from ac­tive polic­ing, which cre­ates more oppor­tu­nity for crim­i­nals, es­pe­cially in poor and mi­nor­ity neighbor­hoods. Busi­nesses that are fi­nally start­ing to emerge from gov­ern­ment lock­downs have new costs to ab­sorb and more rea­sons for cus­tomers not to re­turn.

What all these cities have in com­mon is that they are led by De­moc­rats who seem to have bought into the be­lief that the po­lice are a big­ger prob­lem than ram­pant dis­or­der. They are ei­ther cowed by their par­ty’s left, or they agree that Amer­ica is sys­tem­i­cally racist and ri­ot­ing is a jus­ti­fied ex­pres­sion of anger against it. They of­fer pro forma dis­ap­proval of law break­ers but refuse to act to stop them.

They should recognize that wide-spread lawless­ness is not help­ing their cause. Amer­i­cans have the right to protest, peace­fully, and the killing of George Floyd in po­lice cus­tody is cause for anger and grief. But as the vi­o­lence con­tinues, Amer­i­cans of good­will will sup­port the po­lice and a re­turn to safe streets as the high­est priority. Po­lice re­form and so­cial in­jus­tice will get a smaller hearing.

Public officials need to deploy enough police and National Guard to stop the mayhem. They need to channel the peaceful demonstrations by time and place, as American law allows, so agitators can’t use them to attack police to create violent confrontations. If they can’t or won’t do that, these Democrats will be complicit in destroying their own cities and harming the very people they claim to speak for.

The Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web Today created its own humorous tradition when the New York Times wrote a story attributing sex and race where it did not belong — ”World Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.”

In this case, the WSJ editorial isn’t funny at all:

The vi­o­lence that broke out in Amer­i­can cities this week­end goes far be­yond jus­ti­fied anger at the killing of George Floyd on Mon­day. The ri­ot­ers are loot­ing shops and at­tack­ing po­lice with im­punity, and they threaten a larger break­down of pub­lic or­der. Pro­tect­ing the in­no­cent and restor­ing or­der is the first duty of gov­ern­ment.

The vi­o­lent scenes in more than 30 cities were the worst in decades. Min­neapolis po­lice were over­run on Fri­day as neigh­bor­hoods and a po­lice precinct burned. Los An­ge­les po­lice were as­saulted and their ve­hi­cles van­dal­ized and burned. In Mil­wau­kee a 38-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer was shot and 16 build­ings were looted. In Dal­las a shopowner try­ing to de­fend his prop­erty with a ma­chete was stoned, beaten and left bleed­ing in the street.Amer­i­cans watch­ing on TV saw re­porters grabbed and pushed by pro­testers who flashed ob­scene ges­tures for the cam­eras. Po­lice were pelted with rocks and bot­tles amid “De­fund the Po­lice” signs. May­ors across the coun­try set cur­fews, and in Min­neapolis and else­where the Na­tional Guard was called in.

This was more than spon­ta­neous anger at the grotesque video of a white cop, Derek Chau­vin, kneel­ing on the neck of the African-Amer­i­can Floyd for nearly nine min­utes as he pleaded to breathe. Many protests were peace­ful. But the ri­ots in many places had the ear­marks of planned chaos by those us­ing Floyd as an ex­cuse for crim­i­nality.

Gov. Tim Walz blamed ag­i­ta­tors from out­side Min­nesota, in­clud­ing white su­prema­cists and drug car­tels, for feed­ing the vi­o­lence, though he of­fered no ev­i­dence. At­tor­ney Gen­eral Bill Barr on Sat­ur­day blamed much of the trou­ble on “an­ar­chis­tic and far left ex­trem­ists, us­ing An­tifa-like tac­tics, many of whom travel from out of state to pro­mote the vi­o­lence.”

An­tifa are loosely af­fil­i­ated ag­i­ta­tors who claim to be anti-fas­cists. They dress in black and cover their heads, of­ten let­ting oth­ers man the front lines while di­rect­ing as­saults on po­lice from a dis­tance.

Amid this chaos, po­lice in most cities have shown no­table dis­ci­pline. A po­lice car drove into a crowd sur­round-ing it in New York City, but even Mayor Bill de Bla­sio noted it would not have hap­pened if pro­testers had not been threat­en­ing. The risk is that, as con­fronta­tions es­ca­late, some po­lice will lose their cool and some­one will be killed, pro­duc­ing an­other cy­cle of protest and vi­o­lence.

Con­trast all of this with the progress of the jus­tice sys­tem in the Floyd case. Of­fi­cer Chau­vin was charged Fri­day with third-de­gree mur­der and sec­ond-de­gree man­slaughter. The Hen­nepin County dis­trict at­tor­ney brought charges in record time that he will have to prove be­yond a rea­son­able doubt, and he says he may bring more charges, pre­sum­ably against one or more of the three other of­fi­cers in­volved in Floyd’s ar­rest.

The Jus­tice De­part­ment and FBI have as­sisted the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as the D.A. has noted. Mr. Barr con­demned the acts in the video and has launched a civil-rights in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Cur­rent and for­mer po­lice across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum have de­nounced the acts on the video as a gross vi­o­la­tion of proper po­lice meth­ods. Pres­i­dent Trump is­sued an aw­ful tweet that “when the loot­ing starts, the shoot­ing starts,” but his re­marks oth­er­wise have sup­ported Floyd and shown sym­pa­thy with peace­ful pro­testers as op­posed to ri­ot­ers.

Po­lice bru­tal­ity is too com­mon, and it should be pros­e­cuted. But these events have be­come na­tional causes pre­cisely be­cause they are ex­posed in the me­dia. Cam­eras on cops have made it harder to cover up abuses and may have de­terred some. There are white racists in our midst but they are con­demned every­where ex­cept in the fever swamps of the in­ter­net.

There are also con­se­quences for black lives when po­lice re­treat from polic­ing. Roland Fryer, the Har­vard econ­omist, has found that when a high-pro­file po­lice in­ci­dent goes vi­ral and is fol­lowed by a Jus­tice De­part-ment in­ves­ti­ga­tion, homi­cides and felonies spike in suc­ceed­ing months. “It’s cost­ing black lives,” he told our colum­nist Ja­son Ri­ley last week in a Man­hat­tan In­sti­tute video. “That pains me” and no one is talk­ing about it.

All of this poses a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge to the lib­eral es­tab­lish­ment that runs most of these cities and states. The may­ors of At­lanta and Den­ver were ex­cel­lent in dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween peace­ful protest and vi­o­lent de­struc-tion. But oth­ers have en­cour­aged rage against po­lice, and so-called so­cial jus­tice pros­e­cu­tors have risen to power in such cities as Phil­adelphia, San Fran­cisco and St. Louis. Now we’ll see if they pro­tect the neigh­bor­hoods they claim to rep­re­sent against vi­o­lent mobs.

The same goes for liberal media and intellectuals, who are in general portraying the riots as an understandable response to social injustice. Most of them live far from the burning neighborhoods as they denounce police. They ignore that there is no chance of addressing social injustice without underlying civil order. The main victims of a summer of chaos in America will be the poor and minority neighborhoods going up in flames.