Four Lessons Learned From the Mora City Riots

Sept. 13, 2034

By Tim Reagan

In August 2034, the private security force of Yukon.com, Inc. headquarters carried what they believed to be an unconscious homeless man off the premises, only to find out hours later that they had in fact deposited a dead Yukon employee, Stanley Smith, onto the front sidewalk. Playing off assumptions that Smith, a low-income worker, had been maltreated to the point of death by a faceless corporation, five days of city-wide rioting ensued.

How the Mora City Police Department dealt with this situation carries four lessons for future instances of civil unrest.

Rioters are not protesters.

When people damage private property and steal from businesses, they are not protesters. They are criminals. There is no gray area. There is no room for debate.

For the two days that immediately followed the death of Smith, Police treated the spreading disorder as political expression. Instead, they should have predicted that the seemingly “peaceful” demonstrations would turn violent. Their trust in the right of free speech was misguided and naive.

Needless to say, those people attacking businesses around the city were not the heirs of Gandhi. Not a single person who “peacefully” demonstrated in Mora City was innocent, no matter how adamantly they might have pretended to condemn the looting and violence. Disregard all video footage of so-called “peaceful protesters” blocking business entrances from looters. This is propaganda invented by the liberal media.

Responsible leaders must send the correct messages.

In Mora City, the U.S. government took far too long to take charge of the situation. While government officials wasted their time trying to decide on a cautious approach, undesirables entered the leadership vacuum. Failing to present the Mora City riots as a black-and-white case of criminal attacks against innocent businesses, the public discourse became dominated by arrogant, no-good civil rights activists who insisted on clouding the situation with their own equality agendas.

Indeed, just listen to what one leftist senator (who shall not be named) said on the third day of the riots: “This is a symptom of class oppression and of our country’s monstrous disenfranchisement of its most vulnerable citizens.”

This insipid mystique of faux-revolutionary politics must be drowned out by the collective yelling of reasonable, rational leaders who say, “This has nothing to do with class!”

Police must respond robustly and innovatively.

I suppose that Police must respect and protect the rights of peaceful protesters. However, that point is irrelevant whenever a riot is even remotely possible. In such cases, the Police must increase their response proportionally to the number of demonstrators. The response must be proactive, innovative and robust, not conciliatory. When one demonstrator throws a rock, the Police need to don military armor and hold tear gas at the ready.

A problem the Police faced in quelling the Mora City Riots was the public’s general mistrust of Police officers– particularly those who receive substantial bonuses for meeting arrest quotas, as defined by the 2022 nation-wide restructuring of fund allocations for police departments. However misguided and idiotic the peoples’ mistrust is, it must be alleviated by outreach programs. In more recent months, Mora City PD has begun recruiting from the lowest income brackets in an attempt to heal social bonds between the Police and citizens who see their law enforcement officers as inaccessible and unsympathetic. This is a step in the right direction.

Another proven strategy that helped to stamp out the chaos was gathering intelligence on the riot leaders. The Mora City PD wisely used all the intelligence gathering equipment at its disposal– hidden cameras, GPS trackers, phone tapping devices, spyware and domestic drones– in order to identify and hunt down those responsible.

The Police must continue to use these intelligence assets for discovering criminals. It would also be advisable for Police and private security personnel alike to wear body cameras at opportune times. If Yukon security guards had worn cameras in August 2034, we would know the definitive truth about Smith’s death, instead of these unproven theories about Yukon abusing its employees.

Punishment must reflect the crime.

Perhaps the most poignant takeaway of all is that the lazy poor will use any excuse to take money from honest, hard-working CEOs– even if it means disobeying the law and pillaging storefronts. Our country’s own penal system was not strict enough to deter the Mora City criminals from stirring chaos.

Government officials have finally realized that theft is a symptom of sloth, not poverty. Therefore, a new and more fitting penalty for theft is under consideration in several states. Under Prop 872, criminals convicted of stealing will, in addition to any fines or prison sentences, automatically forfeit their legal access to Revivifall, the sleep-elimination drug. Instead, parole officers will periodically administer sedatives to these convicted criminals, limiting their activity and potential to commit more crimes.

It is my sincere hope that law enforcement officials take these lessons to heart. With the right execution, we could enter a future in which crime rates plummet and civil unrest is a thing of the past.