Wako Comparisons

I've seen several posts comparing Wako's gang shootout to riots in Baltimore.... I'm not so sure that a gang shootout is really something you can compare to a riot so easily.

• One comparison suggested that there weren't mass arrests in Wako, but 170 gang members were arrested.
• One comparison suggested that since tear gas wasn't used, the police weren't as intense..... police were firing their guns at the gang members, that's not as intense as tear gas?
• One comparison suggested that since the National Guard wasn't called in, it wasn't being taken as seriously.... this comparison was made 1 day after the shoot out, the National Guard has been typically pulled into scenes much later than the first riot in the area... And by the time the comparison was made, the ATF and FBI were on the scene, the area was cordoned off, not really sure what the National Guard would have done
• I've seen a photo and the suggestion that the police were being super-relaxed in their handling of the gang members... Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but I certainly can't tell from one photo and I most definitely don't know enough about the scene to know if they really could have behaved any differently (when you're entirely overwhelmed numerically you often react differently than if you have a ton of cops in riot gear)
• And now I've seen something asking why the media is calling it a gang shootout instead of a riot.... that's because IT WAS A GANG SHOOTOUT... if the riots in Baltimore were gangs shooting each other rather than gangs and others tearing apart some businesses, the story there would have been a gang shoot out as well.

Not everything is equivalent.
Not everything is a prime example of the difference in how police treat blacks vs whites.

Here's one more comparison: The location of the gun fight has been closed down as a franchise and will not re-open.  CVS re-opened one of the sites of the riot in Baltimore and has pledged to support the community.  Please tell me which community is being treated as dangerous and problematic to invite into a business.

I'm not saying there isn't white privilege, there absolutely is.  I'm not saying police behavior isn't part of that white privilege, it absolutely is.  I'm not saying that the riots weren't poorly reported, they absolutely were.  But just because gang members are being called gang members instead of thugs doesn't mean that the reporting isn't appropriate.

I leave you with one last comment: with all these comparisons, none of them are pointing out that 9 people are dead and 18 injured.