Looting/vandalism and the definition of "violent crime"

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The FBI defines "violent crme" as follows:

The only one of these crimes that involves property is "robbery", defined as follows:


The FBI website has a separate section on "Property Crime," defined as follows:


Note that "property crime" is defined so as to exclude "robbery," which is a "violent crime" because it involves force or threat of force against the victims themselves (not just their property).

Based on the above definitions, is looting a "violent crime"?

That depends. If the looting takes place while the store owner and/or employees are physically present and they are physically injured or threatened, then it's "robbery," a violent crime. On the other hand, if the looting takes place late at night, after the store is closed, then it's not "robbery." Rather, it's "burglary" combined with either "theft" or "larceny," depending on the value of the items stolen. These are classified as "property crimes", not "violent crimes."

If I recall correctly, most if not all of the lootings that occurred in the wake of BLM protests happened late at night, after the stores were closed. Thus they were "property crimes," not "violent crimes," at least by the FBI's definition.

Vandalism is not listed in either category. I'm not sure why. My guess is that it's because vandalism is just not one of the crimes that the FBI has been tasked with keeping statistics on. However, given that even "arson" is considered to be a "property crime," not a "violent crime" (unless at least one person gets injured or killed), it's pretty clear that if the FBI were to keep statistics on vandalism, it too would be classified as a "property crime," not a "violent crime."

My point here is certainly not that looting and vandalism are okay. They certainly aren't okay, and indeed the looting and vandalism that have accompanied all too many BLM protests (against the will of the protest organizers) are a good reason not to "de-fund the police." (Instead we need serious police reforms, which will cost money.)

However, it's inaccurate to describe looting and vandalism as "violent" crime.

There seems to be concerted effort going around to downplay all the left-wing riots.

Especially I suppose since all the right-wing riots that were predicted never happened.

As far as calling all those riots that did happen violent, looks like the media cranked out fake news about that.

Portland’s grim reality: 100 days of protests, many violent

Widespread Violence 11 Arrested In Portland As Police Declare Riots

Police chief condemns protest violence

Is Seattle's image hurt by violent protests?

Riots: the violence is turning many away from supporting BLM

Protests turn violent in cities nationwide

How exactly is it downplaying to remind everyone that so far we've consistently seen the left break stuff and the right murder people and plot terrorist attacks.

If the left ever starts behaving like the right has been I will feel the need to condemn those act of violence/terrorism as well but until then it's not an apples to apples comparison.

It's not as though the left hasn't behaved violently in the past, there's plenty of countries whose history makes comparing the two quite fair but America isn't one of those countries.

When someone has to pretend that both sides are "equally bad", it usually means that one side is so indefensibly shady, they can't possibly defend all of it, and the only scapegoat left is to pretend that the other guys are also just as bad. Except, more often than not, the argument goes more along the lines of "both sides are equally bad, but The Left is still worse!" That's why they don't like discussions about nazis. It shines light where they don't want it, and it ruins that argument.

It's functionally similar to the argument that things are just a "difference of opinion", acting as though "I hate vanilla" and "black people are lazy" are both merely equally valid "opinions", claim that one of them simply happens to be "politically incorrect" (rather than racist), and marginalize those who disagree.

It leads to some rather interesting cognitive dissonance. "I'm imparial! But I claim one side is worse. Yet if anyone else claims one side is worse, I use that as "proof" that they aren't impartial. Unless they agree with me, and then they too are as impartial as I am. But if you hold the opposite view, you're clearly biased. But I'm not."

If you look at their posts individually, they make sense in that moment. But if you look at the positions they take over time, they keep switching which leg they're standing on, and they often violate and rewrite their own rules. . Funny that.

Muddying the waters about what is or isn't violence only serves to distort the perception of the count, where 5 broken windows on one "side" exactly equals 5 murders on the other "side". And since 5=5, both sides are EQUALLY bad. LOGIC!

What's the difference between a terrorist act and "breaking stuff"? That is downplaying the extreme level destruction that took place. And this was not a fringe element. It was thousands across a nation carrying out what the press called acts of violence for weeks in which I read 25 people died.

Well, I'm glad you cleared that up, for us.
I'm all for riots and looting now.

Could they be including psychological intimidation, in the term of "violent"?

@Mona, I think you are playing with semantics.
Most people are not in favour of riots, looting, and the burning down of family businesses.
Well, I hope they are not.

A terrorist act would be an act of violence intended to harm people with an ideological motive. Vandalism is not terrorism, even when it's an especially severe incident. 'Breaking stuff' isn't intentionally trying to harm or kill people.

Of those 25, how many were killed by left-wing radicals vs. how many were killed by other types of actors? It's hardly fair to bring up people dying unless they were directly the result of violence by leftists. If an alt-right affiliated person kills someone at a protest for a leftist cause it's not the left's fault the murder happened, it's the fault of the person who committed the killing.

Really?

The problem is that the left tends to think they are angels and all republicans are evil.
That is simply logical, axiomatical nonsense.

You claim this regularly, care to substantiate this claim?

You're not going to get a real answer. It's far too convenient to simply assume that they must have been killed by The Left. Instead they're going to play flattery-pong, pretend they're right, and high-five each other as if they "won".

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but here in america, breaking things and getting into fights is kinda tradition. That is typically how we solve our problems.

Since semantics was brought up, lets discuss it. It seems like it's being said that all violence is bad, but some violence isn't violence. When the "left" does something "violent", it's violence of the worst sort, every time, becuase violence is violence, and that's BAD. But when not-the-left commits violence, well, it wasn't ACTUALLY violence, it was SELF DEFENSE, or some other justification word that still means violence, but sounds friendlier. "That's different". And then turn it around and point at something else.

While it sounds like a lot when you say "over 25 people have been killed (but not specifying how or why), and yes yes any death is bad, when you consider things like, 92 people were killed by accidental firearm discharges this year, and around 90 people per DAY get killed in car accidents, , 25 people dying in locations that correspond to areas of high tension really doesn't sound terribly statistically significant. But hey, let them clutch at straws if that's what helps them feel better about things. If you were to add up the total number of deaths that occurred in those areas when there weren't protests, I'd wager it would still be closer to 25 than to zero, just due to the fact that accidents happen, and people do die sometimes. Why, in just my neighborhood alone, we've had 5 people die in the last year! Nothing happened, they died of old age, but still! Surely there must be SOME way to blame the left!

To many of them, it's not like they have a stake in the game. They can play "rattle the cage" all they want, it has no effect on them. It's not their country, what do they care? It's not like they have to actually live with the consequences of any of this.

Yes legally they're property crimes. But legally hardly any police shooting are murders, and most aren't crimes at all.

It seems odd to fall back on the legal classification to defend actions in a protest that is protesting the legal system's classification of certain actions.

Last edited by Antrax on 01 Dec 2020, 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I find it interesting that this thread sprang out of a discussion regarding which side (left or right) was more "violent".

This thread was initiated once the definition of "violent" was presented in a previous thread where it confirmed that property damage fits within the category of "violence" as some had been indicating.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violence

Instead of accepting\acknowledging this, the OP of the original thread created a new (this) thread about "violent crime" (not violence in general, as had been the subject under discussion) and added a post stating that discussion about "violence" was off-topic in the original discussion and should be continued here (in a discussion\thread they generated).

Source: https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=392474&p=8663775#p8663775

This resulted in shutting down an ongoing discussion about one subject (violence) where the responces were not to their liking and deceptively reframing it about a different matter (violent crime) which suited their aims...Had an honest continuation of the original discussion been intended, this thread would have focussed on the topic (violence) being discussed there, rather than focussing on a specific subset of the original topic (violent crime) in order to avoid the "inconvenient" portions of the earlier discussion.

No matter how much one doesn't like it, the bottom line is there was a great deal of destruction, suffering, injuries and several deaths involved during weeks of violent en masse rioting.

The main complaint of this thread is it's wrong to describe it as violent, but that complaint should be taken to the numerous media outlets who described it as violent.

Maybe if the media starts retracting calling it violent, then there will be a case for using euphemisms.

Once again, people on the other side of the planet somehow have their finger on the pulse of a nation that couldn't be further away from them. Must be all those lying honest impartial biased... Hold up, I forget, are media outlets biased lairs, or impartial truth givers, cos the stance taken on this seems to violently change hands depending on who is providing the article. It's almost as if anything that agrees with them is "true", and anything that disagrees with them is "biased".

The bottom line is, bad things happen in life, sorry for that, get over it. Inflating that fact, misrepresenting it, and trying to tether it to one specific group is disingenuous at best. If you're so concerned for loss of life, this seems like a REALLY narrow topic to get hung up on, especially to be hung up on from a foreign nation that isn't even affected by it.

You personally can take "violence" to mean whatever you want. But rule of law prevails, and that relies on the legal definitions set by the criminal justice system. So if the FBI says there's a difference between vandalizing a mailbox and punching another person, then legally there is one, whether you "like it" or not. It's not mona "splitting hairs". That's the actual rule, on the books.