Chicago, civil unrest and inequality

POLICE IN CHICAGO have an unusual tool to deploy for crowd control: 43 liftable road bridges that span urban stretches of river. Officials ordered many to be raised on successive nights this week, to limit access to the city centre after sunset. That followed an outbreak of rioting on August 10th, when looters—some of whom had hired vans for the occasion—flooded to rich central districts and smashed into luxury-goods, electronics and other shops.

Attackers prised open cash dispensers, seized cash registers and hauled off carloads of fancy clothes, jewellery, televisions and alcohol, even as hundreds of police chased them and helicopters watched from above. Eager for notoriety, a few looters laden with armfuls of designer goods live-streamed themselves on social media. Some violence erupted; a security guard was shot. Police arrested over 100 people.

Shopkeepers lamented they had only just replaced stock stolen in an earlier round of looting after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, in May. Once more a clash with police sparked the uprising. Officers repeatedly shot a young black man in Englewood, on Chicago’s poor South Side, on August 9th. They claimed he had fired at them first, but failed to produce bodycam video footage to prove it. He survived but, as false rumours of his death spread, angry residents shared...