When I search for this story, I see a lot of sources in right wing media, but little outside it. The Washington Post article cited by
@JRP3 is one of the few. I found an article I thought was outside that bubble, but at the bottom it said it was republished from the Daily Caller.
After arresting pro-lifers, DC police reveal they made just 4 arrests for defacing property during weeks of riots - Alpha News
In any case, the story divulges some details near the bottom. The two people arrested were given citations and released. Which means they got a ticket. There was a permit requested and issued, but it was only to assemble, not to do any marking of the streets, which required a separate permit, even if the substance used was washable.
The reason the two were arrested was when the police arrived and told them they couldn't draw on the sidewalk, they kept going. It sounds to me that the police arrested them more because they didn't stop when told to than anything else. Instead of being booked for defying police orders, they were simply given citations for a relatively minor offense and released.
The article is vague about it, but trying to decipher it, it looks like the Metropolitan Police said that most of the protesters who were identified and are wanted for arrest are wanted by federal police for defacing federal property than for anything they did within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. So they aren't making it a high priority to do the jobs of federal police for them.
One thing that is being lost on both ends of the political spectrum today is some people have lost sight of the degree of things. Two things may be bad, but one may be worse than another. What Al Franken did that forced him to resign from the Senate was wrong, but what Bob Packwood did (for years) was far worse.
Unfortunately the segment is not on his show's website, but Bill Maher had an excellent discussion about cancel culture (a predominantly leftist thing) on his show last week with a couple of liberals who signed an open letter calling for it to end. It was a productive conversation about how we're losing track of nuance.
I have posted two articles over the weekend that at least some of the damage done in protests in Minneapolis and in Virginia during the BLM protests was done by right wing activists, not by anybody there for the purpose of the protests. Most of the protesters who did damage have not been identified, or police are not talking about what organizations, if any, the ones they have identified belong to.
I know from talking to people who were at WHO protests in Seattle, that all the property damage they personally witnessed were done by people who were not part of their group. They showed up, smashed windows nearby, and then disappeared.
I have also known people first hand or second hand who have been at the BLM protests in Portland. They didn't witness any violence until the feds showed up. The BLM protests in Portland had calmed down significantly from late June to mid-July with the only property damage being some graffiti. The mayor and police chief had been working with the protest organizers to reduce disruption and to stop property damage. The number of protesters had dropped significantly too.
When the feds were in Portland, they often would escalate things with any excuse. For example a protester would throw a firework (like a smoke bomb) and the feds would reply with lots of tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper balls.
After some heavy use of tear gas in the early protests the state of Oregon banned the use of it except under some defined extreme emergencies. All the tear gas used in July was from the feds.
But back to the point about scale of things. A year ago yesterday an armed gunman with a political agenda stormed a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and killed 23 people.
A lot of people were injured in Portland. Most by law enforcement
Burns, bloody wounds, broken bones: Injuries mount at Portland protests
Though there is at least one story of someone getting kicked in the head in a confrontation May 30 between BLM protesters and counter protesters.
Most of the damage in Portland was property damage, and the bulk of that was graffiti. Not great, but in the scale of things, it's not as bad as some other things that have happened around political protest in the last few years.
IMO
Graffiti - Not good
Broken windows and looting - worse
People injured - worse
People permanently maimed - still worse
People dead - worst outcome
Trump sent in federal officers to Portland over graffiti. There are protesters who will have health problems the rest of their life due to the actions of the federal officers. The feds improperly escalated the situation IMO.
I was just focused on science, but most institutions have issues like this. I worked at Boeing back in the late 80s and early 90s and back then there were a lot of stupid rules. The group I worked in was a bunch of renegades who went their own way. The long term head of the group was forced out and the new guy's mandate was to bring the organization to heel. It ruined both morale and productivity. When they started laying people off I volunteered to go. My seniority was pretty low (the group had taken on a lot of people who had been cut loose by the defense side a few years before and they were more senior than me), so I probably would have been among the first 10% out anyway.
The military has always had problems. In peacetime there is a pecking order among officers that academy trained are superior to those who became officers other ways, but the experience of WW II when many people who would not normally become officers got commissioned the whole thing about academy trained being superior was proven false. By late war many senior officers had not gone the academy route and they were performing better than academy graduates in a number of cases.
But it isn't unique to the US forces. I read the memoir of an RAF pilot who became the first reservist to become a Wing Commander in WW II. Before the war the reservists had to wear an R on their collar tabs, but it was done away with during the war. He kept wearing the collar tabs just to tick off the top brass.
You've talked about how you became an officer despite your lack of formal education. I'm sure you ran into the academy people are superior thing.
I believe the current requirement to be commissioned is a 110 IQ. It used to be 120. But IQ scores are a fairly narrow measure of intelligence. (I know complete idiots who belong to Mensa.)
Your communication skills are far beyond at least two US presidents I can think of. Just because your formal education was not as good as many of your peers, that doesn't mean much in the real world (I've also known PhDs who were idiots). A poor education can artificially lower an IQ score.
You may not have some of the specialized education some of us have, but you hold your own here.
