… nothing much at all, as it turns out. Normally, one sees looting after catastrophes, natural or otherwise, as a reaction to chaos and uncertainty. These days, looting takes place in otherwise normal conditions, because progressive policies running urban law enforcement and prosecution are the catastrophe.

However, even then, looters usually confine themselves to one target (or Target) at a time. In Philadelphia, scores of looters descended onto an entire shopping district, and more. CNN reports that the proximate cause was the dismissal of charges against a police officer in a fatal shooting, but not even the city government believes that:

More than a dozen people were arrested after stores were looted when a large crowd gathered in Philadelphia’s Center City district Tuesday night, police said.

The looting began shortly after the conclusion of peaceful protests against a judge’s decision to dismiss all charges against a former Philadelphia police officer, Mark Dial, in the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry on August 14, authorities said. The city’s police commissioner said he believes the looters were “opportunists” that were not directly connected to the protests. …

Police started getting calls around 8 p.m. from businesses reporting they were being broken into or getting ransacked, Stanford said.

The protest over the Irizarry case ended around 7:30 p.m., and though the police department had begun moving officers out of the area, enough were around to respond quickly when 911 calls about break-ins began, Stanford said.

One fan of the looters grabbed some video, and then angrily reacted to the police arrests of the criminals involved:

UPDATE – #Philadelphia Large crowds of juveniles loot multiple stores in Center City, police say

100-200 kids are walking around with masks on breaking into stores and stealing whatever they can.#Philadelphia #Walnut #iPhone15 #apple #AppleStore #Lululemon pic.twitter.com/XMNYIg7xyp

— Ratnesh Mishra 🇮🇳 (@Ratnesh_speaks) September 27, 2023

PJ Media has a lot more video of the gangs ransacking and pillaging Philly’s City Center. Actually, the looting went beyond just this one district, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and was fueled by the social-media reports that made it clear that the police were outmatched:

Large groups of young people broke into numerous stores across Philadelphia Tuesday night, stealing merchandise and vandalizing property, Acting Police Commissioner John Stanford said.

By midnight, police had arrested more than 20 people, many of them juveniles, Stanford said, and at least two guns were recovered. The unrest stretched across the city, including Center City, the Northeast, and West Philadelphia, with business corridors along Aramingo Avenue and Walnut Street targeted through the night.

Initial reports of break-ins near Rittenhouse Square began just after 8 p.m., shortly after protesters had dispersed from a peaceful gathering at City Hall, where marchers called for justice for Eddie Irizarry, who was shot and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer last month.

Rittenhouse Square is a mile away from City Hall. The protests didn’t start, end, or take place in these districts. The protests had concluded and crowds began dispersing a half-hour before and a mile away from where the looting began. Even the police assigned to keep the protests peaceful had begun to move to other assignments. This was not a protest, nor was a protest spinning out of control into a riot, as in Minneapolis in May 2020. This was an outbreak of organized-crime mobs attacking law-abiding and jobs-providing businesses that keep the city financially engaged, using an earlier protest as thin cover for their marauding.

The organized-crime looting gangs showed up to pillage, not protest, and largely got away with it. Even the juveniles that got arrested, and the adults too, will get away with it. They will get cited and released. They know it, we know it, and the retailers know it too. Everyone knows it.

That’s why the videographers in these clips are laughing hysterically:

Law enforcement finally steps in to stop the looting. This was Philly tonight:

pic.twitter.com/vCFsPRfcdG

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 27, 2023

And that’s why we will see more and more of this insane looting in large cities, and why large cities are rapidly heading for collapse. Prosecutors refuse to go after criminals involved in property crime, especially “social justice” DAs like Philly’s own Larry Krasner. City governments refuse to support policing and fund it at levels where minor crimes get addressed before cities lose control of their streets. The larger retailers play footsie with the progressives to curry their favor for social credit and better DEI/ESG scores, only to bail out as soon as the consequences of progressive policies come to their own doors. (Looking directly at you, Target!) Independent retailers can’t absorb the losses or skyrocketed insurance rates, collapsing their businesses and ending any commercial growth in the cities.

And the same people cackling in these videos will be next year’s “food desert” activists, claiming that it’s the system oppressing them because they can’t find jobs or any place convenient to shop.

Until America’s urban centers start taking crime, policing, and prosecution seriously, they are headed for collapse. The smart people will be those who can afford to get out now and do so. The unfortunate people will be those smart enough to see what’s coming but financially unable to avoid it. National elections won’t solve these problems; only state and local elections can do that, but that will require the voters in these elections to grow up and prioritize public safety ahead of “wokery” and other grievance politics.

Progressives aren’t delivering “social justice.” They’re delivering “social destruction.”