“This is wonderful. This is what should have happened a long time ago,” Robert Powell, 42, said as he watched looters during the night hop through the shattered glass door of a meat market.

Powell, who owns a professional cleaning service, grew up on the city’s west side, and to him, this was small-time crime.

He dismissed the looters as “suburban nerds” likely to get busted. But after years of living in a town in which he said African American men are singled out for harsh treatment by the police, he shared the looters’ frustration.

He gestured to surrounding businesses, whose fluorescent lights were now shattered, their parking lots strewn with broken bottles.

“They support these police, give them free food. People just got tired of it,” he said.