How should the Trump administration combat the LA riots, especially if/when they spread to other cities?
In short: RICO, RICO, RICO.
The problem: You will never run out of rioters to arrest and charge.
The solution: You have to target the organizers and facilitators. And you can run out of them.
Let’s make a comparison. In Afghanistan especially, we ran into the same problem. There was a never-ending supply of IED emplacers. They were killed by the dozens and it didn’t stop the IEDs.
But when we started targeting the chemists, facilitators, and IED builders, we saw the effects: a substantial reduction in IEDs in the region, despite increased U.S. operations.
That was the Center of Gravity — if they didn’t have the stuff that goes boom, then it doesn’t matter how many pressure plates they put in the ground.
The emplacers were merely the end of the chain. But the higher up you break the chain, the more disruption you cause to the lower end. Rioters are the end of the chain.
The Trump administration has to break the chain higher than the bottom, so it has to go after the command and control and support networks that enable the rioting — the organizers and facilitators.
Some of these organizations are regional, some are national. This becomes a challenge of determining the priority of targets, which has to be based on evidence of criminal conspiracy.
I hope the Trump administration understands that. If we start seeing organizers and facilitators frog marched out of their homes during 2am raids, and booked on criminal conspiracy/RICO charges, then we can expect possibly immediate but definitely long term effects on the riots.
Until that happens at scale, buckle up because I’m seeing Far Left groups across the country latch onto the LA riots as the spark they needed to reactivate.