Burnin’ Down the House

This is a breaking story, just found out about it five minutes ago and even the news stories on it don’t give a lot of detail, so I will try to rein in my outrage and just make a couple of observations.
First, a lot of the available quotes come from “Community Organizer Frank Nitty.” Sure, it’s likely that he’s a great guy, but my first thought was “when the reporter asked him his name, that’s the first one he thought of, because he probably watched “The Untouchables” last night. Because Frank Nitti was Al Capone’s right hand man and that’s a heck of a coincidence.
Probably just a coincidence, though. It’s a name.
My second thought was ‘this is an interesting case.’ It raises questions. What use are the police, and would we be better off just trusting law enforcement to angry mobs? There are arguments for both sides. On the one hand, even if this one incidence of arson proves to be justified, if the house really was used being used for kidnapping and sex trafficking, then that’s fine, just as well it was burned, but what about next time? Will it be the home of a gay couple who aren’t harming anybody, or will neighbors feel justified in burning down a house if a bunch of homeless people are squatting there? A world of mob rule would be a dangerous and unpredictable world, indeed, but…
According to a lot of people interviewed, the police had been remiss about even looking for the missing girls, and wouldn’t have come to the neighborhood at all if there wasn’t a house on fire.
My opinion on this may shift as more information becomes available, but it appears that cops in the U.S. have completely lost the trust of the people. Up in smoke, as they say.