> It's pretty clear the chief intended on showing the writer how well-adjusted he wasn't

I'm guessing the second 'he' refers to the letter writer and not the chief. It's a little unclear from the sentence.

This seemed like a very well written and thoughtful rebuttal to some of the concerns in the letter. I didn't get a tone that it was showing the letter's author they weren't 'well adjusted'.

> [..] this after many protesters doing similar things elsewhere had been violent and criminal.

If the protesters in Tennessee weren't being violent/criminal, why compare them to the protests in some other cities? It was mentioned that the highways were kept open after the first night.

Sounds like the whole thing went pretty peacefully. If letting the protestors close an onramp or two the first day was the price for avoiding a riot or revolt that may have been an excellent decision.

Your first assumption is correct, the chief was showing the letter writer that the letter writer wasn't well adjusted, but it looks like you figured that out. > why compare them to the protests in some other cities? You'd have to be intellectually dishonest to compare one to the other and not worry that they were the same. They were protesting the same thing and in a similar manner. While it hadn't escalated to the point of other protests, all other indications were there with no way of determining the stopping point of escalation. > If letting the protestors close an onramp or two the first day was the price for avoiding a riot or revolt that may have been an excellent decision. Perhaps that may be true from the police officer's point of view but it doesn't offer any validation to citizens safety concerns. When we look at the incident from a standpoint of it being passed us, then it is only convenient to say that the police officers made the correct decision in allowing illegal acts, but it isn't necessarily true.

The Problem with the chief's reply is that it ignores the citizens VALID safety concerns and then makes assumptions concerning the citizen's adjustment to society. If there had been no safety concerns, then the chief might have been justified in his assumption, but when the police force allows people to do large scale illegal acts that directly affect the lives of the people around them, then you can hardly say that concerns for safety aren't valid.

So whether the citizen's concerns for safety are valid or not is the point that the article relies upon to justify the chief's response. I submit that the citizen's concerns for safety were valid, whether or not I would have felt the same (you have to "step out of your comfort zone" and try to avoid biases to understand that), and therefore the chief's reply was assuming and biased.

When confronted by an unexpected powder keg situation, the best answer is often to try to defuse it gently while putting in place contingencies to prevent recurrence. Throwing a lit match (or the riot squad) has not worked out so well for Ferguson...

That doesn't invalidate the citizen's concerns for safety though, which is what the chief had to do in order to then make assumptions about the writer's lack of aptitude for societal understanding. People were doing illegal acts in mass that directly affected the lives of the people around them with no immediate repercussion. It would have made more sense for the chief to apologize for the citizen's valid concerns and an inability to enforce the law due to the threat of escalation. The belief that any action on the police force's part to enforce the law would have escalated in violence only further speaks to the validity of the concerns for safety of the writer.