Gen Honore: If Riots Not Stopped St Louis May Have to Invoke The Insurrection Act

Gen Honore: If Riots Not Stopped St Louis May Have to Invoke The Insurrection Act

Tuesday on CNN, retired lieutenant general and the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina Gen. Russel L. Honoré  said if the riots in Missouri cant be controlled the next step is “the Insurrection Act.”

Partial transcript as follows:

It takes a lot of patience he on the police part to understand that civil disobedience by it self is to force the police to take actions. So the people stand in the street, and if it can be done in a safe way, sometimes it’s best to observe that as long as it doesn’t go violent. More often than not, many times the police will want to move them out of the street because I said so . And that is when the pushing and shoving starts, and that’s when they go violent and when they put people in jail. Or people actually do criminal acts like throw things at the police. You throw something at the police, you’re going to go to jail. I think police are in the city unlike Ferguson and St. Louis that have mobilized National Guard and backup troops, they’re dealing with shift officers who are probably working overtime.

They’re going to have it to change their game unless they can come to a political conclusion that says, hey, we’re going to do this in terms of a federal review of procedures across the country at the heart of this issue or we’re going to have a blue ribbon panel that has 90 days to make recommendations to the federal government as well as to every state on how we deal with these issues in the future. 

I’m going to tell you this, Anderson, if St. Louis can’t control this, you know what the next step is and it’s called the Insurrection Act, the same thing they did in Los Angeles. We’re nowhere near that now, but people might want to look at that because that is a statute that’s designed if local authorities cannot control and provide civil law inside their cities.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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