In what capacity should the Maryland National Guard be utilized to assist with the Baltimore riots?

Stay safe Chief. The question that immediately came to mind when reading your post is who's property and person should the National Guard be protecting? I understand the concerns involved with this, but putting the National Guard in a position to confront protesters is a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

I agree, SGT (Join to see). It's a fine line and a very touchy situation. I just heard that Governor Hogan has declared a state of emergency in Baltimore and called up the National Guard.

I don't have the answer, but I do know that the violence needs to stop. Some of those protestors were high school kids. I'm sure of that. They left (or were released from?) school and that allowed them to protest, jump up and down on police cars, torch vehicles. As George once said on Seinfeld, "We're living in a society here!"

CW5 Scott Montgomery, I do not believe that the violence is ever justified. If Martin Luther King changed America with nonviolence then violence will absolutely Never work. I am not convinced that black men are purposely being killed on purpose. We expect police to take a lot of verbal abuse and general uncooperative exchanges not to escalate into some type of violent encounter. I am convinced that a police officer will be held accountable for blatant physical assault caught either on tape or by witnesses.

Putting a broad brush on all police as targeting black men is not fair. Lets look at the facts. Do black men commit crimes? If we never commit crimes then we would have something to complain about. We commit crimes like other races in our country. We should not think of ourselves as victims in all cases. Fighting police will always end bad for anyone, because the police requires cooperation. We need to understand as black men that police in general are not our enemy unless we prove them the stereotype that may fit their preconceived notions either from profiling or all points bulletins looking for some black man who committed a crime.

Antagonist and platform seeking for any personal agendas by antiamericans.

Pretty words, but how would that play out in practice? What people and assets merit protection and what don't? I can foresee protesters claiming that "white assets and white people" were protected while "black assets and people" were not. There is a huge racial aspect here that needs to be accounted for when allocating limited National Guard resources and manpower.

It doesn't matter to me weather you're black white Asians or purple... People who are in danger need to be relocated to a safer area. As far as asset protection food water and power of course. Just the basics...

National Guardsman shooting looters and rioters is exactly the situation that we don't need. Absolutely nothing good can come from that. Soldiers are supposed to defend the freedoms of all Americans, and there couldn't be a more stark antithesis to defending the protesters freedom than engaging them with lethal force.

Protesters, sure... but what I've seen on the news last night were rioters and looters. What they're doing has nothing to do with Freddie Gray's death.

And it gives racist assholes all the justification they need to treat me and others like me who are professional and act right as if we were subhuman, just because of the color of my skin.

No one called the students "thugs" or called it riots when they engaged in property damage recently in WV. When the UMd students riot after a game and burn couches on Rt. 1 in College Park, MD, no one calls it a riot.

We blacks need to hold ourselves to a higher standard, because Wanda Sykes was right when she said "When one white guy fucks up, he represents himself. When one black guy fucks up, he represents the whole race.......we should have killed Flava Flav 10 years ago".