First, it’s pretty weird to say I’m “hanging on” to the one iota remark. That was literally the argument that you made, that I responded to in the first place.
Secondly, you partially answered your own question, didn’t you? Police often used mass arrests to clear the protest, but when push came to shove they really didn’t have evidence to prove the charges that they slapped those people with.
Here is a good article from the New York Times about this. It also mentions that people charged with serious things like destruction of property and vandalism are still facing charges. It also mentions the DA in Portland acknowledging that “70-80% of the cases there would not survive constitutional challenges.” The article also makes the very good point that there’s a difference between the standard an officer uses to arrest someone, and the evidentiary standards that must be met to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in court.
The TLDR of all this is what we have been trying to tell you guys for years at this point: Jan 6 and the George Floyd riots are totally different types of events which took place for different reasons on different types of property and involve different statutes and laws, and comparing those two things, as right wing media has been so eager to do, is disingenuous at best and downright dishonest at worst.
