After a third night of looting on Monday, June 1, New York governor Andrew Cuomo accurately observed: “The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night. It was rampant looting across the city last night that they did not stop.” Cuomo’s comment spurred indignant replies from the New York City police commissioner and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who claimed that there was “no such thing as being able to loot with impunity.”

For once, Cuomo was right. Numerous videos on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere show people breaking into stores and then walking out with goods as police looked on passively. Police cars raced past shops being looted. Store owners recounted calling 911 to report that their stores were being broken into at that moment, and hearing that police were not available to come help.

Why are the police simultaneously willing to attack peaceful marchers but so tolerant of looters? The answer certainly is not lack of officers, nor is it police incompetence. NYC has three times as many officers per capita as the US average. 8,000 cops were on the streets in NYC on the night of June 1 as the looting occurred. Whatever one can say about the New York City police, they are highly experienced in crowd control and at deploying forces to places they have identified as crime hotspots.