For months now, Haiti’s unelected de facto leader, the acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has been demanding a foreign military force to break the armed gangs currently terrorizing the country. Mindful of objections from those who remember the destructive effects of past foreign (read: U.S.) interventions in Haiti, backers of Henry’s request — including U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres — always counter that this will not be an invasion force, but rather support for Haiti’s police.

Well, yesterday those same Haitian police rioted in the capital, Port-au-Prince. They barricaded streets, burned tires, and attacked Henry’s private residence — smashing windows and shooting up the courtyard. Henry wasn’t home. When the current and former officers (and friends) learned the de facto PM had just landed back in the country from a summit in Argentina, they surrounded the airport where he was holded up, and smashed windows there as well. So that’s how that’s going.

Police riots aren’t unique to Haiti. Much of the violence on U.S. city streets in the summer of