It depends on what you define 'people' as.  During the black plague, the French townspeople proved jews poisoned the town waterwells with sacks of rotting flesh, rounded up jews, and burned them in an open pit. The free range surviving jews threw themselves and their children into the pit for martyrdom, as if there was some sort of cause to die for rather than punishment for deliberately coordinating the killing of multiple towns by poisoning the well, which is where the phrase comes from.  Point being that burning a group can be justified punishment, but clearly burning police for killing felons, pedos, murderers, or just plain niggers, is not a just cause.