
When the protests were “peaceful.”
REMEMBER KIDS: THE WORST WAY TO GET THE NEWS IS TO WATCH THE NEWS.
AD COMMENTATOR GORDON SCOTT HAS BEEN FILING REPORTS IN THE AD ITEM Outraged, they came, protested, and then did a little shopping
These are those comments up to Sunday Morning.
Gordon Scott May 28, 2020, 7:46 PM
Today things got worse. They began to use social media to organize looting in St. Paul, and some of the suburbs. Target has now closed and boarded up 26 stores. CVS and Walgreens have closed all stores inside the beltway. That is not the only looted Cub grocery store; I’m not sure how many at this point. But the one nearest me on North Broadway was under siege. And someone called one of the nearby biker groups. They all roared past my house–there were a lot–and to the Cub. I do not know any more than that.
Both St. Paul’s and Minneapolis’ mayors are in over their heads.
The initial damage attacks were caused by Antifa. The looting began just because they figured that the cops were more or less trapped in the 3rd precinct, and even though Target was just across the street, that the cops would not respond. The cops did not respond.
Now in some of the other towns the police are being a bit more aggressive.
I am very sure there are at least 200 who made the trip from Chicago to take advantage of the opportunities for property liberation here. More will come.
Both St. Paul’s and Minneapolis’ mayors are in very deep over their heads. The governor appears to be also. He’s managed to rack up nursing home deaths such that 80 percent of Minnesota deaths are there, and they’re STILL shipping sick people to them. Now this…the National Guard should have been put on alert Thursday morning. Instead, the governor waited until 4 p.m. It takes time to get everyone together and briefed and armed and deployed.
All of these stores that are closed or looted or torched? They are where I make my living, or used to. But I guess there will be lots of work cleaning and restocking.
Gordon Scott May 28, 2020, 7:57 PM
Part of the unreality is that you will see some idiot carrying stuff out of a store, and there are 10 people videoing it with their phones. But fear not. At some point, the looters are going to realize that all of those phones are more valuable than some damn Target lamp.
City of Minneapolis does not give one shit about you or your livelihood, your safety, or your property. They care more about looters.
Gordon Scott May 29, 2020, 6:32 AM
Yeah, right, Chris. The cop who is the chief suspect is over at the Auto Zone kicking out windows.
That cop and his family are in hiding, as there is a 24/7 protest at his house.
If you are a store owner or a retail employee in Minneapolis, it became abundantly clear in the last three days. The City of Minneapolis does not give one shit about you or your livelihood, your safety, or your property. They care more about looters. Oh, and a CNN crew.
I’ve been saying this for years. In fact, our boy mayor Jacob Frey was luvved, luvved by businesses in his downtown district when he was on the council. Not because he got anything done for them; they all said he talked a lot but did little. No, his claim to their support was that he listened to them. None of the other 12 council members would listen.
Every pharmacy and pawnshop has been looted and burned in a zone that saddles I-94 well into St. Paul.
And every retailer learned that it was useless to call the police. They would not come, would not seek, would not bother to hand a case to the prosecutor because the prosecutor would ignore it.
If you were an independent retailer, you had some degree of freedom to threaten and hell, drag thieves into the back room for a beating. It happened. The Mexican-and Muslim-owned stores would tolerate a lot less. But CVS, or Walgreens, or Target, or Auto Zone, either had to just take it, or hire the Badge Gang. And we learned this week that the Badge Gang won’t even cross the street to stop a looting.
24 metro Target stores are now closed, all the way out to the third-ring suburbs. CVS and Walgreens have boarded up those stores that weren’t already looted. Every pharmacy and pawnshop has been looted and burned in a zone that saddles I-94 well into St. Paul.
Can you fill a prescription in Minneapolis today? At the county hospital, and the other big two, perhaps.
Oh, they busted out the very, very expensive Pelli-designed windows at the library. Because justice, man.
Gordon Scott May 29, 2020, 9:22 AM
Much more burned Thursday night. The National Guard arrived, but had no clear orders, and did little. The area around the 3rd Precinct, the center of protests, is now secured by a couple of hundred police.
In north Minneapolis where I live, pretty much every business has been destroyed. None of this is in the news. They were still looting here as of an hour ago. The media are concentrating on downtown and Lake Street.
The boy mayor is walking in little circles muttering, “but I thought if I was nice and kept them from being arrested, they would love me.”
Unless you go to a hospital pharmacy, you cannot fill a prescription in Minneapolis.
I don’ t think you can buy a bottle.
Facebook is full of tales of how an off-duty St. Paul officer started the whole destruction thing. In other accounts, it was the cop who killed the guy. None of the tales account for how so many people were eager to do the bidding of the cops by looting.
The boy mayor is walking in little circles muttering, “but I thought if I was nice and kept them from being arrested, they would love me.”
The governor is telling us how his top priority is protecting the media.
The attorney general is telling us how we have to make the merchants feel safe again, after we have justice, of course. I have news for Keith, who was once my state representative and later my congressman: The merchants didn’t feel safe before the riots. How about you investigate why Minneapolis won’t defend the merchants from the feral?
Gordon Scott May 30, 2020, 12:21 AM
It is Saturday morning at 1:30 a.m. The curfew went into effect at 8 p.m., but it is not being enforced. Police, state patrol and National Guard were invisible until the remnants of a lawful protest wandered down the interstate freeway to Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue.
This is where the 5th Precinct is. An Office Max, Subway, Dollar Tree, and the last remaining Kmart in Minnesota have been looted there. That Kmart was scheduled to close in a few months. I think they will move up that timetable.
No one has hurt a firefighter, but people can hinder them. The police are invisible.
A Kmart should be easy to defend because of the small entry area. Doing so would require cops to try. They are not. Fires are burning without hindrances in several parts of the city. Firefighters will not roll to a location now without police. No one has hurt a firefighter, but people can hinder them. The police are invisible.
The bad cop was arrested and charged with 3rd-degree murder and manslaughter. The charging documents reveal that the dead man did resist and refused to allow the cops to put him in the squad car. The autopsy found no evidence of strangulation or traumatic asphyxiation. He was hopped up, most likely on crack. The sweating plus the behavior of the man and woman in the car with him are a flashing neon CRACK sign, if you know the clues.
Now if you’re really high on coke or crack and have a bad heart, well… the stress can do a person in. His behavior points to him having the crack equivalent of an anxiety attack. He and his pals should have been long gone from the store where he tried to pass fake money. He could have calmly driven away before the cop approached his car door. He would not have been pursued.
But, he didn’t and the deadly chain of events continued. The cops all thought he was having a bad drug reaction. But Chauvin was watching the crowd, not his prisoner. When the less experienced cop suggested turning Floyd on his side, Chauvin refused.
Even after Floyd went limp, became unresponsive and after another cop failed to find a pulse, Chauvin just knelt there until the ambulance arrived.
The details, the drugs, the resistance, those all might be enough for a good lawyer to convince a few jurors to acquit. But the video will damn Chauvin. No lawyer will be able to argue away the clear and obvious suffering.
The Republican state Senate majority leader called President Trump and begged for federal troops. MP units are on standby. The governor and his minions are having a press conference at 2 a.m., and they report that despite the 200 state patrol cops and 500 guardsmen, they just don’t have enough men. This is true. There are not enough if the plan is to have police stand in a line.
Unsaid by the governor and unasked by the toady media, is why the governor failed to activate 2000 more Friday morning. Well, now President Trump will step in and that will be quite interesting.
Gordon Scott May 30, 2020, 12:51 AM
Dang, do I know these guys or what? Well, I should. I’ve lived among them long enough.
We thought the curfew would work. Our intel was faulty
The governor’s presser: We thought the curfew would work. Our intel was faulty (note: some in the media were saying at noon that the cops had better be ready for tonight because it was going to be bad). Despite our bravery and sacrifice, we just didn’t have enough men!
So Governor Walz is activating 1700 more guardsmen. And he is, mutter mutter, considering accepting federal help.
The thing is, all of these “protesters” are the Democrat base. Perhaps more the Bernie base than the Biden base, but Dems through and through. So Governor Walz and Mayor Frey are absolutely terrified of anyone in authority harming one hair on the protesters’ heads. Now if these people were wearing MAGA hats, then things would be different. The state really would need that $7 million morgue that they insist is critical to keep China Flu corpses on ice, need it for Tumphaterz.
Gordon Scott May 30, 2020, 6:42 PM
The “outside agitator” scenario is being tapped hard by the governor. Amazingly enough, the press is pushing back. Gov. Walz claimed 80 percent of the bad people were from out of state. The press has pointed out that of people arrested (less than 100 so far) 80 percent were from Minnesota.
One protester obviously anguished over the death of George was shown on TV just now carrying a Molotov Cocktail.
He’s also grasping for the “white supremacists” theme rather desperately. But a law enforcement source was quoted in the Star Tribune saying that that was nonsense, at least so far. People have traveled in. There does seem to be some young, white men leading some of the damage. But as any sensible person knows, in any white supremacist group, half of the dozen or so members are FBI informants.
They shut down the freeways inside the beltway at 7 p.m., and the curfew is on again. Tonight there are 2800 National Guard troops; the governor activated the entire Minnesota National Guard. President Trump offered active-duty military police units, but so far they have not been asked for.
It’s just after 8 p.m. and there’s a large group heading toward downtown from the 5th Precinct area, but a larger group remains at the 5th. This was the focus of last night’s action. But there were also fires and looting in other parts of town, including two blocks from me.
A good-sized apartment building was right next to a Dollar Tree/Auto Zone store that was set ablaze. The residents were told that no firefighting help was available. They did the best they could, and with luck on the wind, saved their building.d
One protester obviously anguished over the death of George was shown on TV just now carrying a Molotov Cocktail.
The cops are moving on these groups. It will be a lot more of a battle tonight.
Gordon Scott May 31, 2020, 6:49 AM
It was impressive. The police moved on the crowd line abreast. They covered their flanks and had reserves to fan out and widen the line as they advanced across parking lots. The crowd was forced northward, but there was a blocking force further north to prevent the crowd from getting to the city center.
“If you aren’t ready to die for this cause you can go the fuck home.”
Any group that tried to set up a line was swiftly rolled over with arrests. One group headed east to the bridges to St. Paul. But the St. Paul police had the bridges blocked.
One guy was yelling at a group taking refuge under the Hiawatha overpass, “If you aren’t ready to die for this cause you can go the fuck home.” Two minutes later the police rolled through the group and scattered them.
Local residents self-organized and defended the only intact grocery store on the east side. Residential streets were barricaded and patrolled. A Native American nonprofit has very thoroughly armed folks at all 16 of their properties. In my neighborhood there were residents sitting every few hundred feet, watching for suspicious people.
There had been reports all day of vehicles with no license plates. I saw one, a gold Escalade with tinted windows. Police were told to stop them and identify the driver.
Closing down the freeways, a surprise move, was very effective. Police were able to move quickly anywhere. Protesters could not. A few reporters got hit by marker rounds or rubber bullets, and a couple were pepper-sprayed. It was a very different night.
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Rumors, rumors. A large group of Klansmen in robes checked into the LivInn next to the Menard’s in Fridley! Now, really. Is there a Klan group left that’s more than a dozen people? There certainly are none where half the membership isn’t reporting to the FBI. It didn’t help that the governor was tossing around allusions to these rumors. He admitted this morning that he was “hoping” that the whole outside agitator thing was true, but he didn’t have evidence.
One of the really interesting things has been how folks have just showed up with brooms and shovels and started cleaning up. This has happened all over town. Three blocks from where I live there has been a giant food giveaway for the last three days because folks will starve, I guess, because the Cub grocery down the street was looted. But the Aldi is still open (though boarded) and the HyVee just across the border in Robbinsdale is wide open.
Target has announced that they will rebuild and reopen the Lake Street store before the end of the year. It didn’t burn, because the sprinklers ran for about a day after the looting. I’ve worked in that store and it’s stressful because of the blatant and persistent in-your-face theft. But no one stole the giant electronic vacuums over the checkout areas. Those are intact and ready to go back to sucking money off of EBT (welfare) cards.
I think I might be able to get some of my work done today. The two Walmarts near me were not hit. Yesterday they were closed, but I think I can get in with my vendor pass. The Brooklyn Center Walmart was interesting. One could not get a car near it, and the Brooklyn Center PD was close by and watching. Those guys are very no nonsense.
Brooklyn Center is unusual because it used to have a good-sized mall and retail area. If you came to the Cities from the northwest, it was the first big retail node. But then Maple Grove, which was just farmland 30 years ago, exploded and built a big new retail area, and it blocked Brooklyn Center off. The mall, retail and car dealerships withered away. One would expect the town to look like a derelict.
But the town is well run by conservative-minded business people. They fund beautification, and have kept enough going in those empty big box spaces to hold the line. Now there is new development going in. It’s amazing what a town can do when it’s well run. Oh, the beautification: you see mostly white high school students out there weeding, planting, maintaining. It’s like that rumor that American kids won’t work was, I dunno, incomplete?
I only see local news, and only some of that, so I was unaware that on Saturday night it got really, really ugly in some other cities. As near as I can tell, there were two deaths here: George Floyd and some looter who got shot by a store owner. Some people may have been mildly assaulted, but nothing too serious.
But what I am hearing about other places . . . is very scary.
Back in 1967, which was the last riot of significance here, it was mainly contained to a small area around Plymouth Ave. At that time, there were a lot of retail businesses on Plymouth, mostly owned by Jewish folks who lived north of the avenue. The relatively few black people lived south of Plymouth. A lot of those stores burned, and the Jewish folks decamped west to St. Louis Park, where there are now temples and one of those wire border things called an eruv that makes the enclosed area one really large private home for ritual purposes.
And ever since 1967 black residents have moved further and further north as the years passed. That’s kind of ended now, and one can see young families of white, yellow and brown moving into the near north and northside. It is the only part of town where a house can be bought for under $200,000.
So, our riots tend to be tasteful and understated. Looting and burning are just not the sort of thing we do, you see. We didn’t need to learn social distancing, as Minnesotans have done that for 150 years.
About 90 minutes ago protesters (peaceful! peaceful! scream the news anchors) were out on I-35W, as is the fashion nowadays. The freeways were not closed–that didn’t happen until 5 p.m.–and the crowd filled both the north and southbound lanes. And then a gasoline tanker truck came north at freeway speed.
He was blaring his horn and doing his best to stop, which is not all that easy when you have 60,000 pounds of fuel behind you. The crowd parted and as near as I can tell, perhaps one person was very slightly injured if she was really hurt at all. The driver was trying to get away, and who would blame him? The mob surrounded his truck and now he is in the hospital with injuries.
One of the male news reporters near the scene was interviewing people (He was accelerating! We threw bicycles under his wheels to stop him! Neither are true). I wanted to pull the poor dear aside and give him a replacement tampon, he was so weepy.
So now we’re probably in for more of this crap.
We have/had a crew in Minneapolis working on boarding up CVS stores. Not sure how many they got done, but they did 5 stores Thursday and still working on them.
Boarding?
Against fire?
Night is falling fast. The large group–perhaps 5000–that was on the freeway has dispersed quickly. The curfew started at 8 p.m. As of about 30 minutes ago there remained a group of perhaps 250 near a freeway entrance.
The police, state patrol and National Guard gradually moved in on them. At one point the protesters tried to dash across the street, but the police moved quickly to block that. The perimeter around the group has contracted, and the ring is now within 30 feet on all sides.
Then, a group of ten or so move in and take one person into custody. They then return for another. It was amazingly smooth and efficient. No one is fighting. Being surrounded by a ring of hundreds of cops takes it out of you, I guess.
The governor has announced that Attorney General Keith Ellison (yes, THAT Keith Ellison) will be leading the prosecution. This is an enormous gift to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, whose house has been under siege for most of a week now. Ellison has zero prosecutorial experience and is not considered a brilliant legal mind. I’m sure they will have lots of folks advising him, but it can be amazing how badly progressive legal minds work.
This is not, by any measure, a slam dunk case. A good lawyer will make sure the jury knows that A) George Floyd DID resist arrest, and B) he didn’t die from the knee on his neck, and C) the drugs Floyd had consumed probably did cause his death. Cops get some legal leeway for mistakes.
It is dark now, and there are no other gatherings or incidents in the Twin Cities.
@GS;
Boarding up to prevent broken windows. Must have something to do with insurance? Just like the difference between having a lock on a building and no lock, insurance will pay for one and not the other.
You board up to keep people from coming in. It may be after the store was looted, or it may be to prevent looting by reducing the area vulnerable to easy penetration. When used as a prophylactic, it doesn’t always work. Some of these guys have good pry tools. The plywood can be doused with charcoal fluid and burned.
In the post-looting situation, it may prevent a second round of looting, or it may prevent someone starting a fire just for fun, or it may provide security for the cleanup going on inside.
I worked in a Walmart on Sunday. Every vulnerable door and window was boarded. Instead of the usual wide entrances on both sides of the store, there was only one side, and only one entry lane and one exit lane. The number of customers was restricted and others had to wait in line for other customers to leave. The store closed at 4:30 p.m. One interesting thing: when it was closing all hands were rounded up and told to go get carts from the parking lot. Some of the newer, vibrant hires had a shocked look, and said, “You want *me* to get carts?” Cart fetching is apparently a low-respect job. The manager just deadpanned the guy and said, “Get carts or punch out.”
What’s behind the plywood? In an unlooted store, just the normal entrance. In the case of this Walmart, there were stacks of empty pallets about 15 high. That’s a fair amount of mass. Behind those stacks were pallets full of potting soil and cases of water. No one is going to push that pile back. One of the managers sat atop a forklift–ordinarily never seen on the floor when the store is open–and was very anxious to cover the exit hole. She had already blocked the entry hole.
Aside from the plywood cocoon, the local PD was very much in evidence. And once the store closed, no one was allowed to drive into the store area, with entry nodes blocked with barriers and police cars. This is the closest Walmart to the trouble on the north side. The looters have only attacked Target stores. They’re closer in.
There used to be a Walmart in the St. Paul Midway area, which was a heavily looted part of town, but it closed some months ago. The daily chaos/theft was just too much compared to what could be sucked off the EBT cards. Shoplifting is almost impossible to prosecute in Minnesota and the chain stores don’t even try.