This afternoon there was an anti-police demonstration at the Mall of America in Minnesota. Twitchy had coverage. Stores were closed as chanting protesters occupied portions of several floors overlooking the mall’s rotunda. This photo is from Twitter:
The person who posted it added: “Prosecute the police! Multilevel chant is thrilling.”
The mall warned protesters to disperse, and police eventually cleared them out:
While the demonstration was in progress, another anti-police activist, in Brooklyn, walked up to a police car and shot the two policemen who were sitting unsuspectingly inside. One was pronounced dead at the scene while the second died shortly after at a hospital. The gunman ran to a nearby subway station, pursued by other policemen, where he reportedly shot himself. The two policemen had been participating in an anti-terrorism drill. Many, many liberals celebrated on Twitter.
The murderer has been identified, at least tentatively, as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, apparently a gang member from Baltimore. On Instagram, he announced his intention to murder two policemen in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner. I would link to it, but his account has already been deleted. Brinsley apparently shot his girlfriend, too, before leaving for New York.
Of course, not all of those who have led or participated in anti-police demonstrations can be blamed for these murders. But a lot of them can be. Some of the anti-police demonstrations have explicitly called for policemen to be murdered. Here, for example, you see marchers in New York one week ago chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops!” Today they got them.
No doubt it is futile to hope for any sort of accounting; I suppose the press is already spinning madly. But at a minimum, we can hope that Bill de Blasio isn’t invited to the funerals.
UPDATE: Brinsley’s Facebook page is interesting. Brinsley says that he is a Muslim, but evidently not a very good one. He had 1,300 Facebook friends and, seemingly, quite a bit of money. He traveled to Miami and to Hawaii and said that he was going to write for STFU Comedy. He posted this photo of himself with a stack of $100 bills:
Normally one assumes that means he was a drug dealer. No doubt more information about Mr. Brinsley will come to light over the next few days.
FURTHER UPDATE: The murdered police officers have been identified as Wenjin Liu and Raphael Ramos.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.