Riot? What Riot?

Most of the Twin Cities metro area was under a 7:00 p.m. curfew last night, leading to cancellation of a Minnesota Twins home game and other sports events. Rioting and looting were widespread in Brooklyn Center, where the police encounter with Daunte Wright took place, and elsewhere. The National Guard was deployed along with local law enforcement to try to limit the damage done by rioters.


Brooklyn Center’s Chief of Police held a press conference in which he referred to the riot, in which one of his officers was hit in the head by a thrown brick and had to be hospitalized. The assembled reporters, in their invincible ignorance, denied that there had been any riot:


The correct term, apparently, is “mostly peaceful protest.”

The Star Tribune, on the other hand, knows how to toe the party line. Its “news” story fails to describe Duante Wright’s struggle with the police officers in his attempt to flee the scene, instead decorously saying that “he slipped back into the driver’s seat.” Then we get this editorializing:

Once again, a Black man died during a police encounter. In an instant, the world’s focus on Minnesota shifted from the trial of Derek Chauvin to a new outrage that brought street protests, promises of reform, and anguish over a relentless pattern of deadly police misconduct.

The Strib adds this absurdity:

A “blue line” flag β€” a sign of law enforcement support, co-opted by extremists and viewed by many activists as a symbol of opposition to the racial justice movement β€” waved below the American flag on the pole in front of the police station.

Meanwhile, the defense begins its case today in the homicide trial of Derek Chauvin. Good luck with that.

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