I want to add more notes to our coverage of Winston Boogie Smith, the target of a North Star Fugitive Task Force arrest operation that cornered him at the top of the parking ramp adjacent to Uptown’s Seven Points (better known as Calhoun Square). Smith appears to have engaged in a gun battle with members of the task force when they sought to arrest him on an outstanding warrant this past Thursday afternoon.
• Doing the work that the Star Tribune won’t do, Kyle Hooten provides background on the deep thoughts of Winston Smith in the Alpha News story “Minneapolis man shot by police published plans for ‘war’ to kill cops.” Subhead: “Winston Smith asked protesters to target police from the rooftops and bring bombs to rallies.” Kyle’s story is documented with social media including two Instagram videos.
• Alpha News has also posted the video below of the rioting in Uptown late Friday night and early Saturday morning. This is what it looked like at one of Minneapolis’s prime intersections.
• As usual, the Star Tribune obscures a rounded view of what’s going down in Uptown in Smith’s honor. Maya Rao had the help of two other reporters for the story on last night’s festivities in Uptown: “Protesters converge for third night at Uptown spot where Winston Smith was killed.” Subhead: “Crowd vandalizes site of law enforcement team’s killing of Winston Smith.” Let us observe, Star Tribune style, that the protests “veered into vandalism.”
• One has to get to paragraph 15 of Rao’s story to be reminded: “Authorities say they recovered a handgun and spent shell casings from Smith’s car, suggesting that he fired a weapon at some point.” The Star Tribune is exercising extreme epistemological caution on the chain of events leading to Smith’s reported death.
• Rao’s story is thin and inadequate, but she has an excuse. She was busy on the story “Three shot to death overnight in Minneapolis; officer shoots, wounds suspect in one homicide.” Subhead: “Two of the three people killed were bystanders watching street racing.”
• For those not in the know — the so-called “street racing” with “hot-rodders,” as the Star Tribune refers to them, is conducted by gangs with stolen cars and unlawful firearms.
• The tweet below gives us a look at one of the “hot-rodding” events cum shootout in Minneapolis last night.
Here's last night's hotrodder shootout at E Lake St and Hiawatha Ave S that resulted in the murder of one person last night.
The hotrodders murdered two people last night.
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) June 6, 2021
• My first friend in life lives in Uptown. Yesterday he wrote me regarding Uptown Crime on Facebook: “This is the page that I follow for the most accurate accounts of what is going on in my neighborhood and how safe it is on a daily/nightly basis.”
• Uptown Crime is run by Steve Taylor. On Friday Taylor caught up with Minneapolis City Clowncil President Lisa Bender for a gonzo street interview. It is posted here on Uptown Crime and is accessible via the tweet below.
Facebook Uptown Crime's Steve Taylor catches up with Minneapolis Council President Lisa Bender for an interview on June 4. Must watch to understand what's going down in Minneapolis.https://t.co/BceB3225C5
— Scott Johnson (@scottwjohnson) June 6, 2021
• Yesterday morning the United States Attorney’s Office sent out this statement to media:
The North Star Fugitive Task Force (the “Task Force”) is a U.S. Marshals-led Task Force, established pursuant to federal law, that locates and apprehends fugitives in the District of Minnesota.
The Task Force is comprised of members of local, state and federal law enforcement who partner to arrest the state’s most violent fugitives.
The Task Force adopts warrants issued by state and local courts for pending criminal charges, probation violations, or failures to comply with court-ordered conditions.
Task force officers (TFOs) are state and local law enforcement officers who receive special deputations from the U.S. Marshals Service. While on a task force, these officers can exercise U.S. Marshals’ authorities, such as being able to cross jurisdictional lines to apprehend violent fugitives. Nationally, these critical partnerships result in the arrest of nearly 100,000 violent fugitives each year.
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Body-Worn Camera (BWC) policy to permit TFOs to utilize body-worn cameras on federal task forces. In February 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service began to phase-in this policy, which continues to be implemented in the District of Minnesota.
The statement’s concluding paragraph reiterates what we already know: “The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation into the officer involved shooting incident that occurred on June 3, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
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