Riots

Inside the bizarre hellworld of Minneapolis

Featured image Rebecca Brannon describes herself as an independent photojournalist covering Minnesota politics, protests, and riots. Rebecca has the nerve to do much of her reporting from the inside. If I have the chronology right, Rebecca got inside the “two hour black bloc Antifa protest” on Lake Street in Minneapolis, and the perpetrators are not happy about it. They don’t really want the exposure. Say this for the Star Tribune. The paper’s »

Felony murder in a good cause: Questions for Merrick Garland

Featured image I learn from today’s New York Post story that Senate Judiciary Committee member Tom Cotton has written a letter posing a few questions to the meritless Merrick Garland about the sentencing of Minnesota’s own Montez Terriel Lee. Lee drove up from Rochester, Minnesota to get in on the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis on the evening the police department’s Third Precinct Headquarters was burned down. Lee joined the action by »

Felony murder in a good cause: A comment

Featured image After posting my extended comments on the sentencing of Montez Lee by Judge Wilhelmina Wright yesterday, I received a message from a knowledgeable law enforcement source on the investigation of the orgy of wanton destruction in the Twin Cities riots — block after block of burned buildings, all in the name of George Floyd, what a crock, as the source puts it. My understanding is that the agents working the »

Felony murder in a good cause: Fox News edition

Featured image I was invited to appear on FOX News last night for a brief segment to discuss the January 14 sentencing of Montez Terriel Lee, Jr. The segment was tentatively bumped to this evening. I am posting this for viewers in the event that the segment runs tonight. The relevance of the story is enhanced by the fact that sentencing judge Wilhelmina “Mimi” Wright is now reportedly on the shortlist of »

Felony murder in a good cause

Featured image When the authorities let the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct headquarters burn following the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day 2020, all hell broke loose. Thugs from all over the state made their way to the Twin Cities to participate in the orgy of riots, destruction and looting that spread throughout the Twin Cities. One such participant was Montez Terriel Lee, Jr. Lee came up to the Twin Cities »

Riots, Then and Now

Featured image President Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. In response, radical Democrats gathered in Washington to riot. The riot was ugly and violent: Protesters set fires and hurled bricks in a daylong assault on the city hosting Donald Trump’s inauguration, registering their rage against the new president in a series of clashes that led to more than 200 arrests. Police used pepper spray and stun grenades to prevent the »

How emotional can you get?

Featured image The George Floyd riots that devastated the Twin Cities the week following Floyd’s death on Memorial Day last year weren’t the end of it. We had a follow-on eruption at the end of August in the heart of downtown Minneapolis when a crowd went on an incredibly destructive rampage of rioting, looting, and arson. The Center of the American Experiment’s John Phelan concisely recounted the events this way: In the »

Who’s In Favor of Looting?

Featured image Apple CEO Tim Cook, for one. This was his comment during the George Floyd riots that devastated the Uptown area of Minneapolis: As it happens, Apple had a store only blocks away from the center of the George Floyd riots. The store was damaged during those riots. Subsequently, in June 2021, Winston Boogie Smith fired at police officers who were closing in on him in the parking ramp for the »

Looting Comes to the Suburbs

Featured image Beginning with the George Floyd riots, liberals have generally taken the position that rioting, looting and arson are just fine, as long as they are done in a righteous cause. This was what the anti-Rittenhouse hysteria was all about: how dare he try to interfere with rioting and arson, carried out by Antifa and BLM? Liberals are generally of the view that looting and arson only damage property, and property »

Kyle Rittenhouse’s offense

Featured image To leftists and the prosecutors who did their bidding, Kyle Rittenhouse’s offense wasn’t any of the things he was charged with. He clearly had an unassailable defense to all of the charges against him. But that didn’t matter because Rittenhouse was guilty of something else — showing up armed at a leftist riot or, as the left called it, “vigilantism.” As the left and the prosecution see it, Rittenhouse never »

Rittenhouse Trial Brings Out the Crazy

Featured image I am not sure how liberals expected the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial to go. Anyone who had seen the videos of Rittenhouse’s interactions with the men who were chasing him, striking him and trying to kill him knew that he had a strong case of self-defense. But apparently the fact that Rittenhouse has a defense–and is so bold as to assert it!–came as a surprise to the Left. Liberal reactions »

Documents In Ashli Babbitt Shooting Produced

Featured image Following a FOIA request and a lawsuit, Judicial Watch has obtained around 500 pages of documents from the D.C. Metropolitan Police that relate to the shooting of Ashli Babbitt during the January 6 riot. The documents are here; you can read them and make of them what you will. Judicial Watch’s commentary on the materials is here. The most significant documents are the statements taken from the other law enforcement »

Whatever happened to Umbrella Man?

Featured image Who can take a city, burn it to the ground? Umbrella Man can, at least according to the search warrant application/affidavit filed by Minneapolis police officer Erika Christensen in the summer of 2020. Star Tribune reporter Libor Jany told me he came across Christensen’s affidavit in a routine review of court filings. Libor reported on the allegations of Christensen’s affidavit in his July 28 story “Minneapolis police say ‘Umbrella Man’ »

Mob Rule In Minnesota

Featured image The murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin is wrapping up today with closing arguments and jury instructions. The National Guard is standing by to deal with the expected riots when the jury returns its verdict later this week, along with law enforcement from several local agencies as well as other states. Downtown Minneapolis resembles a fortress, only with fewer people. Both Scott and I have questioned whether Chauvin »

Maximum Maxine [Updated]

Featured image Maxine Waters, one of the House’s most senior and looniest members, is in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, firing up the rioters there. In this clip, she urges them to be more confrontational and to stay in the streets. She also demands a guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. Not guilty of manslaughter–“oh no no, not manslaughter!”–but murder. pic.twitter.com/O7EwvCtM3D — CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) April 18, 2021 I don’t suppose Mad Maxine has »

Minneapolis Cancels School for Chauvin Riots

Featured image The Minneapolis Public Schools are shutting down next week in anticipation of a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial: Minneapolis Public Schools are suspending in-person learning next week as the state awaits a verdict in the murder trial against Derek Chauvin. Why? In anticipation of riots, looting and arson, presumably: “Our community is moving through an extraordinarily challenging time as we react to the killing of former MPS student Daunte »

Antifa Comes to Town

Featured image During the George Floyd riots in Minnesota last Summer, the first night or two of violence was carried out predominantly by locals. But then the professional rioters and career criminals arrived, in the person of Antifa. That seems to be happening again, as Fox News reports, with reporter Mike Tobin on the scene: Members of the violent far-left activist group Antifa identified themselves to a Fox News reporter who was »