I’m sure we’ve all seen images of the rioting and destruction in Minneapolis following the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of police there. I won’t bother to reproduce any here.
I have no problem with protests against the actions of police in Mr. Floyd’s death. If I were living in or near Minneapolis, I’d take part in them! On the basis of video evidence, I have no hesitation in labeling it police malfeasance, at the very least. There should be (and I hope there will be) legal consequences for all concerned. However, when the protestors start behaving like thugs and criminals, that crosses a line just as clearly as the one the police crossed in dealing with Mr. Floyd. The protestors make themselves criminals too.
I can’t understand how the city authorities in Minneapolis are allowing this anarchy to continue. In northern Texas, I know for sure that every small business would have its owner(s) and/or employees deployed outside with firearms in the event of similar trouble here – and they wouldn’t hesitate to use their guns if necessary in defense of their property. They’re entirely within their rights to do so. Many of their customers would join them to help out. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case in Minneapolis, where business owners are cowering at home, relying on the police to protect their property – and the police are conspicuous by their absence.
This abdication of authority and responsibility seems to be a pattern in that part of the world, judging by earlier reports. It’s a license for anarchy. Unless it’s stopped, and the authorities do their job, Minneapolis may become – perhaps already is – ungovernable. The current behavior of its police force, letting the riots continue without actively moving to stop them, appears to be nothing less than an acknowledgment of that reality. I can only assume their behavior is the result of orders from the city authorities, which means that the latter are equally culpable.
If that’s the case, I think – I hope! – that an increasing number of Minneapolis residents will take matters into their own hands, and start striking back at the anarchists and criminals and thugs who currently appear to rule their streets and business districts. If I were living there, I’d be among them. If police fail to keep the peace, then it’s up to us to do so in our own neighborhoods and towns. If police have no duty to protect individual citizens, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then citizens most certainly have the right to protect themselves and their property. That’s one of the primary justifications for the Second Amendment to the United States constitution.
If the authorities can’t be trusted to stop this sort of anarchy, why should they be trusted to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, or business and commerce, or anything else? Right now, Minneapolis doesn’t appear to have a city government at all. Will its residents do something about that at the next elections? I hope so . . . but as Joseph de Maistre famously said, every nation gets the government it deserves. I guess that applies to every city, too. I just can’t figure out how Minneapolis became such a nasty place as to deserve the government it’s got!
Peter
They can’t touch the rioters because they’re black, and any effort to control them would be sold as racism. And – to control them you’d probably have to shoot a few of them.
They are culturally enriched now.
Plus 1, sadly.
I daresay many, if not MOST of the arsonists in Minnesota are whites, guys. Indeed, the guy caught on camera breaking all the windows at that AutoZone, and tagging "freestuff for everyone!" on its wall, was supposedly ID'd as a Minneapolis cop!
Between the Black Lives (dont) Matter, Antifa, and a troubled Somali population, the Twin Cities are hosed…..
Minnesota law imposes a “Duty to Retreat” outside the home, and using deadly force to stop property crime at your business can land you in jail, as one Minneapolis pawn shop owner appears to be discovering.
Duty to retreat… That's a bs law. NY has the same cowards law. It isn't right.
The fact that the police do NOT have a duty to protect or stop crime bothers me greatly. The deference given by the court to the police is, at least in part, in recognition that they are putting themselves between the population and danger. If the police don't do that, as a duty and rule, then we must remove that deference. They become no more and no less than another citizen. Qualified immunity must end.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. This should be the police as well as the armed forces.
The owner of the pawn shop had his business cleaned out as revenge while he sits in jail for shooting a looter. MN is a different world than TX.
Minnesota's duty to retreat law states:
"609.065 JUSTIFIABLE TAKING OF LIFE.
The intentional taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death, or preventing the commission of a felony in the actor's place of abode."
That said our law enforcement here in MN, along with medical and other emergency services, are fair weather entities in that they will almost always take their safety above yours.
I.E If you store ammo in your house and it catches fire, the first thing the fire dept will ask is if you have ammo stored in it. If you say yes, you can forget about it getting put out. They will watch it burn with you.
"an increasing number of Minneapolis residents " are going to decide to leave and the ideological cleansing of Minneapolis will continue. The city will ask for redevelopment funds and a bailout from the Federal government, making the November election more critical. The left will use this as yet another excuse for mail in ballots. Once Barr indicts the first of the conspirators in the Russia Collusion set up the trial by media will burn out, unless actual democratic polls show these riots turning Minnesota Red, then the narrative will change even faster.
Minneapolis is a long-time Democrat run city. The law-abiding have no standing, only the criminals and certain favorite special-interest groups.
Minneapolis/St. Paul is the Progressive center of MN. It's a socialist cesspit of scum and villainy. But the Twin Cities dominate the population, so what they say goes, regardless of what the reality in outstate MN is (similar to how Chicago can dominate IL). The suburbs are pretty, but after living there for a summer in my youth I have no desire to live there ever again.
Sad how far the good folk of Minnesota have fallen from the days when the citizens of Northfield took up their deer rifles and shotguns and blew the bank robbing James-Younger gang to doll rags.
President Trump, "Minneapolis, I can send in some more National Guard." Minneapolis, "Not needed we have Roof Top Karens."
Spin Drift
Import enough of the third world
become the third world
There is video of a man in gas mask in black clothing carrying an umbrella and coldly systematically breaking windows. This person has been positively identified as a cop. Was this riot provoked in order to disregard those simply protesting? https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fm.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dqv-O4rnUToU%26fbclid%3DIwAR3i3unZo3ChVZk6VeyaLGvf2pnhdPhLnP8NDOpD0_9E0SjmSniIdguCm5I&h=AT3O7Q9HBXAzoXAlQH8SG_d8QOTQp-StRnMHPk_WlPy7naXtII8NaWasTgnninKWq1KpA9ynMdkbWla6c_DWTtZQCx8V8GCXvYMsd7Tg0cM9QETfe7TBG-GowW3bOl0S8e-uG6HCKQLrLxzgQJtf2vuw9fnmjQrnayASwTxAmZsiKKAKfaebPakQ6_d-6cH2tRcdYCoKO7UwXxlTDpeb1CHpzArWjZf0IMOaap_pJU–2AJXnjDTxTS-bfBC_rd0auH-Q266NheYRrL1rHkyeDDWJtqdaC1UQ-gUG68iKL7uU45I3UNb7yUxYB3WeC8fls4V87v9H1h9okNhf-AZhPyfFaLyWM9UrG2z6HrR_5H_gGVWP0oh2ct-YxIybp2IkWbAvVugQH7caWEa0xVE6pN0E9_jRTMwUHKbUzbyILrqNJavDGxZIdwVBohxApMuq4EdeUKojksuJLdYqxSbeborsU_XdBpT_dAUhwFsCFO-gJ7OjpUSaOtUyuRpbnn19f2_vv3KirG8JCbgyTiKZo3ZMV3EAYth8tgCwQTpsyDyAxR_17S8Spnfl12sZjTGT4HP5sSivANVw2JtV6pKAkim1saZZEL-wyGr1Ta3pgS14zojKEsRjRrV_xqLpGabztdquciRe_v34UnLMuXIRhedBXaN7Z6f8XGlxOMLi05e6L8-6iqYIw
None of thosexlinks work, dude…
I have little problem with actual protests, peaceful protests. And not a lot of problem with armed protests up to storming the local Bastille or City Hall.
Protests. Part of the American heritage. May suck, but they're protests. May actually stimulate local politics to change.
Looting, on the other hand, for fun and profit? Should be shot on site.
To the point of lining up whomever has a gun and just letting them open up anyone running around looting. Shoot them and shoot them often. Walk through the streets in a wall of shooters, shooting. Gun down every damned one of them. Then cut their heads off and display them in the neighborhoods where they come from as an example of what active redistribution of wealth by violence gets you.
Hell. Do get the NatGuard involved. With M-14s or M-1s. And Bayonets. Shoot, shoot, stab.
Displaying your unhappiness to the local politics by looting a Target or Autozone, setting fires to homes and businesses, is not the proper American way to do it.
And people in the South think Sherman was an animal…
The rioters attacked a police precinct and the cops ran away. Now think: You're a protestor, and the only protests that are working involve violence. Over the course of, say, a year, there are more and more instances of the cops advancing to the rear. That means you and yours are winning. Then an entire police station is destroyed and the cops run away.
Question: What's your next move?
Me, I'm in Columbus and I live right off machine gun alley. I hear sirens, gunshots, and fireworks all the time, but the one thing I'm not afraid of are BLM protestors tearing the place up. Because, you see, it's called Machine Gun Alley for a reason, and everyone knows it.
I get non-violent crime up the wazoo, but violent crime? Not so much. What little there is amounts to domestics and the occasional gang shooting. Because, you see, Machine Gun Alley. People are armed.
“In Minneapolis, you can get arrested for opening a business, but not for looting one.” – Rush Limbaugh
Minneapolis is merely one of many U.S. cities which have only the appearance of possessing a functional government.
My, my, my. 18 comments. Not one mention of a knee being placed on a man's neck until he was dead.
@bultaco1495: You might want to check your facts. The autopsy revealed the victim showed no signs of asphyxia or strangulation. Ergo, the knee hold (which is, by the way, approved and taught to its officers by Minneapolis PD) was not medically responsible for his death. That's all we know so far, and I won't speculate as to other possible causes.
I agree, the attitude and behavior of the officers concerned was wrong. I said as much in my original post. That doesn't mean we need to circulate falsehoods about the victim. They only stoke up the outrage while doing nothing to establish the facts.
D iversity
I nclusion
E quality
"(which is, by the way, approved and taught to its officers by Minneapolis PD)"
I believe that I read (somewhere) that while it may have been taught once upon a time, it was discontinued & discouraged due to the high risk of injury attending its use.
My kid, a cop in an AZ city, says that his PD trains them to stay away from the head and neck areas because of the risk of injury. It's a knee to the back, between the shoulder blades, that is taught in his PD.
He also mentioned that each jurisdiction trains to its own policies and guidelines, so what may be trained in one has no influence or bearing on that which is trained in a different jurisdiction.
FWIW…. 🙂
@ColoComment: I confirm that Minneapolis PD teaches the neck hold as CURRENT departmental policy and practice:
https://www.lawofficer.com/neck-hold-used-by-minneapolis-officer-was-approved-by-department-policy/
Ok. Thx for the correction. It must have been some other jurisdiction that I confused with MPD.
That MPD has it as still approved does reflect poorly on that department's policy & guidance.
" In northern Texas, I know for sure that every small business would have its owner(s) and/or employees deployed outside with firearms in the event of similar trouble here – and they wouldn't hesitate to use their guns if necessary in defense of their property"
Without in any sense meaning to imply my comments have any particular application to current events and certainly without intending any legal advice I might point out that Texas is unique among the fifty states in permitting, in some circumstances, lethal force in defense of what some call mere property. In every other state lethal force in defense of mere property is a criminal act that destroys any rights of self defense.
Of course in owner occupied property the violence that often comes with looting might, or might not, be an attack on the life of the owner and so justify lethal force in stopping the threat. On owner occupied property non-lethal force such as a pepper spray may be permitted – not in Massachusetts where having the spray on hand is itself a criminal act and so the criminal with non-lethal force is deprived of related rights to self defense – and generally backed up with lethal force if the reasonable use of spray provokes a criminal assault by the looter on an otherwise innocent property owner. Must be otherwise innocent. Spraying a mask might allow good identification and picture taking for later action when the mask is promptly removed and again might innocently provoke the looter to escalate. Again if intended to provoke taking pictures might imply not otherwise innocent.
Crossing state lines to riot or loot or conspiracy to riot and loot if such things happen further complicates legal issues. Hence staying home with good property insurance and good business interruption insurance and allowing criminal acts to take place someplace else is a safer course.
Then again Texas is the home of one riot one Ranger.
Bottom line, using guns in defense of mere property may be more trouble than the property is worth even when the property is worth a good deal.