Yes, the bit about being escorted away sounds pretty odd. Unless they were protesting on private property and the owner was telling them to leave, I don't see why they'd be 'escorting' anyone. Bigtexxx probably should have gone with the self-defense angle instead of the shoot-myself-in-the-stomach angle.
http://www.vice.com/read/five-black...ers-shot-by-white-supremacists-in-minneapolis Witnesses Say Five Black Lives Matter Protesters Were Shot by White Supremacists in Minneapolis November 24, 2015 Brian McManus On Monday night at around 10:40 PM, shots rang out at a Black Lives Matter rally in Minneapolis. Five protesters were shot and three were rushed to North Memorial Medical Center and Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), according to deputy police chief Medaria Arradondo, where they were treated for non life-threatening injuries. The suspected shooters are white supremacists who arrived at the protest with the express intent to disrupt it, according to eyewitness accounts in the Star Tribune and Minneapolis City Pages. No suspects have yet been arrested. Black Lives Matter spokesperson Miski Noor told the Star Tribune that white supremacist counter-protesters have been a permanent fixture of the BLM protest outside Minneapolis's Police Department's Fourth Precinct that began last week in response to the shooting death of Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old unarmed black man who was killed by police eight days ago by a shot to the head. According to a video of alleged witnesses uploaded to YouTube by a white supremacist blog, on Monday BLM protesters noticed a few suspicious white men videotaping them. They approached and asked the men to remove their masks and identify themselves, a request met by a "**** no!" A BLM protester then punched one of the white men in the face, and a chase began, according to the men in the video. When it ended on the corner of the 1400 block of Morgan Avenue North, the three unidentified white men pulled a gun and opened fire into the crowd. Protester Jie Wronski-Riley was on the scene, and witnessed two people close to him get shot, he told the Star Tribune. At first, he thought the gunshots were firecrackers, unable to believe it could be gunfire. "Surely they're not shooting human beings," he thought, according to the paper. Officers reported a seeing Silver Chevy Trailblazer or Chevy Envoy leave the scene in a hurry, according to police scanner audio. A statement from the Minneapolis Police Department says officers responded "almost immediately" after the call of shots fired came in around 10:40 PM Monday. (Commenters on the BLM Facebook page claim it took police as long as ten minutes to respond.) In response to last night's shooting, Jamar Clark's brother Eddie Sutton released a statement asking that protesters end their occupation outside the Fourth District police station: "We appreciate Black Lives Matter for holding it down and keeping the protests peaceful. But in light of tonight's shootings, the family feels out of imminent concern for the safety of the occupiers, we must get the occupation of the 4th precinct ended and onto the next step." Jamar Clark's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
It's either a hoax or it's racists shooting at a protest put on by racists, either way it's a meh sort of situation.
Trying to bring more facts for Bigtexxx. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...est-cops-searching-for-3-white-male-suspects/ [rquoter]Two men arrested in shooting of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis By Alex Baumhardt, Lindsey Bever and Michael E. Miller November 24 at 3:02 PM MINNEAPOLIS — Simmering racial tensions boiled over yet again Monday night when several men shot five people who had been protesting the recent police killing of an African American man in Minneapolis. Police on Tuesday afternoon said they had arrested two suspects and were seeking others. On Monday night, five people suffered non-life-threatening gunshot injuries when at least one person opened fire on a crowd outside the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct building, authorities said. Afterward, police said they were searching for “3 white male suspects” who fled the scene. By Tuesday afternoon, police said they had arrested a 32-year-old Hispanic man in South Minneapolis and a 23-year-old white man in nearby Bloomington. The suspects were not identified and no other details were released. “We are sparing no efforts to bring any and all those responsible to justice,” Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges (D) said on social media, where she called the shooting “abhorrent.” Protesters have been camping out in front of the 4th Precinct since Nov. 15, when two Minneapolis police officers were involved in the contentious killing of 24-year-old Jamar Clark. “Tonight, white supremacists attacked the #4thPrecinctShutDown in an act of domestic terrorism,” Black Lives Matter Minneapolis said on Facebook. “We won’t be intimidated.” Although Clark’s family called for an end to the protests after the recent shooting, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis vowed to return to the 4th Precinct on Tuesday for another demonstration. Throughout the morning, protesters continued to gather outside the police station. Federal authorities said Tuesday that they knew about the shooting and were working with local police during the investigation. “The Department of Justice is aware of the incident and is coordinating with the Minneapolis Police Department to assess the evidence and determine if federal action is appropriate,” the department said in a statement. About 10:40 p.m. Monday, police responded to the scene, about one block from the police station. Soon, 911 calls started to pour in, police said. A video from a journalist at the scene showed people fleeing, then screaming for an ambulance. A young African American man was seen writhing in pain with an apparent gunshot wound to the leg while fellow protesters — then police and paramedics — tried to help. Henry Habu, a nearby resident, said he was there during the shooting. Habu said there were three men and a woman in ski masks who were filming the demonstrations. One witness reported seeing three men in masks; another reported one. Still, when protesters asked them who they were and why they were filming, Habu said, they deflected the questions. Several people involved in the demonstrations — including a Black Lives Matter organizer and the NAACP Minneapolis chapter president — have called the alleged gunmen white supremacists. Authorities, however, have not confirmed those claims. Habu said the outsiders appeared to fit the description of white supremacists whom protesters had been told to watch out for — those wearing masks or camouflage clothing. He said that at one point, those who were wearing masks walked away, and some protesters followed them. “They tried to fight,” he said. “There was a scuffle.” Carrie Brown and several other older members in the community said they tried to defuse the situation. “One of the white protesters who had been with us since the beginning said, ‘Be careful, those guys are white supremacists,'” Brown said, referring to the three men and one woman in balaclavas. “We asked them to remove their masks, asked who they were, invited them to come and protest with us peacefully once they did that.” “One of our young men reached out and touched one of them and said, ‘Oh he has a vest on’ like a bulletproof vest,” she added. One witness, who did not want be named, was among those who followed the outsiders up the street. “About midway down the block the group sort of thinned out and I said, ‘Maybe we should turn around, not make them feel like we’re all up on them,’ and the minute I turned around I heard four shots,” he said. “One whizzed right by me. I was going to get down but then I just ran.” Habu said shots rang out and he saw people disperse, running back to the demonstration camp. Brown said she heard about 15 shots and, when she turned around, “four boys on the ground.” She said she tended to one who had been shot in the leg. “He just kept saying, ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,'” she said. Several witness said police used pepper spray on those who were trying to help — apparently to get protesters away from the victims so that medical personnel could reach them. Brown said an officer put a gun to her face and told her to move back. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “He [the gunshot victim] had his hands wrapped around me. They pried his hands off of me.” Three victims were transported to North Memorial Medical Center, police said, and two others were transported to the Hennepin County Medical Center. Police described the injuries as not life-threatening.[/rquoter] More at link. Vice says the masked men were running away after being assaulted by a protester, while WaPo says they walked away of their own accord. Vice says they were chased while WaPo says they were followed ('escorted' I suppose). All sources seem to agree they were outsiders filming the protest and were confronted about their intentions by protesters. Looks like the blame game will revolve around whether the masked men were assaulted and chased (like Vice says) or walked out on their own accord before turning around and opening fire. I don't want to jump to any conclusions before we have all the facts -- and I know BigTexxx will keep me honest -- but the WaPo version strains credibility. If they came to shoot, they should have done it earlier instead of wasting time filming. Probably they had a provocation provided by protesters before opening fire. Either they brought the guns because they really thought they were in danger there, or else because they were hoping for a pretext to use them. I'm really interested in this thing about bulletproof vests, reported by BLM witnesses. It says a lot about a person's state of mind if they wear a bulletproof vest to go be a hostile observer of a protest. Did they think this night might end up in a shootout with the cops?
hmmm NSFW language <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XVgpfvwNEwg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Turns out there is a 3rd option, they might have been people who showed up, got attacked and started shooting. This is going to be a mess.
2 guys who are keeping their faces covered up, talking about how they were in a group that attacked 2 people for covering up their faces.... Anyway, it sounds like these people will have a pretty solid case that they acted in self defense.
Yea, right because it turned out so well for the Black Panthers. This is the mirror image of the poor rightist Second Amendment clowns who think their hand guns will do them well against the helicopter gun ships of the US military and prevent tyranny. Hey, it is good to be left, but being unaware of history or effective tactics does not help at all.
BigTexxx would ask that you not jump to any conclusions before the facts are in. The WaPo says 2 of them have been arrested, not taken in for an interview or any friendly crap like that. They may plea self-defense later and maybe even win, but the police aren't coming with that approach apparently. If they do plead self-defense, it would have unsettling parallels to Trayvon: go look for trouble, pull out your gun when you find it, tell the court you were afraid for your life.
If you think the civil rights movement would have been as successful as it was without armed groups like the Panthers and the Deacons of Defense being active at peaceful protests, marches and organized events, then it is you who is unaware of history and effective tactics.
Filming a protest in ski masks while wearing bullet proof vests seems to me to be looking for trouble (if that's what actually happened).
Saying that they'll probably have a pretty solid self defense case isn't jumping to any conclusions, it's stating the obvious based on what was said in the video I was responding to. As to them being arrested, they pretty much had to arrest them and go that route. I'm pretty sure the local government has seen what those BLM idiots have done in other towns and they want to get out ahead of it as best they can before they have to face the decision of using force against the mob or just letting them burn down the town. If it shows that they were physically attacked and they were forced to use a weapon to defend themselves, yeah, there will be tons of parallels to the Trayvon Martin case....hopefully these 2 people are better people than Zimmerman has turned out to be. Of course the major difference in this case is that the 2 people involved were attacked (if the story told by the 2 guys in the video is true) by a large group of people rather than by just one person, and no one died.
In what way would that be looking for trouble? Reporters wear vests all the time. Hypothetically, filming your protest doesn't give the protesters the right to escort you out. Neither does refusal to answer protesters questions.
Bobby, I think Texxx will be disappointed with all the conclusions you've jumped to, but if that's where you want to hang your hat so be it. I'll await the facts and we'll see if you're vindicated. Bandwagoner, do reporters also commonly carry guns?
And I have never seen a reporter in the USA wearing a bullet proof vest... They were those in WAR ZONES.
