On Monday, as vandals and looters tore apart Minneapolis again in the
wake of a cop-involved shooting, a suburban police chief tried to report
on the dangerous conditions outside his station.
"Just so that everybody's clear, I was front and center at the protest,
at the riot," Brooklyn Center (Minn.) police chief Tim Gannon told the
media. He was there. They were not. This did not, however, deter the
know-it-alls from castigating Gannon for using the word "riot." Cue the
collective outrage and the ululations of the aggrieved.
"Don't do that!" one journalist exclaimed. "There was no riot," another
propagandist retorted. "It was not a riot!" another indignant media wag
chimed in.
Gannon did what reporters are supposed to do: Report. In a rare show of
public courage by an elected official in these hellish days, Gannon
remained undeterred. Several officers were injured; 40 demonstrators
were arrested, and 20 businesses were invaded and robbed. "The officers
that were putting themselves in harm's way were being pelted with frozen
cans of pop, they were being pelted with concrete blocks. And yes, we
had our helmets on and we had other protection and gear, but an officer
was injured, hit in the head with a brick ... so we had to make
decisions. We had to disperse the crowd because we cannot allow our
officers to be harmed."
Outraged journo-activists apparently disagree. These same types of
professional word massagers who bark at police not to call riots "riots"
are the same types who've been calling the deadly conflagrations of
every major American city since George Floyd's death last May "mostly
peaceful protests." Our airwaves and newspaper pages have been saturated
with loaded language and warped narratives about every high-profile
police encounter exploited by Black Lives Matter and antifa from George
Floyd to Ahmaud Arbery to Jacob Blake and now Daunte Wright.
Not only are these "protests" immune from criticism about their violent
criminal nature, but they are also miraculously immune from COVID-19.
When citizens in flyover country have gathered to resist lockdowns and
mask mandates, the national media pounces on these peaceful protesters
as selfish, reckless menaces to public safety. When inner-city thugs
burn down auto repair shops, firebomb courthouses and police precinct
offices, cart off diapers from Walgreen's, and raid liquor store shelves
in the name of social justice, pandemic paranoia and condemnatory
headlines suddenly evaporate.
Rigged media coverage. Rioters run amok. The threat of violence hanging
overhead like thick cumulonimbus clouds. How is it possible for anyone
accused in a riot-triggering incident to obtain a fair trial? In a
remarkable act of self-delusion, the presiding judge in the ongoing
trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin rejected a
defense request to immediately sequester the jury in the aftermath of
this week's new bumper crop of riots. Stating the gobsmackingly obvious,
defense attorney Eric Nelson argued that the violent outbreaks would be
at the "forefront of the jury's mindset."
Judge Peter Cahill, however, shrugged off the threats and ruled that
the jury doesn't need to be shut off from media and social media
exposure until closing arguments begin next Monday. Never mind the
barricades and barbed wire outside the fortified courthouse. Never mind
the half-billion dollars in damage already done by George Floyd's
vigilantes. Never mind the blaring, front-page stories about shopkeepers
preparing for bloody chaos if the jury doesn't rule the "right" way.
Instead, Cahill nonchalantly advised the jury to simply avoid the news
during the trial. Sure, just ignore the acrid smell of anarchotyranny
permeating the air. Take no notice of wall-to-wall coverage of Gannon's
resignation Monday afternoon after he pushed back against the media. Pay
no attention to the journalists raging at police officials calling out
rioters. Tune out the black-clad militants screaming "All Cops Are
Bastards" and "No Justice, No Peace." Pretend away the pretrial
publicity and nightly news jeremiads from racial demagogues Al Sharpton
and Benjamin Crump painting Chauvin as an evildoer on par with Ted Bundy
or Adolf Hitler. (Read more.)