Earlier this week, the Minnesota Reformer – a news outlet financed by “progressive” plutocrats iwth deep pockets – did its review of AlphaNews’s “Minneapolis Has Fallen”.

The claims – well, I’ll let the tweet do the talking for the piece, entitled “I Watched Minneapolis Has Fallen So You Don’t Have To”.

Let’s go briefly through Winter’s claims.

Restraint

The biggest hit Winter has against Collin is that, according to her, the movie’s revelation that Chief Arredondo and his training officer lied about whether “Maximal Restraint Technique” was part of the MPD’s training and policy. Collin showed cops, and Chauvin’s mother, opening the manual to the exact section, and showed multiple current and former MPD officers saying they’d been trained in the technique. The movie also said the jurors were not allowed to see the body cam footage that showed that Chauvin did the technique correctly – with his knee on the shoulder blade, rather than on George Floyd’s neck.

Winter claims that yes, the jury saw both.

OK – so if that’s true, and the jurors saw the same training that the officers had, then could someone explain to me why Chief Arredondo still lied about it?

Neither reporter has clarified that for me, so someone else has to.

UPDATE: Danger Close

And as I wrote this in a hurry, I forgot this. But as “Bigman” noted in the comments – why the fact that Cahill failed to sequester the jury – who came to and from a courthouse that was being fortified like the Green Zone in Baghdad, and who were being told more or less directly that if they reached the “wrong verdict” that they were in huge trouble – not being discussed?

I’ll ask the question because Winter didn’t think she had to.

White Riot

Winter goes on to discuss the parts of the film dealing with the riot, most specifically the evacuation of the Third Precinct (on which. apropos nothing much, I scooped the entire Twin Cities media), I’m trying to figure out what Winter’s point is.

I’ll dispense with the fact that Winter…lacks a certain amount of empathy, or at least insight outside her own apparently narrow experience (emphasis added):

Collin also spends considerable time questioning why the MPD and local and state officials were slow to take action as protests devolved into riots and arson that destroyed hundreds of buildings across the metro.

Retired MPD officer Jason Reimer tells Collin what bothered him the most is “they let people throw rocks and bricks and firebombs and we’re supposed to just put on a helmet and take that.”

Well, helmets, but likely also bulletproof vests and eye-irritant spray, handcuffs, Tasers and semi-automatic pistols.

Bulletproof vests don’t keep you from burning to death. Spray and tasers are useful to get control one on one, not against a mob.

And I’ll let Deena Winter’s idea of shooting into a crowd of rioters hang out there, because I sure didn’t want to have to do it for her.

Winter cites some fairly wrenching scenes in the movie (that reflect what I reported in May of 2020), to which I’ll add some emphasis:

“We were in the middle of a war zone,” Herron said. “We were ordered not to do anything.”

She said the fire department wasn’t responding to calls, and officers were “wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be told what not to do next.”

“They weren’t doing anything to control the riot,” she said. “They wouldn’t let us do our jobs.”

All true – but keep the emphasis in mind – the “they” that left them wandering around were the city and MPD leadership. We’ll come back to them.

Winter adds:

The city and state’s failed response and inability to quell the violence and arson are well documented, but it’s inaccurate to claim police were standing down. 

They went on joyrides, fired rubber bullets at protesters (see Jaleel Stallings); an officer, who went on to run an actual banana stand, was caught on video by a journalist macing protesters for no discernible reason; lots of cops in riot gear teargassed crowds. 

They shot protestors like Soren Stevenson with a rubber bullet and blinded him in one eye. They maced a journalist from Vice News in the face. They fired rubber bullets at journalists, including Reformer reporter Max Nesterak and Star Tribune reporter Andy Mannix.

Side note: anyone but me notice how journalists only get really irate about injustice and official overreach when it’s other members of the Journo Club who are affected? Lake Street – and a fair chunk of the Midway, my neighborhood – got burned. The Minneapolis Police Department was, and remains, gutted. Crime soared, and is still double what it was as recently as 2018 – enh. But journalists got attacked ZOMG!

Not that Winter’s article tells you, but the main contention of the cops in the movie was that the city and the. MPD leadership – the “they” in the emphasized text in the first round of quotes, above:

• Had no plan to deal with the riot
• More specifically, abandoned the Third Precinct (apparently to “give the rioters ‘space to destroy'”), without having the foggiest idea about what the officers marooned there were supposed to do.

So when Winter snarks:

To the people on the other end of a rubber bullet or tear gas or mace, the police response sure didn’t feel like “standing down.” 

Stop me if I”m wrong, but everything she cites supports the cops contention. Some cops, operating in a complete vacuum, followed the normal human inclination to fucking hit back.

Either way, there was no plan. They were left danging in the breeze.

Winter doesn’t write about that, so I have to.

Who’s The Boss?

Winter goes on (and I’ll add emphasis):

[retired MPD cop Jason] Reimer says the weak response was all a deliberate attempt by politicians to use Floyd’s police killing to their advantage.

“The elections were coming up,” he said. “They were gonna use this incident for a political narrative, and they did.” 

Let’s hope Reimer was a better cop than he is a political analyst: The riots were a political disaster for the mayor, the governor and the entire DFL establishment. DFL political operatives blamed the riots and the defund/abolish police movement for key suburban losses that prevented a 2020 DFL trifecta. 

Although both Frey and Walz won reelection, they did so in part by hitching themselves to police during their reelection campaigns and would soon be accused by partisans on the left of being too cozy with cops.

I’m tempted to get cute and “hope that WInter is a better political analyst than Jason Reimer” – because it’d be more accurate to say the riots were a disaster for one city political establishment; the one where Jacob Frey and Andrea Jenkins and Lisa Bender were the “middle” and Alondra Cano was the loony left.

And for them, the riots were a disaster. For the new establishment, the one that gained huge ground in the ’22 elections and is poised to take the city over, the one led by the Democrat Socialists of America, against which Frey and Jenkins barely survived, and Bender and Cano retired lest they be seen as “too conservative” (literally the language the DSA droogs use to refer to Jacob F*cking Frey and Andrea Jenkins – the riots, and the aftermath (including the far far far left’s well-funded and well-organized response to whatever backlash there was in the ’20 elections) were a prime organizing opportunity.

But I won’t call Winter a myopic political analyst. Someone else will have to.

A Bonus I’ll Answer So You Don’t Need To

“Minneapolis Has Fallen” refers to quite a number of former MPD cops. Winter reminds us that a number of them are living on disability pensions and workmens comp settlements.

Someone needs to explain why that’s relevant (as opposed to, frankly, kinda pointlessly bitchy) since Winter will no doubt say she doesn’t have to.