Dakota Beacon

All of us were sickened two weeks ago by the senseless killing of George Floyd by an out-of-control cop.  A few of us were sickened at the senseless killing of Justine Damond by an out-of-control cop.  (So maybe we do have a race problem ) The conduct of some of the law enforcement personnel in Minneapolis had already become notorious.  It should have been addressed in no uncertain terms long before it impacted George Floyd.  

Why wasn’t it?  Good question, that.  Who could have made changes?  Certainly not any Republican.  The crowd that has run Minneapolis for as long as anyone can remember are Democrats.  Of course Democrats come in all shapes and sizes, all colors and genders, but it seems none of them, whether Amy Klobuchar or Keith Ellison, or either of the last two mayors, pretty boy Jacob Frey or Betsey Hodges, both of them DFLers, or the city council, gave police reform a thought.  All of a sudden they are attempting to show “solidarity” with Black Lives Matter and whatever tag-along looters and arsonists turned out to party on the excuse of (former) Officer Derek Chauvin and his merry men, Thao, Keung and Lane,committing a murder.  

Frey announced that the 3rd precinct police building was theirs for the taking, and take it they did - and burned it to the ground.  Still trying to get in solid with them, he then showed up at a gathering of them and when he declined to support dismantling of the police department he was told to “get the f--k out of here”.  He was literally booed out of the rally.  So much for solidarity, I guess.  

That’s quite a leap, isn’t it, disbanding the police?  Sounds pretty Bolshevik of them.  Strange that after having control of the city’s government and services since the time of Caesar, they never thought of anything between having an efficient force of well-trained, conscientious officers and anarchy.   There is a lot of support, it turns out, for getting rid of police protection in Minneapolis - Ilhan Omar (no surprise there), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and, of course a majority of the City Council - all of which are Democrats.  Who, by the way, put them there?  This is a good question for the people of Minneapolis to ponder as they install the iron bars on their windows, buy alarms and expensive security systems, arm themselves for the onslaught to come and brace for their insurance rates to suck the last dollar out of their exchequer.  .  

One would think, from the hatred spewed at Trump, that he had a hand in the disciplinary process of the Minneapolis PD.  Why isn’t anyone - of all these super-smart and hyper-moral, superior “protesters” asking about this?  Why aren’t they ganging up on the people who made George Floyd’s death, at the hands of a bad cop, possible?  We already know that Klobuchar declined to get rid of Chauvin when she had the opportunity.  We know there were many complaints in his file about his behavior on the job and no Republican on the scene to sweep it under the rug. It would almost appear that the city council planned to get rid of police all along - they couldn’t have managed it more effectively.

We also know that Justine Damond’s murderer (or slaughterer, as he was convicted of manslaughter) had complaints.  We also know that then-mayor Hodges stuck up for him.  The police union, too, stuck up for him, and circled their wagons.  (How smart was that, by the way?  If they had backed a thorough investigation and sought reform themselves they wouldn’t all be going the way of the dodo bird now.)  Damond’s killer, Mohammed Noor, had a big party thrown for him when he was hired.  It was a big deal.  Who hired him?  Betsey Hodges.  Who was in charge of the police at the time and who might have used the occasion of her murder to bring about change in the department - change that was obviously needed back at the time of Philando Castile’s murder? True, that one happened in a suburb - Falcon Heights - but it was a valid wake-up call all the same.  

It seems that this would be a good time, instead of blaming people who have had nothing to do with police brutality and abuse and weren't even on the scene, to go back and find out who actually did hire the bad guys.  What is wrong that they didn’t do better in recruiting suitable officers?  What kind of training did they provide?   

All the while this was festering, building up to a boil, all the city government cared about was “diversity”.  That is why Mohammed Noor was hired.  That seems to have been an overriding concern.  Let’s take a look at the tag-team offenders who killed Floyd.  We have two white officers, one black and one Hmong.  Looks like the Village People gone berserk.  We can’t say there wasn’t some sterling diversity there.  

And as to Black Lives Matter, they seem to be a pretty diverse bunch themselves.  They have no visible organization or leadership, they just spring up here and there.   Some are “peaceful” and they argue with the ones who think that “looting equals reparations”, who “don’t condemn the violence” - for just what, we are left to guess.  Some are decidedly not peaceful  And some work the local councils, and mine them for supporters to give them the seal of approval, while others just show up once the action starts.  BLM, the welcome committee and sometimes rival and sometimes ally with Antifa, always deny they are the bad guys.  And with no discernible leader, they get away with it.  I never seem to hear them denouncing rogue members of BLM.  That might be helpful.

In Fargo they looked at what was happening in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, etc., and decided it would be a good idea to hold a protest in their town too.  Never mind that the officers involved in the Floyd death were all behind bars by then and charged with very serious crimes, it just seemed like a good occasion.  I regret to say a friend of mine lent himself to this community project.  It ended as they usually do, perhaps on a smaller scale - this was Fargo, after all, and not Detroit, but all the same, with massive damage to downtown businesses and a bit of looting thrown in and a few injured police for good measure.  They all blamed it on “out-of-towners”, which, to be sure, might be correct.  But the out-of-towners didn’t have the key to the door, did they?  They would not have been there  but for the local team who started it and unleashed the havoc. Then they all had a merry clean-up project the next day, sort of like a community event, and congratulated themselves copiously for their civic pride.   The pride of Fargo, the iconic HoDo was smashed into, its massive plate glass windows left in scattered shards for the clean-up friends, and other businesses were looted as well as broken into.  These civic leaders were very lucky indeed that no one was killed in the affray.  I know some of those involved.  They are wonderful, caring people and I know it would have destroyed them and broken their hearts had someone died in this, and that was very possible, and yet they went ahead..  Oh, well, it did create a warm feeling of satisfaction to clean it up.  So warm, in fact that they did it all over again the next week, only this time without the out-of-town gang, who had moved on to greener pastures, and it did not develop into violence, thankfully.  

The protesters of Grand Forks held a march and that, too, went off peaceably, for which we should all be grateful.  If any out-of-town activists had scouted that city out, they might well have come to the conclusion that there wasn’t enough left of downtown Grand Forks to vandalize or loot, that the city fathers had beaten them to it. 

I don’t ever object to gatherings of people to protest.  I strongly support the fundamental right to assemble (peaceably).  It is part of our heritage, our birthright.  It’s one way we get the ball rolling.  But to be worth doing there needs to be something we want to accomplish other than getting our signs flashed on the local news or on someone’s Twitter.  And no responsible person would choose to set up such a thing in the climate we are seeing right now.  These “support” protests have flared around the world.  They are meaningless.  In Toronto, one of the “protesters” - an immigrant -  admitted to Rebel News that they wanted to replace the “fascist” government of Canada with communism. 

In London BLM held “protests of support” - whose primary effect seems to have been the defacing of war memorials and the statue of Sir Winston Churchill (all of whom risked their lives and limbs battling fascism in WWII - but who even knows about that these days?).  One casualty was a mounted police officer, sent in to try to quell the rioting.  People began tossing bicycles in the path of the horses.  Someone THREW a bicycle and hit a horse with it.  The horse threw its rider and left her glassy-eyed on the pavement.  She will be at least four months recovering from her injuries which included broken vertebrae and a collapsed lung.  It will be a great opportunity to see their world-famous health services in action. Meanwhile, the stupidity of this mob eventually cost “their side” as well.  The horse, now riderless, bolted and galloped, terrified,  down the streets, decking one of the the stalwart BLM fellows before it then hit a light post and managed to find its own way back to its stables.  (Seems the horse was the smartest one on the street.)  There seemed to be no report as to the fallen BLM rioter.  Does any of this make sense?  The people of London have nothing to do with Floyd’s death; most certainly Churchill and the heroes of WWII didn’t.  And you most certainly have no right to call them “fascist”.  

This is not about Floyd.  Arguably it never has been. Ostensibly, it started out as a statement against police abuse.  That was valid.  What happened to Floyd should never have happened any more than the murder of Justine Damond, and we can also rightly say that it happened entirely on the watch of one of the most leftist city governments in the country.  Why has none of these protesters pointed that out?  If this were really about Floyd’s demise and injustice, why haven’t they?  This is why I would say it has nothing to do with Floyd.  His murder was tragic.  His death was unnecessary and unacceptable.  It happened because Minneapolis has a long, long, long tradition of Democrat rule.  The last Republican mayor of Minneapolis ended his term about 60 years ago.  Why are these current leaders not on the rack for this?  Why is everyone running around blaming Churchill?  And Trump?  And let’s not forget Lincoln, whose monument was vandalized as well.  Shame on the whole lot of you.

If anyone out there cares about George Floyd (including my good friends in Fargo) they should be taking on the Democrat machine that has run Minneapolis for as long as anyone can remember, and get to the bottom of the problems there.  If Fargo has problems with their police they need to address them civilly and articulately, not with marches and sit-ins, with scrawled signs and mindless chants, at a time when such events are being used to create a dangerous situation.  People get killed, they lose homes and jobs and businesses in riots.  It’s not about a can of spray paint.  It’s people’s lives that you are playing with when you act irresponsibly.  And if you can sit quietly and listen, or do your own research, discuss alternatives and suggest responsible solutions, you might just be the one who could bring about that real change.

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