Media Drawing Conclusions on Minneapolis Black Lives Matter Shooting with Scant Evidence

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota–The night after five black people were shot at a Black Lives Matter protest, police had two white suspects in custody but details still remained sketchy. Meanwhile, the black activists held another night of protests on Tuesday and the forces of the left are playing the moment up for all it’s worth.

Nathan Gustavsson, 21, Daniel Macey, 26, and Lance Scarsella, 26, are all being held without bail on assault charges. Scarsella was arrrested and Gustavsson and Macey turned themsevles in on Tuesday. Another man, a Hispanic who uses the online name SaigaMarine, was briefly held and then released. None of the five people who were shot had been seriously injured, and at least one shooting victim was at protests again on Tuesday night.

Those basic facts are about the only thing clear about the shooting at this time, despite a growing amount of video and social media evidence available.

The coverage, however, is decidedly skewed.

The Washington Post ran the headline “Shots fired at Minneapolis protest second night in a row.” While video hows that shots may have been fired, there’s nothing to indicate that the shots had anything to do with the protests.

A story in The Guardian is typical of the reporting that continues to amp up racial animosity and the Black Lives Matter anti-police narrative:

“This is what you guys wanted,” police told protesters after five demonstrators were shot and injured by masked men at a continuing protest in Minneapolis on Monday night, witnesses told the Guardian.

Protesters trying to tend to the wounded were also maced.

Anger continued to grow against the police on Tuesday at a march and concert held outside the fourth precinct police station, where protesters have been occupying the space since a young black man, Jamar Clark, was killed by police a week ago.

One example how left media like The Guardian are spinning the story can be seen in its description of the shooting: “On Monday night, a group of three or four masked men, who had been escorted from the protest by volunteer marshals, opened fire on protesters, injuring five.”

While the picture emerging of the incident appears to that of a black group and a white group, both with racist beliefs and both looking for confrontation, the media coverage wants to make the Black Lives Matter activists into gentle heroes.

The incident started when the protesters’ “safety team” approached the men.

https://twitter.com/micamaryjane/status/669051723093184512

The Guardian’s choice of the peaceful sounding word “escorted” is at odds with the description of the events given by two of the Black Lives Matter protesters themselves on video, who describe a chaotic situation where “everybody started rushing them at the same time,” and it appears that Black Lives Matter activists landed the first blows:

Somebody out the crowd punched one of them and they hit the gate over here. after that, one of them started reaching and backing up.

I’m like-he got a gun, he got a gun.

So after they hit the gate again, they hit this way… they went around the corner. Somebody hit somebody else and they hit the gate one more time. And after that they started running back and the car started chasing them back.

However, the situation is made more complicated by video that apparently shows the men connected to shooting on their way to the Black Lives Matter protest several night earlier, with thoughts of confrontation on their mind. One of the men says they are going on a “recon mission” and then raises his gun to the camera and says “we are locked and loaded.”

As the Star-Tribune reported, the suspects are almost out of Central Casting for demonizing conservatives as violent racists:

Meanwhile, the Facebook page of the Minneapolis man released from custody shows a profile photo that features him armed and donning full military gear. He describes his occupation simply as “Saving the Constitution.”

The man, who bears a striking resemblance to the masked “SaigaMarine,” also displays an affinity for firearms. On a cache of a now-deleted Instagram page, he describes himself as a former Marine infantryman and Iraq war veteran, as well as a firearms model and supporter of the Second Amendment.

He also appeared to be well-known on /k/, a popular weapons message board on the website 4chan where racist comments are sometimes posted. There, he was known as SaigaMarine, among other monikers, and news of his arrest reverberated among the anonymous users.

“What an idiot,” one wrote. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Never should’ve trolled that protest so hard.”

Earlier in the day, protesters made repeated vow not to end their demonstrations over the police shooting of Jamar Clark, despite a plea from Clark’s family to end protests and move to the “next step.”