Government

Minnesota Cops Slash Reporters' Tires For, Ummm, Public Safety

Qualified Immunity is a hell of a drug!

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BREAKING! ANTIFA supersoldiers slash tires at Minnesota protest in frightening display of lawle—

Whoops, sorry! It was the police jamming knives into the tires of parked cars in Minneapolis during protests on May 30 and May 31.

Mother Jones was first to report that unidentified law enforcement officials had systematically slashed the tires of dozens of vehicles parked in a K-Mart lot, leaving multiple journalists and medics stranded after police used teargas and rubber bullets to force protestors off the streets. New Yorker reporter Luke Mogelson appears to have been specifically targeted because he was a journalist.

As the protest on Sunday evening turned hairy, with law enforcement tear-gassing peaceful groups soon after curfew, Mogelson went to check on his car, showing his press pass to officers along the way. (Media were exempt from the curfew.) One officer took a picture of his press pass and said he would “radio it up the chain so everyone knew that car belonged to the press,” said Mogelson. When he came back later that evening to retrieve his car, officers informed him that the tires were punctured. “They were laughing,” Mogelson recalled. “They had grins on their faces.”

MoJo couldn’t get comment from local law enforcement, but the hometown press at the Minnesota Star Tribune were able to get confirmation from Department of Public Safety spokesman Bruce Gordon that police had cut tires in “a number of locations.”

“State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires … in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement,” he told the Star Tribune.

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“While not a typical tactic, vehicles were being used as dangerous weapons and inhibited our ability to clear areas and keep areas safe where violent protests were occurring,” Gordon continued. “As in all operations of this size, there will be a review about how these decisions were made.”

If mistakes were made — IF! — there will be a very thorough review, so don’t you worry about it.

Gordon failed to explain why all four tires had to be flattened to inhibit “vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds,” nor did he explain how trapping reporters with no means of egress contributed to the police’s “ability to clear areas.” He did, however, insist that police only targeted cars “that contained items used to cause harm during violent protests.”

Which was apparently every car in the lot, several of which belonged to reporters.

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Why would reporters leave “items used to cause harm” visible in their parked cars? And how did trapping them there with said dangerous items and no means of escape promote public safety? Mr. Gordon was silent on this as well.

And why should he say any more, right? Bill Barr has abandoned whatever minimal oversight the DOJ ever undertook, refusing to launch “pattern and practice” investigations of violent police departments, while simultaneously seeking to unwind consent decrees that forced law enforcement agencies to commit to reform. Meanwhile, if police lawyers can stand up in court and claim with a straight face that the officer had no idea that he was violating the law when he destroyed a house with smoke bombs instead of using the key, or tased a pregnant woman at a traffic stop, or shot a sleeping woman in a botched no-knock raid, then the courts will bless it under the doctrine of qualified immunity and deny plaintiffs recovery.

Why did the cops slash those tires? Because they knew they could get away with it. And as long we let them, they’re going to keep right on doing it.

Videos Show Cops Slashing Car Tires at Protests in Minneapolis [Mother Jones]
Officers slashed tires on vehicles parked amid Minneapolis protests, unrest [Minnesota Star Tribune]

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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