Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, a guest during coverage of civil unrest in urban areas around the country on MSNBC, spoke critically of the law enforcement response in Minneapolis.
According to Butler, that response was a “police riot.”
“[S]o what [Ali Velshi] said is that all of the protesters tonight were peaceful,” Butler said. “There was no violence from protesters at all. And what happened? The cops opened fire. They just started shooting those rubber bullets, that teargas, those flash grenades. And so, last night, in Minneapolis, we had a riot maybe from some of the protesters, maybe from some outside agitators. Joshua, tonight in Minneapolis, we had a police riot. We have police who were enforcing curfew laws, enforcing the laws against marching without a permit.”
“And the way that they enforce those laws is to fire on peaceful demonstrators exercising their American constitutional right to petition the government and to protest,” the MSNBC guest continued. “So when you talk about restoring order in Minneapolis, there’s no order to restore. There has not been order in Minneapolis or most other American cities for a long time. There was not order last night on the streets of Minneapolis. There was not order tonight. And last Monday, when four uniformed Minneapolis officers extinguished the life of George Floyd, there was certainly not order in the street that day.”
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