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Two culture war bombs in the upper midwest this week
In May 2025, a woman in Rochester Minnesota uttered the N-word at a child who tried to steal from her, and then again at an adult who confronted her about it while recording with his phone. Both the child and adult are Somali. The video, uploaded to Youtube, went massively viral.
The woman was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct. One of the charges was dropped, the other two just went to trial. After a four day trial and 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found a guilty verdict for one of the charges.
The defendant's lawyer is claiming misconduct by the court and intends to appeal.
Our nation's few remaining principled free speech advocates do not approve of this. This verdict will likely be appealed and may, at minimum, result in Minnesota's disorderly conduct statute being nullified with regard to offenses that are limited to speech and no other disruptive behavior.
In a somewhat ironic twist, apparently the guy who recorded the viral youtube video at the center of all this, was arrested for gang raping a child in 2022, and had those charges dropped "in the interests of justice" by the same prosecutor's office that this year thought it was in the interests of justice to throw the book at somebody for saying a naughty word. What a funny world we live in.
Bomb number two: Police in Madison, WI, responding to reports that someone was casing vehicles to break into, confronted a suspect, who fled, resisted arrest, and finally attacked one officer with a knife, causing that officer to respond with lethal force.
Activists are very clearly trying to turn this into a reprise of the George Floyd moment, including transporting the raised fist monument from Minneapolis' "George Floyd Square" to Madison. The area around the shooting has been barricaded by activists. Activists stormed a police press conference, seizing the podium to deliver a rant about Zionism.
State representative and gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong has thrown her lot fully in with the activists. Whether this helps or hurts her electoral chances will remain to be seen.
Madison's "Independent Police Monitor", who has also thrown her lot in with the activists, is confused about why the Madison Police Department are not involving her in their investigation of the incident.
Attorney Ben Crump, whose list of cases is a who's who of law-enforcement-related racial grievances, is representing the family of the deceased.
And the deceased? Over 40 arrests, multiple felony convictions, including a history of assaults on police officers. (No way to link directly to this, but go here and search for Corey Ruiz).
It never ceases to amaze me how the left is so consistently able to mobilize itself in the defense of the worst people in the world.
I have been somewhat following the protests around the Madison, WI shooting. There is a lot of disagreement about the protesters tactics. They are doing things like shutting down a free orchestra concert, blocking traffic, getting a local music festival cancelled because they were planning to protest at it, a balloon release.
There are a lot of other democrats/progressives that are raising objections like:
This feels like a way different vibe than 2020 when it was less social acceptable for people on the left to raise common-sense objections like these.
Is there a bodycam video of the shooting?
A bystander video is available here.
Three officers struggle to subdue the kneeling suspect. It looks like they've got his legs and his left arm. From the camera's perspective, his right arm is hidden behind his body, and whether it is restrained is not clear.
Multiple officers shout, "He's got a knife" (presumably in his right hand).
The first three officers back off, making room for a fourth officer to arrive and use a Taser. The suspect has risen to his feet with the weight of the first three officers removed, but now stumbles back to the ground (lying on his side).
Of the first three officers, two get back on top of the suspect, but the third instead pulls out his gun and fires three shots.
So it's not totally unreasonable to question whether the gunshots were necessary when the Taser already seemed effective in taking the suspect to the ground.
Based on the video alone, I tend to agree with you. It doesn't look very clean or justifiable. Given that the additional context provided in that thread is true, like this individual having 34 prior incidents, this is yet another example of a repeat offender remaining on the street until something catastrophic happens. If it technically wasn't a good shoot we'll watch them create more racial bias workshops or additional training mandates and/or everything else that goes with kneecapping law enforcement and enabling career criminals. Meanwhile, the legal and ideological failures that repeatedly allowed this turd to run around committing crimes will get brushed under the rug.
I think fumbling melees with multiple officers and multiple implements (gun, knife, taser) have a high chance of tragic results.
Also, I thought all black people have gotten The Talk. My ex-friend who always talked about The Labor of his Oppressed Black Body had a performative fear of the cops even when they were in line at the taco truck, like he was going to get popped for Walking while Black.
Cops shoot people who keep holding knives after being told to drop them, this is well-known to everyone, no matter what color they are.
Even if this specific shoot doesn't look technically pretty, I have zero sympathy for the felon who could have just dropped the stupid knife.
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that my only explanation for people not understanding it is because they are too ideologically committed to hating cops to acknowledge when the use of force is reasonable.
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Exactly. It's like the ICE situation where having belligerent protestors deliberately walking up as close to the line of 'peaceful protest' as they can en-masse is going to produce occasional flash points.
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