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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

You don't even need to leave your porch to get shot. Police and National Guard are patrolling neighborhoods and shooting civilians with paint canisters on their own property in Minneapolis. In one case they yelled "Light 'em up!" before starting to shoot [1] with ammunition that could blind people.

It's legal to be outside your house during the curfew in Minneapolis [2].

> Can I be outside my house (on my property) after 8 p.m. and before 6 a.m.?

> Yes.

[1] https://twitter.com/tkerssen/status/1266921821653385225

[2] https://dps.mn.gov/macc/Pages/faq.aspx

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I’m a local. Here’s some additional context:

“Follow up on video of people getting rubber bullets shot at them in their doorway from a source that was there. This was personally texted to me. Source is a teacher that works at my elementary school.

Here’s what was posted.

‘That is my blue house across the street. Apparently this video has gone viral. What they didn’t show was the 20- 30 minutes of the rioters that surrounded the houses, were all over our neighborhood, the street, rioters running through my yard and screaming on the other side of my garden level bedroom window, and hiding in my alley. The neighbors are saying they were ‘just having a beer outside,’ as if this came out of nowhere and while it seems extreme from the national guard/police, the rioters were flooded in our neighborhood and they were trying to get them out. That was terrifying, and to be honest after being at the Minneapolis community clean up today and seeing all the burned down buildings, I am glad nothing was burned down or broken into. And they got them out. Idk who is out there at night! And yes black lives matter!!!! But these riots are scary AF. And they haven’t returned and are gone now and we are totally safe, and all had been quiet for hours. And apparently my upstairs neighbor had no idea the rioters were here at all ... #minneapolisriots #blacklivesmatter #georgefloyd #helpusall #feltprotected”

Edit: apparently, additional information is... controversial? I don’t agree with the police conduct, but there is additional context here.

Nobody managed to get a video of the rioters? Doesn't that seem odd to you? Additional context is welcome as long as it's either verifiable or doesn't serve an obvious agenda.

Here's some additional context that's just as valid as yours: the "rioters" were actually defending the neighborhood from the police who had been there before your context began. The police were beating random people and shooting pets. The person that told me this lives in one of the houses in the video and she's a retired nurse who volunteers to care for hospice patients.

Both your claim and the parent's claim are equally shocking, and the evidence for both is hearsay from someone who lives on the street. How do we know who is being sincere, who is pushing an agenda, who is mistaken, who is experiencing cognitive dissonance, etc.

The history of police being bastards towards protestors? If you think you have no way of establishing priors you aren't examining the facts.

I think there could be an aspect of availability heuristic. You don't watch news of police not acting aggressive towards protestors. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, or doesn't happen even more often than it does. Same with the comment below about why cops aren't speaking up. I've read some articles where they are, but again... it's not going to make news nearly as much as the bad apples do.

This doesn't negate the bad apples and all the bad things that have happened or in any way go against the protests. Just try to be aware when classifying an entire group as bad based hand picked information presented to you.

Of course there is that history. But there are also people who paint the police in an unwarrantedly bad light. People tend to forget that humans are overwhelmingly cooperative and good. Society would not be as stable as it is if people were as consistently bad as some people make them out to be. There are ideologies misrepresenting reality on both sides of this situation. It's so hard to concretely say anything in these situations without examining all the context available.

It’s not a difference of ideologies: one class of people can almost always murder with impunity and the other class of people can’t.

Does that mean we take away the benefit of the doubt for an entire class of people as soon as one person cries foul?

Yes! Now we are making progress.

Police do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, ever, when they are working in their official capacity. They should have to bring proof.

Well, if the police are overwhelmingly good, where are the representatives of the police unions that are condemning the “few bad apples” that are killing unarmed Black people?

Where are all of the “good policemen” who are saying racial profiling during “stop and frisk” is wrong.

If they are complicit and silent they are not “good”.

And I bet you have never been thought of as “suspicious” for walking from your house down the street to your mailbox.

> The police were beating random people and shooting pets.

Well, at least there'll be evidence for that, right? Dead pets?

This doesn't pass the sniff test. If they were rioters, they would likely not be rioting on their own porch. Hence, ordering them to go inside would mean breaking into someone else's house. On the other hand, if they're legitimately on their own proerty, and if they're not being disorderly, then what is the rationale for that use of force?

I hate to say it, but I'm doubting the veracity of this account. There's nothing in the video - trash or debris from a large crowd, in particular - to indicate that the area they were in, specifically, was in need of such force. And, again, the curfew did not forbid being outside on one's own property.

If we're going to second-guess what we see with our own eyes - that these people were shot at by police without provocation - it's perfectly reasonable to then continue to drill down on what happened; question accounts, question logic. Or, we could employ Occam's Razor.

Anyway, as a practical matter we should also be asking for the RUF that these police were operating under. That would clear up a lot.

I’m not disagreeing with anyone about the inappropriateness of the police actions, but the account is not claiming that those shot in the video are rioters. Simply that the police we see were actively clearing rioters from the neighborhood and the porch people were caught up in it.

The alleged presence of rioters in the neighbourhood justifies the police being there in armed convoy through the neighbourhoods. It doesn't justify any of their actions shown in the video, which shows a large section of street with no evidence of rioting and unprovoked fire on people in their gardens to a enthusiastic call to action usually reserved for strikes on military targets.

The area does look remarkably clean to have just had rioters on the street. There’s zero trash or debris on the ground, zero evidence of paint or smoke canister usage anywhere, and all of the houses and cars are immaculate. If there were people on the street prior to these police/soldiers arriving, it’s hard to imagine that they were looting or rioting.

So that makes it a lot better that police made a mistake and did it.....

The assertion that shooting someone on their own porch is wrong doesn't invalidate the claim made by the OP's friend. I completely agree with you that an unnecessary amount of force was used though, to the point where it almost seems criminal.

Where's the actual source? Given that it's using hashtags at the end, it's either a compilation of tweets or a post on some other site.

If the upstairs neighbor didn’t even know there were rioters nearby there weren’t lmao.

Screaming isn’t rioting.

> shooting civilians with paint canisters on their own property

Even if it weren't legal to be outside on your own property from 8p-6a, this isn't proper enforcement of the law.

> Even if it weren't legal to be outside on your own property from 8p-6a

It should always be legal to be outside on your own property. Anything less is unacceptable.

That's because the National Guard isn't law enforcement.

That video wasn't of the national guard it was clearly police of some kind based on the uniforms. Also typically the national guard units they activate for stuff like this are often the MP units so they would be trained on law enforcement specific things. Either way it doesn't excuse or justify that blatant misconduct in the video.

I'm a member of the national guard and I, along with many of my friends, did not sign up to be police officers. That said, in Minnesota they called up every unit it seems. I'd understand civilians to easily confuse police with the military particularly after seeing a Humvee drive by, but if you take a closer look its easy to distinguish.

Also note, we take orders directly from the governor of the state, not the police, nor the president of the US unless activated.

The other thing to think about is, if they activated the entire MN guard, many of these folks are not military police or have received any kind of light MP training. Typically the guard is there to just provide assistance. If they end up doing heavy-duty police work or real riot control, this is how we end up with a kent state type situation--most guardsmen have civilian jobs, so imagine one day your working your IT job, the next day your expected to be a police officer.

What is the National Guard? Voluntary policing of some sort?

The National Guard is effectively the militia of each state. They report to each governor first, and if activated, report to the US military. A traditional guardsman has a civilian job, 9-5 M-F, then one weekend a month 'drills' as a part of the unit. You can get activated, at which point your civilian job has to let you go serve. Most common activations are for statewide disasters--tornados, floods, hurricanes--but most recently medical units were deployed for covid relief. National callups would be to help the us military in Iraq etc., but at all times the guard serves the state first.

worth noting that MN National Guard seems to have replied to this specific video and say that it' is not them.

https://twitter.com/MNNationalGuard/status/12670051854922260...

This doesn't quite disagree with your statement, but I'd like to ensure the correct officers are identified and disciplined.

It's a chaotic situation. They (the police/nat-guard) likely wanted people inside their homes to prevent further chaos and confrontations. It all becomes more volatile if everyone's on their porch, outraged, as the police "parade" comes through.

I know folks on HN like strict interpretations and reasoning of what's legal or illegal, but all of that gets very blurred during a riot when the situation at any given time is on the verge of getting out of control. It just isn't time for a high-school forensics debate when people are in riot gear.

If a group of highly armed police or military are marching through your street and demanding you go inside--- it's probably better to GO INSIDE at least until they're gone.

But again, that’s not the law (the executive order here). They can’t go enforce things not the law. It’s not like there are armed folks running around that street making exigent circumstances. Why do you feel the need to defend something obviously indefensible?

Edit: just to be clear, given all the huff and puff by police of needing riot gear, armored trucks, giant guns, I haven’t seen any report in Minneapolis of any armed protestors or any cops coming under fire. But that doesn’t stop the cops from shooting (less than lethal) rounds.

- There isn't a riot happening there

- shooting people on their porch is the cause of chaos and confrontation you claim police are trying to prevent

- fuck those guys

They were either going to or coming from a riot area.

Their responsibility is to make sure the riot doesn't spread and stop the riot. They can't do that effectively if they have to wade through a massive crowd of onlookers appearing wherever they go. Bad actors easily mix in to situations like this and make the situation extremely dangerous for everyone. If someone doesn't respond to direct commands in such an emergency, they're going to be seen as potential bad actors.

It's totally reasonable to demand that people stay inside their houses while the police are securing the area.

If it was reasonable, it would encoded into the law. It is not for the police to create new laws on the spot, and even if it were, the use of force to enforce it is not reasonable.

Proportionate force is justifiable in an emergency, and we'll see if it is really "against the law" for police to demand that people get inside temporarily.

My guess? Absolutely NOTHING will happen to those police that paintballed the porch gawkers after very clearly telling them to go inside.

Having seen what happened in Baltimore in 2015 and now Philly, I am terrified of the idea of a city going up in flames when a riot gets out of control. It's been too close the times that I've seen it personally. Historically, it has been far worse.

You are absolutely right that none of them will get in trouble. That’s kind of the point of all of this.

The irony, how everyone was howling a out infringements of rights (free speech etc) when youtube banned some right-wing conspiracy theorists, but as soon as we see the most blatant major infringements of rights (shooting at people who have every right to be where they are on their own propert) and the same people find all sorts of ways to make excuses why it's OK.

What's next? Saying that George Floyd was clearly at fault because he was trying to breath, where clearly the officer didn't want him to, so the officers actions were justified?!

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