Thread by @keikoinboston

Just tuned in to the Minneapolis/St. Paul police dispatch scanner.

- Helicopter launched.
- Looters in a CVS. REACT team going in to clear.

broadcastify.com/listen/mid/46

I’ve been doing a mix of adding to this thread I started earlier today and retweeting tweets. The earlier thread was meant to be a 2nd update thread so I don’t want to clutter it with news about the unrest tonight.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1400549982734852101

Not sure how long I’m going to stay up but I’ll add tweets about tonight’s unrest in Minneapolis here.

I’m so sorry for those of you who live in the region. ☹️ Stay safe.

Per scanner: Cub has armed security tonight so they probably won’t have any looting there.

Scanner traffic is often unintelligible due to static, background noise, and not being familiar with names/locations, but what I’m getting is that there is looting at multiple locations in Minneapolis besides the CVS mentioned upthread.

- REACT team back at CVS. Looting over.

4 large windows are smashed out and need boarding up.

- Target was also hit by looters. Windows are smashed but intact but 2nd officer just radioed for one board there.

Arrests of a large group on the south side of Lake St. happening now. #Minneapolis

While I’ve been listening there have been multiple reports of shots fired but I don’t know my Minneapolis geography well enough to know if these are in the vicinity of unrest or unrelated.

There were 84 homicides in Minneapolis last year. As of the end of the year, half remained unsolved.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1396992275784339458

Air quality alert issued for east-central Minnesota which includes the Twin Cities metro area (Minneapolis & St. Paul). The fires tonight are not going to help.

https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/1400685998548336642

Scanner: Group with full face masks discussing hitting a T-Mobile sore because police are pulling out. #Minneapolis

https://twitter.com/TCReporter/status/1400690150405980162

Scanner: Group of 20 teens smashing windows at Target. #Minneapolis

Listening to police scanner traffic is so sad. In addition to the unrest and looting there are the usual domestic calls, possibly suicidal folks, drug use, assaults, and shots fired. 😔

Scanner: People trying to breaking the STUDIIYO23 building in Uptown.

studiiyo23.com

Scanner:

- Alarm at Walgreens on Hennepin.

- Report of 2 teen males trying to break into cars who were scared off by the person who called it in.

People are circulating the name of a man who was supposedly the suspect that law enforcement shot in Minneapolis yesterday as well as what looks to me to be some amount of misinformation. I will not be sharing his name until it’s been confirmed by authorities.

Please consider not sharing social media posts from random accounts (or even high profile ones) with unverified information. Some of what I'm seeing aout the supposed suspect amounts to this.

Scanner: Seem like someone is bleeding from the head at Target. 😟

Scanner: Vehicle rammed a squad car. #Minneapolis

Vehicle with stolen plates took off. Had heavy front end damage, said to be on 2 tires, won’t get far.

Scanner: Hennepin Lake Liquors being broken into. 3 shots fired. #Minneapolis

They are family-owned and operated and were hit in last year’s riots.

hennepinlakeliquors.com/about-us/

https://twitter.com/PaulBlume_FOX9/status/1265937836932567041

It’s hard enough to run a small business and then to have the pandemic and rioting/looting 3x in ~1 year?

The crime spree after Daunte Wright’s shooting was said to be opportunistic and unrelated to the unrest in Brooklyn Center.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1383237005169942536

But it doesn’t really matter to businesses whether they were hit by people angry about injustice or by opportunistic criminals. They still have a lost of inventory and have to pick up the pieces of damage to their building and fixtures.

Wow, heard on scanner a few minutes ago that someone “was shot in the no-go zone”. Victim relocated to 37th & Columbus which is 0.2mi away from George Floyd Square.

There have been reports of victims who live within the area around George Floyd Square being unable to get help from police and EMS because they won’t go into the area. This happened to at least 2 domestic assault victims.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1396992331287515139

I’ve been monitoring tweets as well and I’m very surprised that it doesn’t appear that there are any local TV/radio/newspaper reporters out in Minneapolis tonight. Possible I’m just not finding their tweets? But last year and after the Daunte Wright shooting they were out there.

Some of these local outlets were on scene near the officer-involved shooting in Uptown and at the failed George Floyd Square reopening so they should have been able to forsee that after nightfall there would be more unrest and looting. Where are they?

The only folks I’m seeing on the ground seem to be indie journalists — videographers and streamers on both the left and the right.

Umm, male caller reports that he got a call from a woman she knows that she’s going to go kill his whole family. Her location is unknown. 😳

Scanner: Sounds like they’re getting the helicopter and going to try to make arrests of a large group causing trouble on Lake St. #Minneapolis

Scanner: Several people in Walgreens again.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1400696472228802561

When pharmacies are looted and vandalized, people can’t their prescriptions and OTC meds because they have to be closed for repairs and restocking.

Lloyd’s Pharmacy, a compounding pharmacy, had one of their locations completely destroyed last year. They are still rebuilding.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1399181901676568581

Scanner: Board up crew is at Target. They need police assistance and then they’ll head back to CVS. #Minneapolis

I’ve lost track of the number of shots fired reports I’ve heard tonight. I’m told by a local that this is common in South Minneapolis.

Scanner: 2 men just broke into an Enterprise Rental location.

Scanner: People breaking into a Spyhouse Coffee Roasters on Hennepin. They are a local business with 5 cafes.

spyhousecoffee.com/pages/about

Last year the owner offered to sell the business to employees and turn it into a worker co-op. Unclear if it went thru.

startribune.com/spyhouse-coffe…

People who try to defend looters sometimes claim that it’s fine since they’re often hitting big box stores who are insured and have deep pockets but some looters don’t care if you’re a local small business with lefty politics.

They also don’t care if you're minority-owned.

Last year’s riots hit "immigrant-heavy business corridors" in St. Paul & Minneapolis. They sustained ~$500m out of the ~$700m in damage.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1399181852527763458

The people who've been harmed the most in the past year due to business/economic damage and a rise in crime have been people of color.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1396992235753910275

I’m going to call it a night.

Scanner traffic has slowed down.

Most reports now don’t sound like they’re related to the unrest and looting although they’ve been wrapping things up—taking people in to be booked and boarding up vandalized stores.

Some of the calls unrelated to the unrest:

- Woman confronting a man she was accusing of luring girls demanding that he come out of his apt.

- Mother with paralyzed wheelchair-bound son who said someone stuck him with a needle. Requesting transport to hospital.

- Running gunfight between occupants of 2 vehicles who were driving down the street shooting at each other like it was the Wild West.

Reform is absolutely needed and it’s possible that some of these calls should be off-loaded to social workers or other non-law enforcement workers.

But the level of chaos I heard tonight, even excluding the calls related to the unrest, is not something you fix with no police.

You can’t send unarmed violence interrupters and social workers into a situation where people are driving down the street shooting at each other or to apprehend a potentially violent sex offender. The role for those folks is -before- it gets to this point.

Here’s why a group of residents from the Jordan & Hawthorne neighborhoods are suing the city for more police. Not sure how representative they are because some residents are certainly looking to defund/abolish.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1396997737854480388

People deserve to feel safe in their own homes. Unfortunately they don’t agree on how best to accomplish that in Minneapolis or anywhere else that’s having this same fight.

Update:

List of businesses looted/vandalized in this thread. Includes addresses. I mentioned some up thread but missed a few.

https://twitter.com/MN_CRIME/status/1400730863243911172

If you’d like to listen to live scanner feeds in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area you can find them here.
broadcastify.com/listen/mid/46

This thread has been from reports on the "Minneapolis / St. Paul Police Dispatch” (scroll down to find or search page).