Horowitz: Minneapolis City Council votes to pay BLM rioters who almost lynched a motorist for ‘excessive’ police force

The Black Lives Matter riots were spawned by the excessive use of force on George Floyd by one Minneapolis cop. But nobody in their right mind would suggest police used excessive force in the aftermath of the incident. As a peace offering to BLM, the Minneapolis police sacrificed the entire city for weeks on end, including allowing rioters to vandalize 1,500 buildings, destroy 700 buildings, block streets and terrorize motorists with impunity, and even burn the third precinct police station to the ground with no resistance.

In fact, they barely defended their own lives, as many of them were injured. One was knocked out with a metal trash can lid, and the perpetrator, Brayshaun Gibson, didn’t serve a day in prison. The plea deal, which resulted in just one year of home detention, also dismissed charges that Gibson allegedly threw large rocks at a police car and for a separate crime in which he was accused of stealing from Home Depot at least 10 times and up to 194 times.

Contrast that to Matthew Bledsoe, who had no other criminal arrests but was sentenced to four years in prison after spending 22 minutes in a public building committing no act of violence on January 6 after the cops let him and others in the doors. Anyone who was accused of even minor physical contact against a cop on January 6 was held pretrial indefinitely. Cops in Minneapolis, on the other hand, were fair game.

Nonetheless, the Minneapolis City Council just voted unanimously to pay 12 rioters $700,000 for being sprayed with pepper spray. These individuals were part of a massive mob that illegally shut down I-35 on a west-side bridge on May 31, 2020, and then surrounded a trucker and almost lynched him. Police were saving the life of the trucker and obviously used riot control techniques to disperse the crowd. But in the world of Sodom and Gomorrah, otherwise known as “Minnesota nice,” these rioters and lynchers are victims.

What has essentially been codified into criminal law in this country is that acts of violence in pursuit of the woke agenda are protected speech, while speech and advocacy or nonviolent acts of conservative activism are deemed violent felonies. It was striking watching Whoopi Goldberg during her debate with Senator Ted Cruz when he brought up the violence of Antifa after she asserted that the left doesn’t “storm” or commit violence. She looked at him like he was from Mars and said flatly, “I don’t know what an Antifa riot is.”

Ted Cruz CALLS OUT Whoopi Goldberg On The Viewwww.youtube.com

While most people probably thought she was bluffing, I genuinely think she was serious. In her mind, nothing the leftist rioters did is tantamount to violence because it was all done for the right purpose. In fact, we should be lucky all white people weren’t locked up and beaten out of their cars in pursuit of “justice for Floyd.” It would be one thing if this demonic worldview were limited to hack has-been TV personalities past their prime, but this is the sentiment of elected officials and judges.

Remember when a Minnesota federal judge, Patrick Schiltz, described Michael Bryce Williams, the leader of the attack on the police station, as a "good person who made a terrible mistake"? Noting that it’s "easy to understand" why the killing of George Floyd had affected Williams, Judge Schiltz sentenced Williams to just 27 months in prison.

Contrast this to Matthew Bledsoe, who was just sentenced to four full years for scaling the wall of the Capitol, entering the building for 22 minutes, and shouting, "This is our house. We pay for this s***. Where’s those pieces of s*** at?" He didn’t burn, break, or steal anything. The judge didn’t sympathize with his grievance and note that he never had a criminal record and just made a mistake that day. "I do view this as a very serious case, and you are facing serious prison time," said Judge Beryl Howell in rebuffing Bledsoe’s apology on sentencing day.

And speaking about a fundamentally good person who made a mistake – what about the case of Ryan Nichols? He is charged with assaulting a police officer for having a crowbar and discharging a pepper spray can in defense of innocent people being pepper-sprayed, but there is no evidence he did anything with it. The charging documents make it clear that he wasn’t even apprehended on the spot and was only caught through Facebook snitches placing him in the Capitol. He didn’t break anything or harm anyone, yet the entire arrest was built upon his political views and things he said.

Remember the suspect who got home detention for knocking out the Minneapolis officer? Nichols has been in jail for almost two years pretrial and is facing potentially more than a decade in prison. Nichols is a veteran of the Marine Corps who spent his time rescuing people and dogs from hurricanes. He is a search and rescue specialist helping people before first responders can come to the scene of a natural disaster. He appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ show, and she was so moved by his work that she offered to pay for his honeymoon with his new wife. Instead, Ryan and his wife decided to use the money to buy a rescue boat.

He certainly made a mistake, but how do you square his treatment with that of Michael Bryce Williams or Brayshaun Gibson, neither of whom lived as honorable a life, for knocking out an officer or burning down a police station?

Remember Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office? Nobody will suggest he didn’t do anything wrong, but contrast that to the overtly violent and destructive acts of so many throughout the BLM/Antifa riots who never faced any punishment. This man was held pretrial without bail for four months!

Then there were the peaceful protesters at the Capitol who were merely singing “God Bless America” and had no clue what was about to unfold. They were legitimately beaten and pepper-sprayed by the police for no reason.

Can you imagine the federal government or D.C. government settling with them to pay for injury? And unlike the people blocking an interstate highway, they had the right to protest there.