I had one of those OMG moments when I rolled out of bed the morning of June 25th, 2012 to find every news outlet reporting about the shootings that took place in downtown Minneapolis after bar closing last night. 
My little old fingers could not hit my keyboard fast enough to compare how each news outlet was telling the story. Except for the different name attached to the reporter, most told it the same way. I swear they must get their information by playing telephone or communicating threw tin cans.
By noon WCCO had done such a dramatic hack job of editing its original report from the morning broadcast it was disgusting.
It seems City Pages pays some sandbagger reporter named Aron Rupar to use other news outlets for his reports such as WCCO in this case. The problem with this type of reporting from Rupar and many news outlets is when not on the scene do they know what really happened, and may not even know if what they are reporting is actually true?
I can tell you from being on the scene when the gunfire erupted that the turn of events being reported do not seem to add up to me.
My purpose for being downtown was to see if Mel Reeves who helped lead a rally early Friday evening against police brutality and others that had been in attendance would be present at bar closing time monitoring events while standing together in unity to show this bad behavior being done by police upon the black community was no longer going to be tolerated. Needless to say, I was the only one who seemed to be present.
The crowd seemed thin on the streets compared to past Sunday’s even though it was the ending of Pride Weekend.
I stood across the street from Aqua nightclub at closing time when two girls seemed to be sissy fighting in the street, and I mean really doing pretty much nothing. The Calvary rode in (mounted MPD) and it was not enough to just break these two young ladies up, but the mounted PoPo’s separated and chased them all over the place until they were put in handcuffs. Ridiculous…
It was while they were being handcuffed that the night air was shattered with the sound of many consecutive gunshots being fired. Absolutely every cop went into Dirty Harry mode, except unlike Clint Eastwood many seemed panicked as they pulled out the best of the best artillery.
Being as none of us knew what direction the shots were being fired, some of us started running towards the corner of the Gay 90’s. The 90’s patio was full and many did not even know what had happened. Things were crazy on the street.
I think the actions of the police seemed to create more chaos then needed. They were running all over the place chasing black men down who would immediately throw there hands up in the air. I could not figure out why this was going on.
According to news reports stray bullets went into the crowd of the Gay 90’s hitting three people. I am not sure about the bullets going into the crowd as one of the victims was laying face down on the sidewalk across the street from the 90’s. It seemed to take forever for the ambulance to show up and take this victim to the hospital.
Where the second victim was shot and when he was taken to the hospital I could not tell you, as I did not see that person.
The third victim who was grazed by a bullet was standing right next me. I watched him holding his arm when he decided to look down to where it seemed to be hurting and he, as I noticed blood starting to soak through the sleeve of his white t-shirt. He pulled up the sleeve to find a hole that was oozing blood. For a bullet graze that bitch was deep.
Another guy standing there said “man you need to get that looked at.” I told him he needed to tell one of the police officers. He stood there holding his arm periodically looking at the wound. The dude who told him to get it looked at went up to a police officer and told him that this guy had been shot. The cop did nothing, know one came to talk or offer any help to this man. No wonder the poor guy went home, then decided to take himself to the hospital. They blew him off at the scene of the crime.
Now come to find out the police shot a fourth person who was one of the suspects. I question just how that all went down so fast and how he got shot across the street from Sex World on 2nd and Washington Avenue?
So many shots were fired, and so many cops had guns I am curious as to who just might have been doing all the shooting? Just asking…..
Another question I have is if one, of the two suspects was shot down by Sex World, then I am curious whom the two people were that they arrested shortly after the incident and put into the squad car? One man had a dark shirt on, and another guy was shirtless with many tattoos. Both men were handcuffed.
As things started to quite down, the mounted police kicked back into action by riding those horses towards the crowd of African Americans that had gathered at the scene to move us along. We were all trying to safely keep moving as the horses kept getting closer and closer to our bodies. I then heard a man behind me say that he could not believe that he had turned around to find a horse in his face and that he was shocked that this was happening. I turned to look at what was a white man and stated “Welcome to Sunday nights in Downtown Minneapolis.”
http://www.kare11.com/news/article/980701/391/4-shot-after-argument-leads-to-gunfire-in-Mpls-
http://kstp.com/news/stories/S2667523.shtml?cat=1
http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/160226305.html
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