The guys with the molotov cocktails, are white supremacists. Umbrella guy in Minneapolis - the white guy with the umbrella who was using the sharp end of the umbrella to break store windows, and then would come back a short time later - was tackled and helf by protestors - was a white nationist. He was targetting popular black owned businesses. These guys went for the black owned businesses first, so that when this is over, black business owners will be out of business.
Did they catch and identify the Umbrella guy? What white nationalist outfit does he belong to? Or is this just hopeful speculation on your part?
A new an association of a new chapter of the Aryan and a hell's angel. They might not have caught him yet.
www.startribune.com
TWITTER/JAVIER MORILLO
A still from a video shows a man with an umbrella and gas mask breaking windows at the AutoZone on Lake Street during protests in the wake of George Floyd's death. (Twitter/Javier Morillo)
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A masked man who was
seen in a viral video smashing the windows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store during the George Floyd protests, earning him the moniker "Umbrella Man," is suspected of ties with a white supremacist group and sought to incite racial tension, police said.
A Minneapolis police arson investigator said the act of vandalism at the AutoZone on E. Lake Street helped spark a chain reaction that led to days of looting and rioting. The store was among dozens of buildings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed.
"This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city," Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search warrant affidavit filed in court this week. "Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling 'Umbrella Man,' the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual's sole aim was to incite violence."
Police identified "Umbrella Man" thanks to a tip that came via e-mail last week, Christensen said.
The Star Tribune could not independently verify the police account, which has so far only surfaced in the search warrant, and isn't naming the man because so far he has not been charged with a crime. The man, who has a criminal history that includes convictions of domestic violence and assault, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Spokespersons for the Minneapolis Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is also involved in the investigation, declined to comment.
Floyd's death under the knee of a since-fired police officer set off protests that spread around the world and stirred widespread reckoning over racial injustice. Derek Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, and three of his former colleagues also at the scene, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin.
MARK VANCLEAVE, STAR TRIBUNE
Rioters set fire to the AutoZone near Lake Street and 27th Ave. S. on May 27.
At least two people died in the subsequent riots, which eventually spread as far as north Minneapolis and South St. Paul, and caused roughly $500 million in damage. Authorities have since charged a handful of people with arson-related crimes.
A widely shared livestream video from May 27 — two days after Floyd's death — showed the man walking casually along the front of the former site of AutoZone at E. Lake Street and Minnehaha, breaking out its windows with a 4-pound sledgehammer, prompting some protesters to confront him and demand that he stop. Before that, police say, the man, clad head to toe in black and carrying a black umbrella, had spray-painted "free [expletive] for everyone zone" on the double front doors.
At the time, activists seized on the footage as proof that outside "provocateurs" were trying to derail what had been a mostly peaceful demonstration. But others on social media pointed out that at least some looting had gone on before the video surfaced.
Christensen wrote in the affidavit that she watched "innumerable hours" of videos on social media platforms to try to identify "Umbrella Man," to no avail. Investigators finally caught a break when a tipster e-mailed the MPD identifying him as a member of the Hells Angels biker gang who "wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors," she wrote.
Police have also connected the 32-year-old man to a
widely publicized incident in Stillwater late last month, in which a Muslim woman was confronted by men wearing white supremacist garb.
A subsequent investigation revealed the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky. Several of its members were also present at the Stillwater incident.
Andy Shoemaker, a former St. Paul police officer who has investigated criminal motorcycle gangs, said the Aryan Cowboys are relatively new with loyalties to the Hells Angels, who operate across the state.
"They're another group that's basically a farm system, a minor league for the Hells Angels," he said, adding the Angels occasionally recruit members from some of these offshoot clubs.