Records show few signs of radical ties in protests
WASHINGTON — Scott Nichols, a balloon artist, was riding home on his scooter from the protests engulfing Minneapolis last weekend when he was struck by a rubber bullet fired from a cluster of police officers in riot gear.
“I just pulled over and put my hands up because I didn’t want to get killed,” said Nichols, 40. “Anybody that knows me knows I wasn’t out there to cause problems.”
Nichols, who before the coronavirus pandemic made his living performing at children’s birthday parties under the stage name “Amazing Scott,” spent two days in jail before being released on criminal charges of riot and curfew violation.
President Donald Trump has characterized those clashing with law enforcement authorities, rioting and looting after George Floyd’s death as organized, radical-left thugs engaging in domestic terrorism, an assertion repeated by Attorney General William Barr.
Some Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, initially sought to blame out-of-state far-right infiltrators for the unrest before walking back those statements.
The Associated Press analyzed court records, employment histories, social media posts and other sources of information for 217 people arrested last weekend in Minneapolis
and the District of Columbia, two cities at the epicenter of the protests.
Rather than outside agitators, more than 85% of those arrested by police were local residents. Of those charged with such offenses as curfew violations, rioting and failure to obey law enforcement, only a handful appeared to have any affiliation with organized groups.
Those charged with more serious offenses related to looting and property destruction — such as arson, burglary and theft — often had past criminal records but were overwhelmingly residents taking advantage of the chaos.
The president has sought to paint the protesters and looters with a broad brush as “radical-left, bad people” — invoking the name “Antifa,” an umbrella term for leftist militants, as the source of the trouble. Trump said he planned to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.
Barr, in charge of organizing the police and military response, echoed the president. “The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,” Barr said.
There have been violent acts, including property destruction and theft. Police officers and protesters have been seriously injured, and some have been killed. But federal law enforcement officials have offered little evidence that Antifa-aligned protesters are behind a nationwide protest movement.
The AP obtained copies of daily confidential “Intelligence Notes” distributed last week to local law enforcement agencies by the Department of Homeland Security that repeat, without citing evidence, that “organized violent opportunists — including suspected anarchist extremists — could increasingly perpetrate nationwide targeting of law enforcement and critical infrastructure.”
But the note for Monday acknowledges that the department lacked “detailed reporting indicating the level of organization and planning by some violent opportunists and assess that most of the violence to date has been loosely organized.”
Nichols hardly fits the portrait of a radical. He laughed when asked if he had any ties to Antifa or other militant groups. A white man, Nichols said he protested in support of his neighbors, many of whom are black.
“The city was going crazy,” he said.
Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said people often travel and cross state lines to participate in protests and that not all of them have peaceful intent. He said politicians and law enforcement officials often cite the presence of out-oftowners to justify greater police force.
University of Minnesota Law School student Santana Boulton, 23, said a police officer pepper-sprayed her in the face on May 28 before she was tear-gassed two days later and then arrested last Sunday, charged with unlawful assembly and violating a curfew.
“It was nothing like a riot.
It was a sit-in,” she said.
Boulton, a white woman who moved to Minneapolis from Michigan to attend law school, was arrested and spent 16 hours in custody. She described herself as “philosophically an anarchist,” but “not a revolutionary.”
“Antifa isn’t even real,” Boulton said. “As an actual person who identifies with the political label of anarchist, the only thing anarchists do is have meetings where they argue for five hours and get nothing done.”
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Kunzelman, Jake Bleiberg, Alanna Durkin Richer, Brian Slodysko, Ashraf Khalil, Amanda Seitz, Don Babwin and Lori Hinnant of The Associated Press.