A peacekeeper tries and fails to stop a riot
Foresight is in short supply these days, but thousands have seen it in one remarkable oneminute video clip that shows how a peaceful protest slid into a night of destruction this past Saturday.
“Oh, somebody is bustin’ up the cop car,” Lorenzo Rulli says more than two hours into the march through Pittsburgh to protest the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “Nooooooo.”
We can’t see him, but his body camera rushes toward a young, black-clad, white man who is trashing a police vehicle at the foot of the Hill District.
“What did I tell you?” Mr. Rulli says. “It is not black people.”
He and his camera run up behind the guy just after he’d heaved something at a police SUV, already tagged with red graffiti and its windows smashed. When the little vandal turns around, he’s clad head to toe in black: gloves, pants, sneakers, hoodie and a bandanna anyone might buy after an online search for “anarchists bandannas.” Etsy, Zazzle and others sell them for as low as $14.15, echoing the prediction long attributed to Vladimir Lenin that capitalists would sell the rope with which they’d be hanged.
The antifa wannabe, looking about as tough as the third runner-up in a Justin Bieber lookalike contest, flips two birds at a white woman yelling at him to stop. Then he saunters back to the iron fencing surrounding the Church of the Epiphany, picks up a red spray-paint can and puts it back in his backpack to go.
Mr. Rulli, of McKees Rocks, whose legal name is Shawn Green Jr., shows no fear. “Y’all say we are the rioters. Y’all say we are the problem! It’s white people!” And when another partly disguised white clown throws something at the car, our man’s camera turns on him: “You’re not even f—n’ black! Cut that s—t out before you get round-housed, bro!”
For several minutes after that, the video shows protesters white and black surrounding the damaged vehicle, trying to protect it from further damage. But if a butterfly flapping its wings in a meadow can affect the world, so can a trashed police vehicle at the end of a protest march.
After five police officers arrive on horseback to surround the vehicle, the horses and the crowd get skittish. The mounted officers leave and all hell breaks loose. The vandalism crosses racial lines and things get ugly fast. “Don’t record black men!” Mr. Rulli says repeatedly to a swarm of people pointing their phones at the wrecking crew, but he’s helpless to stop the vehicle’s destruction. Before the night is through, that vehicle and an unmarked police vehicle are set afire, Downtown stores are looted, police and journalists are injured, and 44 people are arrested.
Kevin Acklin, the Penguins senior vice president, posted on Facebook that the “violence in Pittsburgh was started when four white men attacked a parked police car and painted an anarchist symbol on the hood, then lit the car on fire and started painting Soviet symbols on walls. A number of black protesters actually tried to stop them from attacking the police car. We watched the whole thing unfold [from inside the PPG Paints Arena]. Don’t be fooled into thinking who was actually responsible for this peaceful protest turning violent.”
After the photo of the Bieber bozo — lifted from this video? — circulated widely, Brian J. Bartels, 20, of Shaler, surrendered to police Monday afternoon. He was charged with criminal mischief, institutional vandalism, rioting and five counts of reckless endangerment of another person. Here’s hoping others accessorize their anarchist regalia with handcuffs soon.
People talk about the fog of war, but a riot also is murky. Authorities first said that a lot of the troublemakers had come from outside Pittsburgh — but they didn’t have to come far. All 45 of those arrested, including
Mr. Bartels, are from Western Pennsylvania and about half are from the city. In another confrontation in East Liberty on Monday night, 22 people were arrested, four of whom have out-of-state addresses.
One of those arrested was Mr. Rulli. In a Facebook post late Tuesday, he said he was arrested in a hospital bed and brought to the Allegheny County Jail. He was charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse, which he disputes. He has been released. I could not reach him for comment Wednesday.
We’ve so lost faith in our institutions that anyone can massage the available evidence to fit any narrative.
Meantime, thousands have seen how he tried to stop scoundrels who had glommed onto a righteous cause to use the anonymity of a crowd for their own ends. Mr. Rulli could have used more allies Saturday.
We’ve so lost faith in our institutions that anyone can massage the available evidence to fit any narrative. Left-wing anarchists, white supremacists, police conspirators and black militants all have been blamed by somebody for trying to start a race war, even as garden-variety crooks use the marches as cover to flat-out steal from small businesses already reeling from the COVID-19 lockdown. Russians, who long have played too many Americans like fiddles on social media, are loving this because they hardly have to touch the strings anymore
President Donald Trump declared in the Rose Garden Monday night that he was “an ally of all peaceful protesters,” even as military police, Secret Service and U.S. Park Police in riot gear used smoke canisters and pepper balls to disperse a peaceful crowd in nearby Lafayette Square. That cleared the way for Mr. Trump to stand in front of an empty church holding a closed Bible. (He’s never been big on opening books.)
The president said if governors and mayors don’t bring out enough force to suit him, he’ll send in the U.S. military over their objections. Thus a nation that began in fear of a large standing army, and still argues whether requiring thin cloth masks during an epidemic is too much of an impingement on freedom, now faces the militarization of our streets by a Republican president who acts as if he never heard of states’ rights.
People say we need better leadership, but we also need more people willing to act while hundreds of others stand by. We can have an interesting discussion about the irony of Mr. Rulli focusing on race during a march against racism. But there was valiance in his political incorrectness. He knew what would happen if the narrative of peaceful protest was snatched away and, I’m guessing, takes no satisfaction in being proven right.