Kenosha police reported yesterday that nearly 60 percent of those arrested in the Antifa-Black Lives Matter riots since the shooting of sex-assault suspect Jacob Blake are outside agitators.
As well, many are armed, dangerous, drug-addled thugs and criminals such as the three who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who shot and killed two and wounded one on Tuesday.
The report suggests that a well-financed outside army of leftist goons who do not fear arrest or confrontation with the cops has besieged Kenosha.
The Numbers
The release at the Kenosha Police Department’s Twitter feed reported these numbers:
• 20 firearms confiscated and investigations are ongoing;
• Three vehicles towed, all related to criminal investigations;
• 69 arrested for curfew violations;
• 34 people arrested for curfew, plus additional charges such as burglary, carrying concealed weapons, and possession of drugs;
• Total arrested as of yesterday, 175;
• Of the people processed last week, 102 — 58.3 percent of the total — listed addresses from outside of Kenosha;
• Thugs came from 44 cities.
Police have not estimated the damage to city businesses from the deranged rioting.
How It Began
The rioting began after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a black man. Initial video depicted what appeared to be an unjustified shooting; Blake walked quickly away from police around the front of his car and attempted to get in. He appeared to be reaching for something. The officer shot him seven times in the back as he leaned into the car.
Blake is in the hospital, supposedly paralyzed from the waist down.
But that initial video didn’t tell the full story, provide context to the shooting, or explain why cops tried to arrest him.
Riots ensued.
After Marxist radicals from Antifa and Black Lives Matter set the city aflame, subsequent video showed Blake resisting arrest on the passenger side of the car.
As well, he admitted to police that he had a knife in the car; police found it on the floor of the driver’s side.
Beyond that, Blake is a sex-assault suspect, and police had issued a warrant for his arrest on July 7.
The “mostly peaceful protests,” as the leftist media have called the terrorist violence, climaxed on Tuesday with the fatal shootings.
After his shift as a community lifeguard, his attorneys say, Rittenhouse stayed in the city to provide first aid to injured “protesters” and help protect property.
Three leftist goons attacked him. Rittenhouse killed two: sex-offender and sociopath Joseph Rosenbaum and repeat domestic abuser Anthony Huber. He also shot revolutionary thug Gaige Grosskreutz, who ran hither and yon shouting “medic,” as if he were a wounded soldier on a battlefield.
Self Defense
Luckily for Rittenhouse, even the criminal complaint against him suggests he killed the two in self defense and comports with the account from his attorneys as far as the shootings go.
The complaint confirms what multiple videos clearly show: Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz attacked; he fired in self-defense three times.
The complaint does not explain why Rittenhouse was in the city. Unlike the outsiders there to destroy it, Rittenhouse works there as a lifeguard, and the night he was forced to defend himself, was moving about with a first-aid kit to help those injured in the riots.
Rittenhouse turned himself in to police in his hometown of Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles away from Kenosha.
“Kyle is not a racist or a white supremacist,” attorney John Pierce said. “He did nothing wrong.”
Image: P_Wei/iStock/Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
