Seriously, who saw this coming? Well, pretty much everyone, since the mayor of Raleigh declared a 10pm curfew for Friday and Saturday nights, interfering with the rights of law abiding citizens who weren’t going to be involved
Protesters gathered in downtown Raleigh on Friday night to speak out against police shootings and violence. Overnight, 14 people were arrested for violating a curfew and one person was arrested for assault on a law enforcement officer.
The protests started out peaceful, but as the night went on, people vandalized a memorial and a Wake County government building. People smashed the windows of the Wake County Justice Center, threw red paint on the building and sprayed graffiti. A memorial to fallen deputies was also vandalized in protest against the police.
The protests began escalating at about 9 p.m., when people pulled down barricades that had been put up outside the Wake County Justice Center and threw them in nearby bushes and streets. After that, according to Raleigh police, someone started a fire in the middle of Salisbury Street and set off fireworks.
At around 9:45 p.m., Raleigh police tweeted that the protest was “no longer peaceful.”  The vandalism at the Wake County building occurred right around 10 p.m.,  and Raleigh police started ordering the crowd to disperse as the curfew approached.
Some people also burned an American flag early on. Because reasons, you know. And because a whole bunch of young, lily white liberals who should be in college classes are playing at being revolutionaries. Of the 14 arrested, only 4 were black, as you can see at the link.
“The thing that concerns us as law enforcement are those individuals who blend into the peaceful protests and marches and their sole intent and their sole purpose is to come down and cause damage and be unlawful,” Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker said.
There were reports, unconfirmed, of big bricks being present. And reports from the police of frozen bottles being handed out, which wisely were not thrown, either at officers or thru windows.
Waiting for @WRAL , @ABC11_WTVD , and @WNCN to note the lack of social distancing.
Oh, and the burning of an American flag https://t.co/JaMeZSr5X4
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) August 29, 2020
None of the stations mentioned that lack of social distancing in their reports (WRAL’s is the one I am using), nor did the News and Observer. And it is a pretty darned white crowd, eh?
A look at some of the vandalism at the Wake County Jail in Downtown Raleigh. #ABC11 pic.twitter.com/gzFRtZQAnp
— Elaina Athans (@ElainaAthans1) August 29, 2020
In all fairness, it wasn’t as bad is it could have been. We’re no Minneapolis, Oakland, Portland, or Seattle.
