A screenshot of a video showing law enforcement officers slashing a car’s tires on May 31, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A week ago,...
A week ago, there were many reports out of Minneapolis that protesters, reporters, and even medics had found that the tires of their cars were slashed at some point during a night of protest. Witnesses said at the time that law enforcement officers had carried out the act. And now there is clear evidence to support that claim. Mother Jones located video footage that shows officers slashing tires at a highway overpass. The officers at the scene appear to be a mixture of state troopers and county police.
The gray car in the video is the one that Luke Mogelson, a writer for The New Yorker, had rented to cover the protests. When the protests last Sunday turned violent as officers fired tear gas on peaceful protesters who were out after curfew, Mogelson went to check on his car. One officer told him he would tell his colleagues that the car was a press car. When he later went to get his car, officers told him about the slashed tires. “They were laughing,” Mogelson told Mother Jones. “They had grins on their faces.”
Mogelson was hardly alone in experiencing the slashed tires. Andrew Kimmel’s video of a walk-around his rental car with all four tires slashed gained lots of traction last week on Twitter. Kimmel at the time assured that police officers had been the culprits. Kimmel had no doubts about the claim, noting that police took over the area after the protests began. “No protester would’ve been able to get in here after that,” he wrote. Far-away video also appeared to show law enforcement officers slashing tires, although it is not as clear as in the video above.
No comments