Over the holiday weekend, vandals in Minnesota caused $35,000 worth of damage to a state park that is closed due to governmental shutdown.
"This is just exactly the type of thing we're going to be seeing repeatedly as the shutdown goes forward," said Steve Morse, former lawmaker and DNR deputy commissioner who is now executive director of the Minnesota Environmental Partnership. "It shows once again how difficult it is to extricate the state from our lives, and the problems that are going to come to light once something like this happens."
-The Star-Tribune
Unfortunately, it wasn't just closed, unstaffed parks that inspired lawlessness over the Independence day weekend.
On Sunday night, a gas station/convenience store in Milwaukee was overrun by a mob shortly before midnight, and minutes later, a mob, possibly the same one, began attacking people in a nearby waterfront park. According to eyewitnesses, the attacks in the park were racially-motivated.
Cops and firefighters in Peoria, Illinois came under attack when they responded to a burning trash bin during a holiday fireworks display in the ghetto. Perhaps it was by a bunch of other city workers who got laid off after a career of paying into their own pension funds...unlike cops and firefighters.
On Monday night, a mob in Philadelphia attacked passengers on a 69th Street-bound El train full of passengers returning home after a fireworks show.
What's worse than a rampaging flash mob?
Gangster's with badges.
On Sunday evening, two officers responded to reports of a drunken man on the platform of the Civic Center station. Exactly what happened is unclear. What we know is that the man had a knife out and was also using a bottle as a weapon; that some sort of confrontation ensued; that, with passengers on the platform, at least one of the officers fired at least three shots; that one of the officers had a Taser but never used it; that the man was shot in the torso from unknown range, and that he's dead.
Chief Kenton Rainey says he doesn't know if deadly force was the only option. But, asked whether the officers followed protocol, he said Sunday morning, "From what I know at this point, yes, I'm comfortable with what has occurred."
-Inside Bay Area
Ummmm, as a frequent BART rider, I'm not at all comfortable with a 2nd BART cop killing in four years.
