THE WAR ON CIVILIANS:

Boosted by a massive presence of National Guard officers, state troopers and even conservation cops who flooded the zone at the orders of Minnesota's supposedly liberal Democratic governor Tim Walz, soldiers and officers dressed in robocop gear thundered down suburban streets in military cruisers. They set early curfew hours for local residents determined to air their grievances no matter what, then fired tear gas and painful projectiles from behind a chain-link fence at anyone who wouldn't go home. Predictably, the cycle of violence escalated, but the police response soon went far beyond the handful of lawbreakers to assault peaceful protesters -- and those who just got in the way, including the kids in a nearby apartment complex gagging on tear gas.

Their "thin blue line" was especially brutal toward journalists seeking to exercise their 1st Amendment rights and document what police were doing in our name. Even after a federal judge in Minnesota took the extraordinary step of issuing a temporary restraining order telling state troopers (but, weirdly, not local cops or the National Guard) to stop arresting or dispersing working reporters and photographers, officers in Brooklyn Center have been wilding against the media -- epitomized by the pepper spraying of a French journalist in a yellow "PRESS" vest and her heavily equipped photographer.

A video journalist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mark Vancleave, tweeted that he won't be able to work for weeks after a police rubber bullet shattered his ring finger, requiring surgery. Despite the restraining order, Minnesota state troopers in Brooklyn Center on Friday night rounded up journalists, forced them onto their stomachs, and photographed them and their credentials before letting them go. A attorney hired by news organizations on the ground documented a stunning series of 1st Amendment abuses.

These included the arrest of an Asian-American CNN producer, Carolyn Sung, who despite her press credentials was painfully zip-tied and hauled off to jail, with a cop screaming, "Do you speak English?!" -- her primary language. One New York Times reporter was dragged out of his car after officers pounded it with wooden sticks. Another Times journalist was grabbed by an officer who pulled him behind police lines and took his phone. When he dared to ask why, the officer responded "because that's our strategy now."

Indeed. It was almost like the cops on the ground in Brooklyn Center were engaged in a race to the bottom to see how many constitutional rights they could violate in just one week. 

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