Outside agitators? Few arrested in Chicago after George Floyd’s death came from elsewhere

Few of those arrested in Chicago during the unrest that followed George Floyd’s death were from out of state, despite the Trump administration’s insistence that outside agitators were to blame for the looting and destruction that followed peaceful protests here and in other cities over police use of force.

That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times examination of detailed data from the Chicago Police Department that showed 1 percent of the 2,511 people arrested for any reason within city limits during the height of the protests and unrest — a total of 40 people — were from out of state.

Just 17 more of those arrested between May 28 and June 5 live in Illinois outside the Chicago area. That’s at least 50 miles from the Loop, where people filled the streets for days after video came out that showed the 46-year-old, handcuffed Black man being held down by a white Minneapolis police officer who kept a knee pressed to his neck for more than eight minutes, even as Floyd gasped and told him he couldn’t breathe.

About three of every four people arrested in that period — 1,847 in all — gave the police Chicago addresses. Another 230 were from the suburbs.

A police spokesman didn’t respond to a question about why no ZIP code was provided in the data obtained under the state’s public records law for the remaining 371, which included juveniles.

Authorities often blame outsiders for unrest, as they did during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, said David Stovall, a professor of African American Studies, Law and Criminology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“When you talk about uprisings, protests, law enforcement likes to use the rhetoric of ‘outside agitators’ to deflect from the issue at home,” Stovall said.

“In every city across the country that has significant populations of Black people, you saw uprisings that had some material damage, and I think this is not this idea of the criminality of Black people but an understanding that, for time immemorial, people have walked these streets and been abjectly disrespected,” Stovall said.

After protests erupted once Americans saw video of the since-fired officer in Minneapolis kneeling on the neck of Floyd, President Donald Trump proclaimed on Twitter that “80% of the RIOTERS in Minneapolis last night were from OUT OF STATE. They are harming businesses (especially African American small businesses), homes, and the community of good, hardworking Minneapolis residents who want peace, equality, and to provide for their families.”

And Attorney General William P. Barr, calling for the FBI to investigate violent protesters he called “domestic terrorists,” said, “Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent and extremist agenda.”

In Chicago, one of those arrested from outside the region attracted an outsize amount of attention. That was a downstate man from Galesburg who was charged with federal crimes in Chicago and also in Minneapolis after posting videos of himself looting, lighting a building on fire and urging others to “start a riot.”

Matthew Rupert, 28, is accused of rioting and handing out explosive devices to others in Minneapolis, urging them to lob them at law enforcement and saying, “I’ve got some bombs if some of you all want to throw them back.”

The following day in Chicago, authorities said a video captured him saying “Let’s start a riot,” and putting items from a convenience store into his backpack.

When Rupert was arrested for violating Chicago’s curfew, the police said they found explosive devices and a hammer.

Last month, police Supt. David Brown said officers had arrested at least one group of agitators from Minneapolis. But he also said: “I’m very aware across the country where there’s been this claim that outsiders are agitating the protests and they’re the people who have done damage. We have others in the neighborhoods that are from Chicago, South Side, West Side, to be quite honest with you that are just displaying criminal behaviors.”

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has said she won’t prosecute many of the misdemeanors issued for disorderly conduct and public demonstration and that her office will review arrests made for breaking the citywide curfew that was in effect between May 30, when the first Chicago protests devolved into looting, and June 6.

A recent Sun-Times analysis of charges related to curfew violations in Chicago found that 75% of those charged are Black. Police records showed that enforcement of the curfew took place almost entirely on the West Side and the South Side.