Posted on 08/24/2002 3:59:35 PM PDT by Dialup Llama
Among the cascade of bottles, rocks and bricks that fell in Minneapolis' Jordan neighborhood, two men shepherded people caught up in the melee to safety.
Bus driver James S. Till steered his Metro Transit bus out of the riot when his windows were smashed and passengers injured.
Store owner Abraham Awaijane whisked reporters under attack into his store.
On Friday, upon reflection of the events of Thursday night, both men downplayed their actions.
"I don't think of it as heroic. I was trying to help someone — that's a humane thing," said Awaijane, owner of Big Stop Foods at the corner of 26th and Knox avenues.
Close by, as Till drove his Route 5 bus on 26th Avenue North, people throwing objects broke the windshield and then some side windows. The 12 to 15 passengers on board "hit the deck" as breaking glass fell.
Till blew through a stop sign at 26th and Knox avenues, narrowly missing parked cars and people surrounding the bus. As he drove the passengers — including three who had been injured by glass — to safety, he called the Metro Transit control center to let them know what was happening.
"I had to drive a bit erratically to get everyone out of there," Till said.
Till, who has worked for Metro Transit for two years, was driving the route toward Brookdale when he came upon trouble at about 9:40 p.m.
"Everyone was screaming when the first rock hit," said Till of Inver Grove Heights. "My first response was to see if I had been shot. Everything happened so fast, but I could tell things were getting ugly on the street."
All Till thought about then was getting the passengers to safety. So rather than risk taking side streets, Till proceeded to Lowry and Penn avenues, telling Metro Transit dispatchers to send police there. Two of the injured were treated for minor injuries, a police report said.
"I think instinct was what saved us," said Till, who returned to work Friday. "But to call me a hero? I don't know about that. I guess it's still hard for me to grasp what happened."
Also in the chaos of the night, convenience store owner Awaijane provided a safe haven to two reporters, one of whom had been assaulted by the crowd.
Awaijane spotted the crowd beating Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Howie Padilla, who had been covering the story. With the help of a customer, Awaijane pulled Padilla into his store and locked the doors. Another reporter, Judith Yates Borger of the Pioneer Press, also took shelter in his store.
"Who knows what would have happened? We're just glad that we were around," Awaijane said.
The crowds were held at bay until police officers, some dressed in riot gear, swooped in and rescued the reporters. Awaijane fled shortly afterward. He returned Friday to find three windows had been smashed, and a portion of his roof damaged after Borger's car in his parking lot was torched.
"People blame the police, even though most know that was a drug house," said Greta Johnson, an African- American who has lived in the neighborhood four years.
"I'm not leaving because of some jerks who are passing through," she said of troublemakers from outside.
Neither is Kevin Eggleston, who lives with his mother at 26th Street and Logan Avenue North. Eggleston got a call while on his job as a Minnesota Department of Transportation worker that there was trouble near his home.
When Eggleston, who is black, and a white co-worker went to the home to check on Eggleston's mother, the crowd tried to attack the co-worker because he was white, said Eggleston, who suffered a bruised arm.
"I noticed that there were a lot of strange faces that I know weren't from around here," Eggleston said. "I'm not taking blame totally away from the neighbors, but there were a lot of people here not from the immediate neighborhood. I heard one guy say he came by after he got a call on his pager."
There was also a great deal of sentiment in the neighborhood against perceived outsider Spike Moss, a community activist who escorted seven witnesses to the drug bust to a meeting with city officials Friday.
"He is not the leader of our community," said Johnson. "He is the leader of an angry mob. He doesn't even live in our neighborhood."
Jordan neighbors worry that Moss sends a message that the neighborhood opposes the police in efforts to stop drug traffic in the neighborhood.
"We have to tell drug dealers, 'You can't terrorize our neighborhood,' " said Samuels.
Neighbors say Moss never attends community meetings where constructive measures for improving the neighborhood are discussed.
"He only shows up when there's trouble, and he never shows up when he knows he can't stir things up," McCandless said.
Hot, long summer?
David Brown, left, and Toney Powell on Friday criticize what they say was excessive force by Minneapolis police who shot and killed a pit bull outside their mother's house on 26th Ave in North Minneapolis while serving a warrant Thursday evening. The house has been a repeated target of neighbors' complaints, Minneapolis Police Chief Robert 'Castrada' Olson said. Officers have been called there 13 times and to the nearby intersection 397 times in the past 12 months.
David, Tony... your mom runs a crack house. Essentially this was a riot by a criminal subset who were trying to inimidate the police into declaring the crack house off limits. The pro-crack-dealing riot was couched in the language of protest and of civil rights because that is usually successful in getting the weak kneed city council and boy mayor to back off.
Actually not very long. In a few weeks they'll freeze theirs butts off at that intersection waiting for 'the man.'
Hmmm. Moses sounds a lot like Jesse Jackson, Louise Farrakan and "Reverend" Al Sharpton. Thank goodness the article quoted some caring, non-racist Black people who could peg a con-artist and trouble-maker intent only on causing race-riots which divide the races rather than solve the underlying problems like drug houses and gang activities in the neighborhood.
A recent book about the "underclass" in the U.K. by a psychiatrist contains a series of essays he wrote about the white, underclass of the U.K. What is amazing the characteristics --free floating hostility, unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, virtual 100% welfare dependency and the high crime rates are exactly those of the "underclass" of Minneapolis which is primarily black.
Repeated studies have shown that about 5% of males commit 50% of all property and person crimes. The perpetrators are characterized by low I.Q., early school drop-outs, drug and alcohol abusers and manifest hatred of all authority figures and especially the police.
The problem is more than poverty and more than racial tensions. Seemingly, all Western societies are developing an underclass that seems immune from any kind of positive intervention.
Doesn't the ability to easily obtain 100% welfare dependency cause free floating hostility, unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, and the high crime?
It's the difference between people who have homes and work at jobs and others who work a system. Unfortunately the people who work the system use the language of protest and ethnic resentment to bamboozle the brainless city council into thinking that their sole constituency is not the working people of the city, but those dependent on the dole.
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