It started ominously, as not-so-subtle chatter on small, “underground” sites and forums, all promising – threatening – an awakening for East Bay cities and towns.
That chatter seemed to gain weight around 4:58 p.m. Sunday as carloads of people, most of them masked and hooded, began to arrive in Walnut Creek, walking in groups and against traffic as stunned shoppers gawped in disbelief, the groups coalescing like pools of mercury before spreading out to attack stores and businesses downtown.
Groups of rioter/looters armed with crowbars struck at H&M, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, and several other smaller stores, smashing windows or battering their way inside to loot just about anything they could grab.
Walnut Creek police, which had been monitoring the groups before they came together and engaged in an apparently organized effort to sack local stores, were briefly caught off guard, asking for more officers from surrounding jurisdictions and issuing a call for a 6 p.m. curfew.
Broadway Plaza was hit hard, with groups running at will and striking multiple stores simultaneously, making off with anything they could grab. About an hour into the spree, a car with two men aboard apparently fired shots near the now-closed KoJa Kitchen store on Olympic Boulevard – hitting a woman in the arm before fleeing in the direction of the freeway.
It could not be confirmed at this writing if police were able to find the suspects.
For a brief time residents trapped downtown expressed hope that the rioters would tire and move off, and for a while it appears that groups of them did, hitting businesses in Lafayette, Concord and Pleasant Hill.
At 7:31 p.m., with curfew in effect, police – many in SWAT uniform – had secured much of Broadway Plaza, deploying tear gas as needed and setting up skirmish lines to protect threatened businesses.
But groups of rioters managed to filter back into the area, engaging in a cat-and-mouse game of tag with police and looting at every opportunity.
This is disgusting. When are our worthless politicians going to do something and the help the police to stop this crap. I don’t have any sympathy for them. The leftists doing this are way more racist than any cop. I’ve thought about it for awhile, but now I am going to get a gun to protect myself from these vermin and other criminals
“Them” and “leftists” is a little vague. Similarly, “help the police stop this crap” is unclear since police officers murdered a man in Minnesota over an alleged $20 fraud, and that is what made “them” so mad. I think we can agree, as Americans, that we do not like to think of ourselves as looters by nature. So, if we are to ask a serious question, an honest question, we have to ask ourselves how are we in the same position now as we were in the 60’s? Why is this still no closer to a solution?
Also, “leftist” rabble rousers misses the mark entirely. It is the Boogaloo Boys and other race war enthusiasts who are most tumescent about current events.
We’d actually made great progress in race relations and equality since the 50s and 60s. But it began to degenerate a bit when President Obama seemed to insist on opening up some wounds that had healed.
And Obama wasn’t even born in the United States, right? That’s what President Trump said, don’t you agree?
I assume you are joking. Obama’s birth certificate was shown many years ago. I would love to our Presidents college records and his tax filings. Now that would be something to see.
What do you think of Trump’s effect on race relations?
Never lived in the South, have you?
Obama was trying to bring people closer together and we was successful to a degree. Clearly this is such a huge and deep issue that one man in 4 years can’t cure it. That said, one man in 4 years has certainly made it it so much worse!!! This clearly a lack of leadership of the current administration and more importantly Trump’s support of white supremacy.
Obama was in office 8 years. With his reflexive anti-police rhetoric (“I don’t have all the facts, but its clear the police acted stupidly”), it was open season on police. He made many things about race.
President Trump achieved the lowest black unemployment rate ever; signed prison reform; funded Historically Black Colleges; and established Enterprise Zones.
We’ve made massive progress. But Democrats have failed urban America, and liberal policies destroyed the Black family.
Where is the National Guard?
Which businesses did the degenerate horde hit in Lafayette? I took my evening constitutional downtown around sunset and saw no sign of trouble.
There was a snatch-and-grab incident at Safeway, but it did not appear connected to the swarm assaults in Walnut Creek.
You cannot have a civil, rational conversation with people that blame Obama for the racial divide in this country, or equate “leftists” with hateful white supremacists.
100%
This was not leftism. It wasn’t about race either. It was about greed and theft. It was an invasion, enabled by flash mob tools like Twitter and Facebook.
Evil people can trigger the flash mob from the safety of their keyboards, then watch in glee as others are beaten or killed. That kind of incitement, cleverly worded, isn’t even illegal. It makes me sick.
Can someone please unmask the people who promoted last night’s mayhem? They need to face public scorn from, among others, Black Lives Matter, who I’m sure hates this turn of events.
Absolutely.
pathetic
Funny, Trump didn’t threaten to send in the national guard when a large and angry group of armed, white dudes stormed and occupied the Michigan state capitol. Oh wait… He encouraged them!
And they didn’t mess up a hair on anyones head. A little hard to say that about this bunch ….no?