Are these Minneapolis viral videos on fire real?

• George Floyd, a 46 year old black American, died after his violent arrest by four police officers from Minneapolis in the United States.
• Protesters protest for the third consecutive night against police violence against the black American community.
• Riots sometimes lead internet users to publish spectacular videos but filmed on other occasions. 20 Minutes takes stock of the videos of the riots circulating on social networks.

For the third consecutive night, the city of Minneapolis, in the north of the United States, is in the grips of riots after the death, on Monday, of George Floyd after a violent police check which turned into drama. The man, a 46-year-old American black man from Houston, was arrested on suspicion of having wanted to forge a counterfeit 20-dollar bill, and was grounded by a police officer, Derek Chauvin, before he was arrested. exerts strong pressure for several minutes with his knee on the victim's neck.

The pleas "I can't breathe!" ”(“ I can't breathe! ”) By George Floyd are today used as a slogan by the demonstrators to denounce the violence and racism of the police in the United States against the black community. According to our colleagues from Le Monde , the police officer, who has since been dismissed by the Municipality of Minneapolis - like his three other colleagues present at the scene - had already been the subject of eighteen complaints related to his violent behavior.

Since then, not a single night has passed without the locals going out to scream their anger and a neighborhood in the north of the city turned into a real blaze on Thursday evening. The police station where the four police officers who participated in the arrest of George Floyd worked was assaulted before being set on fire overnight Thursday to Friday. He had previously been evacuated by the police for security reasons.

Many videos and viral photos circulate on social networks and give a good overview of the almost insurrectionary climate that prevails in this city of 425,000 inhabitants. 20 Minutes decided to analyze two in order to take stock of the situation.

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In a first video, filmed in tracking shot from inside a car, we can see one of the avenues of the city completely ransacked, with in particular many buildings plagued by flames.

To find out if it is indeed Minneapolis, we took some easily identifiable landmarks in the extract posted online, such as this automobile store "O'Reilly Auto Parts" (from 34 '). A simple search in Google Street View is enough to confirm that it is indeed Minneapolis. The store in question is located at 2905 E Lake Street.

Screenshot of Lake Street in Minneapolis. - Screen capture

The video was indeed taken after the death of George Floyd since, when you look closely (at 23 'and 47'), we perceive two tags "RIP GEORGE" ("Rest in peace GEORGE") and "ACAB" ( "All cops are bastards", "All the cops are bastards") on a brown electrical box. We also find this case and several buildings under construction in another tweet published Thursday morning (local time) by MRP News, whose journalist Jon Collins was on site after the riots.

Several buildings are still on fire this morning following last night's protests in Minneapolis. Reporter @jonscollins, from Lake Street this morning, says it's "unbelievable devastation." https://t.co/pssbJ2GTlw pic.twitter.com/FVFNK4DBGc

A burning building collapses near the police station

The second video, longer (9 minutes), is more complicated to analyze since it was taken at night, while the demonstrators and rioters were still on the job. The person filming the scene focuses on a large five-story building on fire.

If the video itself does not allow us to make the link with the Minneapolis riots, other photographs published on Twitter allowed us to know more. This is the case with this photo posted by Rohit Dhir, who specifies that the author of the photo is a certain SMK2.

Photo shot by SMK2 edit by @profnighthawk pic.twitter.com/3peQVTmyi8

"SMK2 is the Minneapolis-based artist who took the photo of the burning apartment that is circulating on the Internet," he said. Indeed, by going to his Twitter account, we see that he posted two photos on Thursday: one taken during the fire, the other when the building is nothing more than a pile of ash, only the ground floor having resisted the fall of four floors from above. At the time of publishing this article, the author of the photographs could not respond to our requests for additional information.

Before / After pic.twitter.com/3qxrNDJZ9b

But here again, a precise analysis of the second photo (the one taken during the day) allowed us to precisely locate the place of the fire. Zooming in, we see that the photo was taken at the corner of "E 29th Street" and "S 26th Avenue". On Google Street View (photo below), the location was captured in June 2019 and the building in question had not yet emerged from the ground.

As our colleagues from the Daily Herald revealed , the building had just been completed when it caught fire on Thursday evening. A photo of the building in flames is also published in the article in question.

29th Street and 26th Avenue crossing in Minneapolis. - Screen capture

National Guard deploys to Minneapolis

By continuing this virtual stroll in the streets of this district of Minneapolis, you will also realize that the burned police station which we told you about at the beginning of the article is located a stone's throw away. The liquor store opposite was also devastated by the flames, as confirmed by the photographs of our AFP colleagues.

#US - Police precinct in flames in US protest over death of black man. #AFP
📸 Kerem Yucell https://t.co/WSgwsavm62 pic.twitter.com/lLDdi8dCBV

In response to events in this area, Minnesota State Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order authorizing the intervention of the National Guard. After first "asking the Minister of Justice, the FBI, to really look into this matter and see what happened", US President Donald Trump reacted on Twitter to the protests in Minneapolis .

"These VOYOUS dishonor the memory of George Floyd, and I will not let that happen. Just speak to Governor Tim Walz and tell him the army is by his side all along. At the slightest problem, when the looting begins, the shooting begins. Thank you ! "He wrote. This post has since been flagged by Twitter for "condoning violence."

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• World
• Police violence
• Society
• Donald trump
• United States
• Fake Off
• riots