By Evan Perez and David Shortell, CNN
Updated 10:01 AM ET, Wed June 10, 2020
(CNN)The police chief of Bellevue, Washington, was patrolling downtown on a Sunday afternoon late last month as a crowd of what appeared to be peaceful protesters gathered with signs bearing the name of George Floyd, the black man who had died days earlier at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
Police in the wealthy Seattle suburb had tracked discussion on social media and seen intelligence from federal agencies that gang members known to investigators were planning to descend on the city, so Chief Steve Mylett positioned himself and his department to respond to a possible riot. Over a matter of minutes, and with apparent coordination, the crowd of two dozen swelled to some 300 people, most of whom appeared to have no connection to the protest movement, Mylett said in an interview.
“It was like a tsunami coming at us of people,” he said. “They took over the intersection, they dropped the George Floyd signs, there was no more protesting.”
Scores of businesses were looted and destroyed in the “well-coordinated attack” that night, Mylett said, totaling millions in dollars of stolen property and damages and mirroring scenes of destruction seen nationwide.
For police departments and prosecutors across the country, the thousands of riot-related cases being investigated so far are largely divorced from the politics behind a narrative pushed by President Donald Trump, who along with his top law enforcement leaders has claimed that the violence amid the wave of protests was caused by left-wing extremists alone.
While federal law enforcement officials say intelligence gathered so far in dozens of investigations shows that some of the chaos was fanned or carried out by agitators from a mix of extremists across the ideological spectrum, both left and right, federal and local officials also say that local criminal groups, including gangs and neighborhood crews known for other criminal activity, posed a major part of the disorder.
Continued
Jeff in Charlotte
Article URL : By Evan Perez and David Shortell, CNN Updated 10:01 AM ET, Wed June 10, 2020