#NoDAPL: Scenes From a Riot

As I write this North Dakota law enforcement is, once again, in a stand off with unlawful #NoDAPL protesters. This time they’ve tried to build a bridge across a creek to access private land that’s on the Cannon Ball Ranch, and they’re also trespassing on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land.

According to a press release from Morton County, the Corps have given state authorities permission to remove the protesters from Corps land and arrest them for trespassing.

Meanwhile, photos and video from last week’s riot continue to trickle out form law enforcement sources. There’s a lot, I’m dumping most of it into this publicly-available Google Drive folder for anyone who cares to take a look. There are videos and pictures in no particular order. I think the file names generally give you a pretty good sense of what each is.

Here are some of the important photos and clips I saw.

First, there are a lot of photos of the roadblock and trespass camp that was cleared by law enforcement which show a lot of trash and serious damage to the land. Curious things for a group of people who have us believe they’re protecting the environment:

Law enforcement is returning all this stuff to protesters today:

Also, we have some more video from the incident involving #DAPL security worker Kyle Thompson. You’ll remember that he was the man seen with a rifle at the riot, being chased by protesters, who was initially taken into custody. Officials concluded earlier this week, after an investigation, that he was actually the victim.

He said in a Facebook post that he had been taking pictures of construction equipment which had been torched by the protesters and, while trying to leave the area, was run off the road by protesters who went so far as to crash a car into his truck.

This video shows his white truck first taking to the ditch to get away from protesters, then being chased by other vehicles and ultimately driven into the ditch:

Here’s how the latter part of the above video looked from the ground:

Later the truck was apparently moved and used as a burning road block:

If you’re noticing a discrepancy in the dates on the video, Morton County says it was because the proper date wasn’t set. “The digital recorder for the FLIR that allowed us to live stream was installed on the 26th,” Donnell Preskey said in an emailed release. “The [Highway Patrol] pilot failed to set the correct date on the new recorder. The green date/time stamp is accurate.”

Here’s another interesting video, this one of protesters on horseback herding a group of buffalo toward the riot:

There was a lot of nonsense in the immediate aftermath of the riot about a herd of buffalo appearing, with some claiming it was a sort of mystical sign of nature’s solidarity with the Native American protesters. Except, as the video shows, it wasn’t so mystical. People ranch buffalo in that area, and a herd of them were driven by real people toward the protest.

It was quite dangerous. ND Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Iverson told me earlier this week (audio here) that it was only through the intervention of a law enforcement helicopter that the buffalo didn’t stampede both law enforcement an other protesters.

Anyway, contrast the video above with how Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chairman David Archambault described the riot in a press release to the media. He accused law enforcement of using “acts of violence against innocent, prayerful people.”

I’m not sure running cars off the road and setting them on fire is prayerful. I don’t think throwing bombs at cops is peaceful.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has said in an interview that he’d like to let this situation – which has resulted in over 400 arrests, including one for attempted murder, as well as millions of dollars in state law enforcement costs and property damage – “play out for several more weeks.”

Here’s the Google Drive link again.