By DAVID CARON
While much of the national media focuses on the events that occurred on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol and arrests that have stemmed from that, there have been ongoing investigations and convictions for the riots that occurred surrounding the Black Lives Matter protests from last summer that have gone virtually unreported on the national level.
TikTok influencer Bryce Michael Williams recently was sentenced to 27 months in prison and will be expected to pay $12M in restitution for his actions on May 28, 2020, which involved the torching of a Minnesota police station.
Like former police officer Derek Chauvin, Williams had asked for probation on the charge, conspiracy to commit arson, but U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz rejected his request, describing him as a leader and ânot a followerâ in the violent mob that burned the police station during riots.
Schiltz, however, noted that he believed Williams was a âgood person who made a terrible mistake,â and handed him a lighter sentence than one might expect for such a criminal act.
Williams was among the hundreds of people who gathered outside the precinct, when he entered the building and lit a Molotov cocktail, which Davon De-Andre Turner, a black man who was previously sentenced to 3 years in prison, used to start a fire.
BLM supporter âMiss Leahâ claimed in an April tweet, âIt was NEVER the BLM protesters, it was rural white supremacists who did all the firebombing. ALL of it.â
A Brainerd man has been sentenced to four years in prison and must pay $12 million in restitution for his role in the Minneapolis Third Precinct fire during civil unrest after the death of #GeorgeFloyd. https://t.co/XbAF9IhvZC
— Star Tribune (@StarTribune) April 28, 2021
Her claim was in response to an article about a white co-defendant of Williams and Turner, Dylan Shakespeare Robinson, who received the stiffest prison sentence of 4 years.