Rick Snyder: Indianapolis George Floyd Riots Was A Coordinated Event
Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police President Rick Snyder: Indianapolis George Floyd Riots Was A Coordinated Event. It was very apparent that there was a lot of pre planning and it was apparent that there were paid professional agitators amongst the crowds in downtown Indianapolis.
Five years later, is Indianapolis any different? The reaction then the response then we don’t know where. Joe Hogsett, the mayor was He was not on scene. Do we think that if a a riot broke out right now, things would be any different? Tony Katz, good to be with you. Rick Snyder joins us right now. President of the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police, serving over 3000 members in central IN also the national FOP chaplain. Uh, let us start with, uh, I, I think a, a baseline here, which is when we take a look back five years ago at what happened at the devastation, what was your take then on what took place?
Well, our take was the same as our officers, which was that this was a coordinated event that there was a lot of… It was very apparent that there was a lot of pre planning and it was apparent that there were paid professional agitators amongst the crowds in downtown Indianapolis. You got to remember Tony, to put it in context, we had had. A, a police action shooting just prior to this, that kind of flow right into all this national conflict as well. And what we even saw then prior to the riots were people that were showing up. I mean, picture this, you have an event that’s obviously not planned. It’s a rapidly evolving event and all of a sudden people pull up, pop open their trunks and they’re pulling out professionally made signs, bullhorns and are ready to go to start agitating and spinning up a crowd. Well, it’s the same thing that we saw on a huge scale in downtown Indianapolis that led into the riots. So two things being preplanned fashion and professional agitators.
I’m discussing the response from Indianapolis. Take me through what you saw from the, the IMPD, from the mayor’s office. What, what was the response? There were conversations about whether or not the police were ordered to, to stand down. Walk me through that.
Well, they’re definitely from our officers made clear to us… post events that it was abundantly made clear to them to stand down to allow folks to move off of the circle, to allow folks to move throughout the downtown area. And if you remember and you watch any of those videos, you’ll see that our officers literally look like they’re trying to. Stand the line on behalf of our city with their and their side behind their back. And, you know, once things broke loose, businesses were being destroyed. You got to remember there were four people shot, two of which lost their lives. Hundreds of businesses destroyed, fires everywhere. Our officers had frozen water bottles being thrown at them that were hard as a brick. They were under constant gunfire. That’s the thing that people don’t remember. Our officers for two straight days were under constant gunfire. And to prove it, you can hear it in all the radio traffic and many of the 911 phone calls. But here’s what’s interesting, Tony. Not any of that has been published. So, there’s 48 hours of radio. traffic and 911 calls then it would ever been released by the city of Indianapolis back then and still today we asked this question why in the in the in the essence of transparency, why wouldn’t you make those publicly available for people to weed through? And I can tell you why because it was hell on earth and people would hear it in real time. And see and understand what our officers were up against. Yet the mayor convened this crony committee that put together an after-action report. And I want you to listen to part of what they said as their findings. They said that basically blamed the officers for the riots and for defending themselves and said that “officers should always use a soft approach and avoid wearing helmets and protective vests when they’re amongst the crowds.” So here again, we’re going to say to our officers, don’t do anything to protect yourself… Leave that back at home or in your car and put yourselves in the middle of this. What it creates is this real question, what do we do when this happens again, and if people don’t think that this is coming back again, you’re fooling yourself.
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