I covered one angle of this incident back on August 16, 2020.  The organizer of the protest in front of the home of Robert Kroll, President of the Minneapolis Police Federation, was a Democrat candidate for the Minnesota State House, John Thompson.

The protest took place on Saturday in front of the house of Minneapolis police union President, Robert Kroll.

But I came across this new video earlier that I had not seen when I wrote the first article, and the new video provides a different — even more disturbing insight into the bunch of violent nutjobs involved in this “protest.”

As I have now learned, Robert Kroll is married to a woman named Liz Collin,  a news anchor for WCCO TV in Minneapolis for more than a decade.

With that background, now watch the video below:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1294758809039245312

Here is a photograph of Liz Collin — just so there’s no confusion about who the female pinata is meant to represent.

Just good fun with a couple of pinatas full of candy — right?

Or maybe a symbolic beating of Kroll’s wife, a long-time member of the press in Minneapolis.

WCCO is not a Fox affiliate, it is a CBS station.  It is actually owned and operated by CBS Television Stations, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS.

So the editorial “viewpoint” of Fox News — which in the mind of all left-wing lunatics makes them fair game for violence — doesn’t come into play here.   It’s not like Liz Collin is the Minneapolis version of Laura Ingraham for the whack-jobs at BLM and Antifa.

So what has Liz Collin done other than marry Robert Kroll?

Is the fact of her marriage, and her selection of a spouse now a basis to symbolically beat her with clubs?

Minnesota law defines “terroristic threatening” as follows:

Whoever threatens, directly or indirectly, to commit any crime of violence with purpose to terrorize another,…. or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror … may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

How should Liz Collin react to the visage of her dangling from a rope and being beaten with a club?  It wasn’t her birthday.  No one was throwing her party in her yard.  A group of people who advocate violence against Minneapolis police hung a likeness of her up and beat it with a club until it broke in half.  They did this right in front of her house, with dozens of cameras recording the event so it could be broadcast to all who were not able to attend in person.

Interestingly, Hugo, Minnesota — a suburb of St. Paul — is not in wildly liberal Hennepin County where Minneapolis is located.  Hugo is located in Washington County.  The County Prosecutor, Pete Orput, seems to be a Democrat — County Prosecutor is a non-partisan office — in that he has been appointed to various boards by Democrat Governors Mark Dayton and Tim Walz.  But given that Minnesota has consistently elected only Democrats to statewide offices, that is not necessarily surprising.  Orput has also held some national positions in organizations that tend to be more conservative — such as serving as legal advisor to the National Association of Police Chiefs, and as a Vice-President of the National Association of District Attorneys.

Washington County is in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, won by GOP incumbent Tom Emmer with 61% of the vote in 2018.  It was represented by very-conservative Michele Bachman for four terms from 2006 to 2014.  Donald Trump won the district 59-33 over Hillary Clinton.  Minneapolis it ain’t.

DA Orput issued a public statement yesterday finding that while the statements made by House Candidate John Thompson in front of the Kroll and Collin residence were “grossly inappropriate,” he had concluded that they were not in violation of any Minnesota law.

Thompson issued a public apology on Monday, admitting that his rhetoric at the protest directed at Kroll went too far.

But the video of the symbolic beating of Liz Collin was more than simply “fiery rhetoric”.  I question whether that video — posted by an attendee sympathetic to the protesters — was seen by DA Orput before he made his statement.

Maybe we haven’t heard the end of this story yet.