ALRIGHTY, so, I went through the available 74 arrest records for Hennepin County over the past 36 hours - all records of anyone in and out of the Henn County System.

I narrowed the results by a few criteria: 1. Charges: Burglary, Fleeing, Drugs, Riot, and Unlawful Assembly.

2. Time Frame. I narrowed it to arrests taken over the past 20 or so hours, because the state leader statements about arrests were about FRIDAY NIGHT, not any other night of the protest.

3. I googled and verified addresses. Several were obviously fake.

Of 38 people arrested who fit that criteria, here's the breakdown:

38 arrests total
-13 gave a verifiable Minneapolis address (1 homeless)
-3 were St. Paul
-4 gave fake addresses
-2 provided no address
-4 were out of state
The remaining 12 were from other towns in MN.

Correction: 4 were St. Paul

The remaining break down like so:

-Brooklyn Park but is U student (1)
-Fergus Falls (1)
-Brooklyn Center (1)
-Hastings (3, all had same last name)
-Brooklyn Park (1)
-Burnsville (1)
-Big Lake (1)
-Lakeville (1)
-Inver Grove Heights (1)

So what do we do with this data?

First, we have to note what the claim being made actually IS: it is NOT, as many have interpreted, that the "outside agitators" are not Minnesotans. Rather, they are not Minneapolis residents. That's a big difference.

One of the primary complaints about the Minneapolis Police Department is that 92% of their office do not live in Minneapolis - the majority live in the suburban areas surrounding the main cities. This is important when examining who is outside versus who is inside/the community.

There's also a conflation between two statements here: St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said that it appears nearly all the people arrested for rioting in St. Paul were from outside St. Paul. That is being conflated both with the Governor's vague statements about "outsiders..."

...And the Minneapolis Mayor's statements about percentages arrested.

One mistake I'm noticing throughout this discussion is that press are combining all three statements, and applying it to the ENTIRE COURSE of the protests. That's bad math.

Both Carter, Walz, and Frey made it fairly clear in their statements that they are referring to Friday night's protests. Arrests from prior to then are irrelevant to the discussion, because it was last night where we were saw a major influx of outsiders.

"Most of the people arrested in Minneapolis for rioting on Friday night into Saturday morning are not from Minneapolis" is a true statement. Only 13 were from Minneapolis proper. Even fewer were from the neighborhood impacted (I counted between 3-5 depending on neighborhood).

And that, ultimately, is the point. There is verified proof that the vast majority of people setting fires last night were not from the community, and THAT is what is relevant. It is likewise relevant that many of the bad actors are white men, many in their 20s, some much older.

This is much more than just looking through the current list of arrests. This is thinking carefully about the data. We cannot lump in a man arrested for burglary on a bench warrant at 9AM Friday with a rioter brought in at 5AM.

Does the data support the idea that the majority of arrests were non-Minneapolitans? Yes and no, give the low number of actual arrests, and the preponderance of fake addresses.

But I skipped my lunch to do this data analysis and now I'm hungry so I'm gonna go make nachos. Peace out and punch the nazis.