I'm at beautiful Marcus-David Peters Circle where @trapcry is putting on a free show, and I'm LARPing as @GoadGatsby. The sun is setting and there is a uncertainty in the air as we head into the weekend with no RPD chief and an ACLU lawsuit pending against RPD, VSP, and the City.

Darkness is setting in as several hundred protesters continue to hang out, eat free snacks, and shoot hoops. Oh yeah, there is a new basketball hoop AND radical library! The (universally despised) surveillance plane is buzzing overhead, but no other visible police presence.

Dozens of VSP officers in riot gear arrived at 10pm. They refused to identify themselves and almost immediately began deploying rubber bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas. I myself had a flashbang explode literally in my face and was shot with many projectiles.

I saw one bystander who was actually urging protesters to "let the police do their jobs" get pepper sprayed directly in the face, prompting him to begin crying and vomiting in the street. I saw another man hit in the eye with some kind of projectile. He seemed seriously injured.

They began firing weapons at people outside of the Circle before ever declaring an unlawful assembly. They fired tear gas cannisters and flashbangs and rubber bullets at protesters. Explosions and clouds of gas blanketed the neighborhood. Residents screamed at police to go home.

MDP and surrounding blocks were a nightmare warzone hellscape for > hour. Weapons were fired directly at medics trying to tend to the wounded. Multiple arrests, some for absolutely no clear reason whatsoever. Then VSP just packed up and left. Protesters are back in MDP Circle.

I have tons of footage to sift through but right now I need a medic to check me out. My skin and orifices are on fire and my already tender ribs got pounded again. This was absurd. There was no reason for the indiscriminate violence inflicted on a residential neighborhood tonight