Kenosha Business Owner Urges Rioters to Engage Police, Not Loot Stores

A man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who identified himself as a local business owner urged a group of rioters to stop looting and damaging local shops, telling them to take up their grievances with the police instead.

The city became the country's latest scene of racial unrest after cellphone footage emerged Sunday of police appearing to shoot 29-year-old Jacob Blake several times in the back. Anger over the shooting, which left Blake hospitalized in serious condition and possibly paralyzed, drew condemnation from Governor Tony Evers and sparked back-to-back nights of confrontations between law enforcement and increasingly destructive demonstrations.

On Monday evening, video emerged of local police and the National Guard engaging with rioters as they burned and looted stores, prompting one observer to tell them to cease destroying local businesses in a now-viral video. The man quickly became angry at those he engaged, ultimately telling them he'd like to "run all y'all" down with his truck.

"What you guys don't understand is that people have their lives in these businesses," the self-described business owner told protesters from inside his white pickup truck.

"So just because you guys are too scared to go deal with the cops you're just going to burn down our whole town?" the man asked the group of about a dozen people in the street outside of Kenosha's probation office, which is part of the state Department of Corrections.

"Then you get Maced and you all take off? Take your issues up with them," the man says, pointing toward nearby law enforcement officers. "The furniture store is the police? A car dealership is the police?"

"Yes, yes," several members of the group respond, as threatening comments against the truck's driver are heard. "So what we pay for that? So do black people. Go away."

"Do you know how many people have been wrongfully accused in there? I didn't say s**t about the furniture store, I'm talking about the P.O. office. This is a state-owned building," one of the protesters replies.

"You need to go. I suggest you go because they ain't playing right now," the protesters tell the man. "They are going to f**k your s**t up."

In a separate video recorded by Daily Caller media reporter Shelby Talcott on Monday, the self-described business owner can be seen daring onlookers to destroy his business. "Keep destroying s**t, we're going to run all y'all motherf***ers down," the man says.

The exchange came amid hours of looting and rioting, which increased after police fired teargas into crowds of people gathered downtown after the 8 p.m. curfew went into effect, the Associated Press reported. "No justice, no peace," protesters could be heard chanting. Several other videos from Kenosha on Monday night show heavily armed protesters halting an armored sheriff's office vehicle and burning down several city garbage trucks.

Newsweek called the business telephone number on the man's truck, but the man who answered declined to speak with news media.