The situation in downtown Chicago was rapidly devolving last Saturday afternoon when a young man in a grinning “Joker” mask allegedly walked up to a police SUV, set it ablaze, then sat down on the curb to roll himself a cigarette.
Hours later, a downstate man was arrested in the Loop allegedly with homemade explosives in his car after police said he posted videos of himself on Facebook looting stores and saying he’d come to the city to riot.
On Monday, a 19-year-old father of two was captured running from a looted video game store on the city’s Southwest Side with a loaded .357 Magnum. He allegedly told police he was on his way to loot another store when he decided to hit up the GameStop and get some toys for his children.
The three were among hundreds arrested amid the citywide chaos that gripped Chicago for days, along with otherwise peaceful marches against police brutality sparked by George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.
Both Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police Superintendent David Brown have commended the peaceful demonstrators, while also hinting that organized or out-of-town agitators were responsible for much of the violence and destruction.
But the picture that has begun to emerge from court records in both Cook County and U.S. District Court is more complicated.
While some alleged instigators — including a few from out of town — are accused of taking advantage of the mass protests to sow chaos, the majority of those charged with any looting or vandalism are locals who appeared to be swept up in crimes of opportunity.
They’re men and women; they’re racially diverse; they’re parents, blue-collar workers, machinists, truck drivers. The crimes they’re accused of run the gamut, from violating the citywide curfew, to acting “recklessly” in big crowds, to looting convenience stores, big-box businesses and high-end Mag Mile boutiques.
There also were several alleged attacks on police officers, including defendants accused of punching officers, resisting arrest or, in two separate cases, ramming their bikes into officers. And among those arrested were numerous convicted felons allegedly carrying illegal firearms.
Despite widespread social-media rumors, authorities so far have not publicly tied any cases to organized white-supremacist or anarchist groups.
Meanwhile, there have also been hundreds of allegations of excessive force by police. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability fielded 258 complaints from last weekend to Thursday morning, officials said. Based on a recommendation from the board, Brown on Friday removed two officers involved in the arrest of a woman at a shopping mall.
The nonchalant man in the ‘Joker’ mask
The images of a Chicago police squad car engulfed in flames in the middle of the downtown skyline were quickly broadcast across the nation on Saturday and seemed to some to represent a city that had lost control.
The man in the leering “Joker” mask appeared nonchalant about it all, posing for photos as he placed a lit object in the SUV’s gas can and sticking around the scene — even hamming for cameras — as the car burst into flames.
Many on social media immediately saw the hallmark of antifa, a loose conglomerate of like-minded activists that President Donald Trump has blamed, without evidence, for much of the civil unrest across the country and said he intends to designate as a domestic terrorist group.
But when federal arson charges were brought Tuesday against Timothy O’Donnell, a 31-year-old visual artist accused of setting the blaze, that assumption appeared to fall apart.
O’Donnell, who lives in Pilsen and graduated from the Chicago Academy for the Arts, has no history of radical boasting on social media or other platforms about striking against authority, according to his lawyer, Michael Leonard.
Leonard described O’Donnell as a soft-spoken pacifist who spent years traveling the country before returning to Chicago. While he has some minor arrests on his record, O’Donnell is “the farthest thing from a domestic terrorist you could possibly imagine,” Leonard said.
“He’s a big supporter of the police,” said Leonard, who plans to ask that O’Donnell be released on bond at a detention hearing on Monday.
In addition to O’Donnell, federal prosecutors in Chicago have also charged eight felons as of Friday with illegally possessing firearms at scenes across the city where looting and violence were taking place.
Among them was Amber Peltzer, who was arrested last weekend after officers allegedly saw her peering from the shattered doorway of a South Loop bar.
The charges alleged Peltzer, who recently finished serving a five-year sentence for an aggravated robbery conviction in Will County, had a loaded handgun in the front seat of her car.
Two weeks before her arrest, Peltzer had posted a message on her Facebook page celebrating the fact that she’d completed her parole.
“I’m officially off parole, DOC can kindly f— they self now,” she wrote.
But perhaps the most high-profile case to come out of the Chicago unrest wasn’t even charged here.
A case brought in federal court in Minnesota last week accused Matthew Rupert, of downstate Galesburg, of posting internet videos of himself participating in the looting and rioting in both Minneapolis and Chicago, including furnishing homemade explosives to others in the crowd and inciting them to toss them at police.
“Light that b— and throw it at them,” Rupert said on one video shot in Minneapolis, according to the charges. Moments later, an explosion is heard in the video, and Rupert repeatedly yells, “Good shot, my boy!” as well as “F— 12,” a derogatory reference to law enforcement, the complaint alleged.
On May 30, Rupert posted a message saying he was on his way to Chicago. Two hours later, he began posting multiple videos of himself participating in violent acts downtown, including saying things like, “Let’s start a riot” and “I’m gonna start doing some damage,” the complaint alleged.
On one video, Rupert could be seen entering a downtown Chicago store and searching the empty cash register, and going into a convenience store that had been broken into and putting cigarettes and other merchandise in his backpack, according to the charges.
Several associates were with Rupert when he was arrested, including his live-in girlfriend, who confirmed that he’d traveled to Minneapolis “in order to riot,” the complaint alleged.
Also arrested was his brother, Christopher Rupert, 29, authorities said. He was charged with reckless conduct and disorderly conduct, and appeared in bond court at 26th Street and California Avenue on Monday. A judge released him on his own recognizance.
Court records show Matthew Rupert has a long history of arrests. His felony record includes convictions for theft, gun possession, and fleeing and eluding police.
At the time of his arrest on the federal charges, Rupert was facing pending charges of possession of methamphetamine in Knox County, records show.
Rupert’s social media accounts also show an anti-police bent. After Galesburg police in February posted on Facebook that Rupert was wanted on drug charges, Rupert commented on the post using his own profile, calling police “petty” and “bums.”
“Get a life and stop issuing fake warrants,” Rupert said. “Straight b.s.”
An incident at the Brickyard Mall
On Sunday, Mia Wright went to the Brickyard Mall on the Northwest Side, only to realize it had been closed due to looting.
Her cousin pulled over the car they were in, and they were surrounded by police, they said. Officers broke at least three of the car’s windows with batons, according to Wright’s family and the video, and pulled some occupants out of the vehicle.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wright, 25, said at a news conference Thursday in the mall’s parking lot.
“I was trying to get out with my hands up. They continue to break the window, and before you know it, I was being pulled out of the vehicle, pulled by my hair,” Wright said, crying. “The officer grabbed me. I had my hair tied in a bun. He grabbed me by the top of my bun and pulled me out of the vehicle. And that is when they threw me on the ground, and he proceeded to put his knee in my neck.”
Police spokeswoman Kellie Bartoli said Wright was placed into custody and charged with disorderly conduct after she was observed by responding officers “assembled with three or more persons for the purpose of using force or violence to disturb the peace” — a direct quote from the city’s disorderly conduct ordinance.
On Friday, Superintendent Brown relieved two officers of their police powers. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which is not handling Wright’s prosecution since it was brought as a city ordinance violation, said Thursday it also is investigating the matter in conjunction with the FBI.
Cash register found in car trunk
Wright’s arrest was among some 700 over last weekend, at the height of the demonstrations and the ensuing mayhem. All week, Cook County bond court was slammed with new cases ranging from the seemingly petty to the deadly serious.
A 22-year-old Columbia College junior was allegedly caught inside Macy’s State Street store with more than $900 in Ray Ban sunglasses and a designer vest. Also inside the Macy’s was a 21-year-old man who only managed to grab a single pair of Michael Kors sunglasses and two cologne tester bottles before officers grabbed him.
At a Target in Lakeview, a 20-year-old man was allegedly caught with a cash register in the trunk of his car.
A 30-year-old man allegedly fled a looted Walgreens, climbed into a U-Haul and then drove away, dragging an officer who reached inside the vehicle, prosecutors said Wednesday. He faces a burglary charge — but Judge Arthur Wesley Willis ripped into prosecutors for not filing more serious charges.
From Friday evening, May 29, to Monday morning, June 1, police in Cook County brought more than 250 cases to the state’s attorney’s felony review unit. The majority were approved; 24 were rejected outright, 45 were marked as “continuing investigation.”
In all, police brought about 50 more felony cases for review that weekend than during the weekend after Memorial Day in 2019. And the number of burglary cases skyrocketed from 7 to 40 compared with the same time frame last year.
The number of arrests far outstrips the number of cases brought to felony review; some arrestees were hit with misdemeanors or ordinance violations, which do not go through that review process. Others were released without charging.
Regardless, the dockets at Cook County bond court were packed all week, each day bringing new tales of alleged looters or shooters.
And some defendants appeared to simply get caught in the wrong end of the mayhem.
On Wednesday, a man who works for a board-up service came through misdemeanor court on a weapon charge after police allegedly saw him carrying a gun while out on a job.
“It’s just crazy out here,” he told the judge. “I got robbed, my truck got shot at.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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