In the Star Tribune’s occasional Curious Minnesota series, Logan Anderson takes up the question “Who was Umbrella Man, who smashed windows before ‘first fire’ in 2020 Minneapolis protests?” Anderson doesn’t have the answer and the Star Tribune is not so curious that it allows readers to comment on the story.
Although Anderson doesn’t know who Umbrella Man is, he leaves open the possibility that Umbrella Man was a member of “a white supremacist group.” It’s an old cause of a left-wing Minneapolis Police Department officer and of the Star Tribune itself.
Anderson writes:
He was dressed entirely in black — wearing a respirator mask and carrying a black umbrella.
He scrawled a message on the double red doors in white spray paint with an expletive, saying the AutoZone had free stuff for everyone.
Then he smashed the windows, one after the other, with a hammer. People began looting the building. Somebody set it on fire.
It was May 27, 2020, two days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. Before the person in black — who became known as Umbrella Man — broke those windows, the protests had been relatively peaceful, according to an affidavit written by Minneapolis arson detective Erika Christensen.
“This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” Christensen wrote. “The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension.”
Anderson leaves open the possibility that Umbrella Man was a racist right-wing biker:
Later that summer, Christensen, the arson investigator, applied for a warrant to access the cellphone of a suspect linked to a white supremacist group. (The Minnesota Star Tribune is not naming the man because he has not been charged.)
According to the affidavit, the suspect was a member of the Hell’s Angels and a known associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a prison gang based out of Minnesota and Kentucky.
Christensen learned about him from a tipster who sent an email claiming he was Umbrella Man, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit also linked him to a June Stillwater incident. A group of bikers wearing Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood leather vests had been harassing a Muslim woman. The suspect was photographed among them.
U.S. District Judge Luis Bartolomei [sic — Bartolomei is a Hennepin County District Judge] approved a warrant to seize his cellphone information on July 20, 2020. No charges were brought against him.
A number of posts remain on X naming him as the Umbrella Man, including one that has been reposted more than 8,000 times.
Neither the suspect nor Christensen could be reached for comment. The Minneapolis Police Department did not provide comment on the warrant or the investigation.
Anderson leaves out some pertinent background in reviving this story, including the Star Tribune’s role in originally promoting the story. Former Star Tribune reporter Libor Jany told me he came across Christensen’s affidavit in a routine review of court filings. That’s what the man said. (Jany has moved on from the Star Tribune to the Los Angeles Times.)
Jany reported on the allegations of Christensen’s affidavit in his July 2020 story “Minneapolis police say ‘Umbrella Man’ was a white supremacist trying to incite George Floyd rioting.” The story made waves around the world.
According to Officer Christensen, Umbrella Man is a white supremacist who set off the week of riots and arson throughout the Twin Cities by knocking out the windows at AutoZone on Lake Street at Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis on May 27. Did Umbrella Man also burn the AutoZone down? I can’t tell from Jany’s story who who burnt it down, but it was in fact torched.
Jany quoted Christensen’s affidavit: “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city.” Umbrella Man himself does not seem to have committed the arson that destroyed the AutoZone premises.
Over five later Umbrella Man has not been arrested. Charges have not been brought against him. Umbrella Man remains at large. Jany did not identify him in his July 2020 story because he had not been charged and Anderson does not identify him now for the same reason.
Officer Christensen’s account of events was taken at face value in the numerous news accounts that immediately followed the Star Tribune story, but it is ludicrous. Spectator USA’s pseudonymous Cockburn conducted a reality check in “The curious Umbrella Man myth.” Subhead: “Cockburn hasn’t seen this many people excited about an umbrella since Mary Poppins hit theaters in 1964.” Cockburn drily noted in July 2020: “Cockburn would have thought that the carnage of the past month would render one man’s window smashing a historical footnote. But instead, the opposite has happened, for the usual 2020 reason: it is politically useful.”
I thought Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz were responsible for the key event that led to the destruction wrought throughout the Twin Cities following the death of George Floyd. The key event was the abandonment of the Third Precinct headquarters on May 28.
Frey and Walz also remain at large. Their dereliction was not illegal.
Officer Christensen’s affidavit superimposed a mythical narrative over the events as we saw them unfold. Cockburn observed that it took him “just a single minute on Google to discover rioting and destruction from May 26 — the day before Umbrella Man supposedly kicked everything off.”
Whatever happened to Umbrella Man? He was identified by name and cell phone number in Officer Christensen’s affidavit. He looked like a bad dude, but did he do more than break windows as depicted in the video?
There is a yearning on the left to attribute the wave of destruction that emanated from the Twin Cities to “white supremacy” or to “white supremacists.” The left-wing Minnesota Reformer checked in on the case against Umbrella Man in Deena Winter’s 2021 story “What’s up with ‘Umbrella Man’?” (Winter is now a Star Tribune reporter.)
Winter reviewed the allegations regarding Umbrella Man, although she too withheld his identity because he had not been charged. Winter quoted Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder: “It remains an open case and is still being investigated.” Elder refrained from any comment on whether the man listed in the search warrant is a suspect. “The investigator has not authorized the release of information on the case as this remains an open investigation,” Elder told Winter via email.
Winter said nothing about Officer Christensen. Perhaps coincidentally, Officer Christensen is “a frequent letter-writer to the Star Tribune” and the Minneapolis police department’s “rare ‘out’ liberal,” as she described herself in this 2019 Star Tribune column. See Christensen’s letters to the editor here (May 8, 2017) and here (March 25, 2019).
The FBI issued a press release (with new photos) seeking the public’s help in identifying Umbrella Man. Minnesota Public Radio reported on the FBI’s call for help here. Lou Raguse reported on it in the segment below, with video of Umbrella Man at work.
MPR’s Matt Sepic noted in his penultimate paragraph (link in the original): “In a 2020 search warrant, a Minneapolis police investigator [i.e., Christensen] identified the suspect as a Ramsey, Minn. man and alleged he was a ‘known associate’ of the Aryan Cowboys white supremacist gang. MPR News is not naming the man, now 34, because he was never arrested or charged.”
The Minneapolis police and the FBI know his name and address. The Star Tribune knows too, as does MPR’s Matt Sepic. Anyone who wants to find out can find out. Logan Anderson to the contrary notwithstanding, I infer that the Aryan Cowboy known to them is not Umbrella Man.
