#Seattle-based activists arrested in Kenosha after filling up gas cans

Activists from Seattle group “Riot Kitchen” were arrested in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after they filled up multiple gas cans, prompting law enforcement officials in unmarked cars to take them into custody, according to police and video footage.

A 2-minute clip shared Wednesday by Riot Kitchen, a Seattle-based nonprofit group, shows officers in the southeastern Wisconsin city descending on a Toyota minivan with Oregon plates that held its bus crew before they shattered a window and pulled out two people near a gas station.

The group claimed its members were “kidnapped by feds in unmarked vans” in broad daylight ahead of the city’s curfew put in place following the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday.

“We are currently trying to find our friends who were there just to feed people,” the group tweeted.

Riot Kitchen board member Jennifer Schuerle told the Washington Post officers also arrested six other members off-camera just after they put gas in its bus and food truck.

In a statement Thursday, Kenosha police said they got a tip from a citizen regarding “several suspicious vehicles” with out-of-state plates that met in a remote lot Wednesday.

Kenosha police, with assistance from the US Marshals Service, then located the vehicles, identified by the department as a black school bus, a food truck and a minivan, before following them to the gas station.

“Police observed the occupants of the black bus and bread truck exit and attempt to fill multiple fuel cans,” police said in the statement. “Suspecting that the occupants of these vehicles were preparing for criminal activity related to the civil unrest, officers attempted to make contact and investigate.”

The officers then exited their vehicles and identified themselves before detaining people inside the bus and food truck, police said.

“The minivan attempted to drive away; however, Kenosha Police stopped the vehicle and ultimately forced entry to the minivan and arrested the occupants,” police said.

Helmets, gas masks, protective vests, illegal fireworks and “suspected controlled substances” were found inside the two vehicles. In all, 9 people were arrested on disorderly conduct charges, police said.

Several members of the group were still in police custody Thursday, the Washington Post reports. Scheurle disputed accusations that the activists were going to use the gas for anything illegal.

“It’s two giant vehicle and generators,” she told the newspaper. “We don’t have guns, we don’t have weapons. We’re there to feed people. That’s it.”

A spokeswoman for the Marshals Service, meanwhile, said Kenosha police asked the agency for assistance. No marshals took part in the arrests, the spokeswoman told the Washington Post.

Three of the Riot Kitchen members arrested were released Thursday, Schuerle said. They were among a caravan of the Seattle-based group headed to Washington, D.C., when they decided to make a detour to Kenosha to join demonstrators protesting Sunday’s police-involved shooting that left Blake, 29, paralyzed from the waist down.