Your friend was so aware of his surroundings he must have been navigating with his eyes closed. I suppose the magical flying fist that struck him just came from someone casually walking by not even looking at him. A firearm can definitely make a difference when it comes to the possibility of being assaulted, or stopping an assault once it's happened. I don't believe most of the folks in these forums think that bad guys are going to "behave in a blatantly threatening manner initially". It's not like the musical grease where they put on a production before AMBUSHING you.

Congratulations on eventually filling a report with the police though. If your friend wants to file a complaint about the officer he can do so here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/forms/m ... en-report/

Actually, I beat you too it. I already called Ms. Beno (a very pleasant woman) and got my friend on that report; he was the guy they briefly mentioned near the end. I wasn't sure whether or not it would be worth posting here because the final news story paid little attention to the attack on my friend. He was assaulted by a large group of black guys believed to be non-students, according to the UMPD, so it did not fit very well with the story about the idiot football players getting violent. It would have been nice if the segment on TV would have devoted more time to telling my friend's story, but they cut out almost all of the interview.

For those of you who have not already seen it, you may be interested in watching the video of the poor kid in Chicago who got beat to death by a gang. It demonstrates how easily and how quickly you can be killed when people are smacking you in the head.
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/me ... ion_albert
You can see here that when someone threatens to beat you, he is threatening great bodily harm.

This kind of stuff occasionally occurs in the area, especially at the beginning of the academic year. But, I would say that this weekend, one should be especially on high alert if you are going to be in the Dinkytown area. It's the Gopher vs. Badger game, and there is guaranteed to be plenty of drunk kids from Madison in the area, and lots of fights. Happens every time the Badgers come into town. Granted, the cold, wet weather will put a damper on things.

And yeah, you bet there are gonna be people around that are NOT students, and are only looking to cause trouble.