Back in 2015, my hometown of Baltimore was convulsed by riots in the wake of Freddie Gray's murder.
You may remember he was the gentleman who was rattled around in a police transport until his neck snapped. Finally fed up with decades of police brutality and abuse, thousands of my fellow citizens took to the streets in protest, myself included.
But then, something strange happened...
The Mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, came out and told us we weren't who we were.
"Many people who weren't from our community were, in essence, trying to hijack the very raw emotions of some of those who live in Baltimore and were expressing anger over the death of Mr. Gray," she said. "People from the outside were inciting some of the 'shut this city down' sort of messaging, and then just left."
Weird, right?
Some group of mysterious outside agitators rolled into town, stirred up a bunch of trouble, and then just vanished.
And I mean vanished, because I looked at the police records and just three of the 35 people arrested during the first night of protests were from outside Baltimore. A few days later 27 people were arrested - every one of them a city resident.
But the Mayor stuck to her assertion that this wasn't really an organic, homegrown protest. And the police, despite all evidence to the contrary, backed her up.
"The Baltimore Police Department believes that outside agitators continue to be the instigators behind acts of violence and destruction," the Baltimore Sun reported.
I was confused, but ultimately, I let it go.
Until last week, anyway, when a new round of protests erupted nationwide - this time over the murder of George Floyd by police.
Clearly, I thought, the people of these cities have had enough of oppressive and overzealous law enforcement agents brutalizing them and their fellow citizens.
But once again, I was corrected.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz came out and said that by his estimates, roughly 20% of the protesters were local, with 80% of people coming from outside Minnesota.
WOW. What a disparity!
"Over the last 72 hours these people have brought more destruction and more terror to Minnesota than anybody in our history," Walz said.
The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, corroborated that story.
"I want to be very, very clear," he said. "The people that are doing this are not Minneapolis residents. They are coming in largely from outside of this city, outside of the region, to prey on everything we have built over the last several decades."
Sounds pretty scary, and eerily reminiscent of what I heard in Baltimore.
But also, as with Baltimore, the numbers didn't add up.
Data taken from the Hennepin County Jail's roster shows that nearly all of the people arrested in connection with the protests - 86% of them - lived in Minneapolis or the greater metro area.
They'd done it again!
The mysterious outside agitators who had swept through Baltimore, leaving no trace behind but a broad path of carnage, had done the same thing to Minneapolis!
And not only that...
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They paid visits to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington DC.
"These were not Atlantans," lamented Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields. "We knew they were not Atlantans. They were lost when they were in the protest. They didn't know how to march to the State Capitol. That's a clue."
Yet, when the dust settled, 90% of those arrested in Atlanta last weekend were from Georgia - and again, the overwhelming majority from the city and its surrounding boroughs.
And in every other city, the story was the same.
Politicians and police chiefs pointed to "outside agitators" as the main culprits behind the violence, despite long rosters of local residents filling their jail cells.
I had to get to the bottom of this.
How is it possible that outsiders are instigating all this violence and unrest, but only local citizens are being arrested?
Well, after doing some digging I think I've found the answer...
It turns out that less than 25% of the Baltimore police force actually lives in Baltimore City. And the same goes for Atlanta, Washington DC, and Los Angeles.
In fact, this is something of a nationwide problem.
When I learned that, everything else made sense.
After all, wasn't it the police who had prompted these protests by killing people in the street?
Wasn't it the police I saw assailing peaceful protests with tear gas, riot shields, and rubber bullets?
Of course it's them!
It was them all along!
Like an episode of Scooby-Doo, where the amusement park owner haunts his own park...
Like the business owner who burns down his own store to collect the insurance money...
The outside agitators instigating all of this violence are actually the very "peace officers" lamenting it.
It's not some traveling circus of anarchists roaming the country. It's the cops coming in from the suburbs to show us cityfolk who's boss.
What's the motive though?
What reason could the police possibly have for turning peaceful protests into violent ones?
It's almost like they're profoundly threatened by peaceful demonstrations against their excessive use of force, their total lack of accountability, and their terrifying arsenal of weapons, military-grade vehicles, body armor, and chemical agents.
I guess if I had all of that stuff, and didn't want to lose it, I'd point my finger at someone else, too.
I might even point at all the mayhem I'd caused under the guise of an "outside agitator" and use that to justify having all of those things to begin with, and why I need them still.
But that's just me. What do I know? I'm just a gullible local, the citizen of a city that's somehow both threatened and protected by the same small group of outsiders.
Fight on,
Jason Simpkins
Jason Simpkins is Assistant Managing Editor of the Outsider Club and Investment Director of The Wealth Warrior, a financial advisory focused on security companies and defense contractors. For more on Jason, check out his editor's page.