Photo shows pile of bricks in Dallas, not Kenosha
CLAIM: Photo shows a pile of bricks in Kenosha, Wisconsin, placed around the courthouse of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The image, which has been circulating online since 2020, shows stacked bricks in Dallas, Texas.
THE FACTS: As the jury in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial deliberated for a third day on Thursday, social media users shared a photo of stacks of bricks they claimed had been placed nearby in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer.
“A Kenosha officer found this pile of bricks in an alley and says scanners are ‘non-stop’ reporting many other sightings around the city. This is what the left does!” claimed one tweet that was shared more than 2,000 times.
But the photo has been circulating online since last year, and shows bricks near a construction site at 1700 Ashland St. in Dallas. The bricks can be found in an image from Google Maps as early as February 2020.
The image circulated as several blog posts also claimed that police were receiving reports of “suspicious activity” in Kenosha, and that officers had spotted bricks in a local alley.
The claims were accompanied by a Kenosha police scanner recording taken between 11:44 a.m. and 12:14 p.m. on Nov. 16, where an officer stated that someone called to report that bricks were “being stacked up” on 63rd Street and 22nd Avenue.
But the Kenosha Police Department told The Associated Press that they have found no credible threats.
“KPD is aware of numerous attempts by malicious actors to spread disinformation on various social media platforms. To date, there is no credible threat to public safety,” the department said in a statement.
During protests over the police-custody death of George Floyd in 2020, social media users also posted images showing piles of bricks, falsely claiming that they were placed there ahead of protests. In many cases, the bricks were part of nearby construction.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.