Floyd protests: Frey vows 'all-out' push for peace, safety in Minneapolis
Daylight reveals south Minneapolis destruction; unrest spilling into St. Paul
MPR News Staff
Minneapolis
May 28, 2020
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The damage at East 29th Street and South 26th Avenue in Minneapolis Thursday morning.
Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
Updated 1:57 p.m.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey promised “an all-out effort” for peace and security in the wake of violence and looting overnight Wednesday into Thursday as people protested the death of George Floyd, a black man who
died in Minneapolis police custody.
“I believe in this city, and I know that you do, too,” he told reporters Thursday after daylight revealed the extent of the damage in south Minneapolis — some buildings were still smoldering — and news that one person was shot and killed.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey speaks during a news conference Thursday, in Minneapolis, Minn.
Elizabeth Flores | Star Tribune via AP
Frey and Andrea Jenkins, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, said protesters’ anger over Floyd’s death was understandable given the long history of racism in Minnesota and the country and the need to push back against it.
“We feel there was a knee on all of our collective necks … a knee that says black life does not matter,” said Jenkins, who is black.
However, Jenkins, Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo all said that as much as they grasped the anger, the violence would not be tolerated. The mayor said he had called Gov. Tim Walz to request National Guard help in coming days.
“You have no right to perpetrate violence and harm on the very communities that you say you are standing up for,” said Jenkins. “We need peace and calm in our streets, and I am begging you for that calm.”
Arradondo said the “vast majority” of people have been protesting peacefully the past few days but that the situation changed dramatically overnight as a small number took to destruction and looting.
Police chief says dept is looking into reports that some of the people involved in "criminal behavior" not known as Minneapolis residents.
— Brandt Williams (@BrandtMPR)
May 28, 2020
People took to the streets Tuesday after a video of the incident surfaced showing a white Minneapolis officer pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for minutes as the man lay handcuffed and face down, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.
Peaceful protests morphed into confrontations with police Tuesday night followed by violence, arson and looting overnight Wednesday into Thursday.
By midmorning Thursday, tensions were rising again.
Hazy on Lake Street from all the fires. Conflicts between police and protesters beginning again.
pic.twitter.com/qJuQfjubZr
— Evan Frost (@efrostee)
May 28, 2020
By early Thursday morning, Minneapolis police confirmed they were also investigating the shooting death of a man, with one person taken into custody.
Minneapolis fire officials Thursday morning said crews responded to at least 16 structure fires during the protests. While trucks were hit by rocks, no firefighter injuries were reported.
Crews continue to respond and extinguish fires.
Protests spill into St. Paul
Early Thursday afternoon, Metro Transit said it would shut down light rail for the rest of the day out of concern for the safety of riders and workers given the expected coming demonstrations.
St. Paul police were also dealing with confrontations Thursday in the city’s Midway neighborhood, including looting at the neighborhood Target store.
Just before 2 p.m., MPR News producer Megan Burks reported looters had moved to a liquor store on the south side of University Avenue and that there were hot spots of trouble throughout the Midway neighborhood.
Things have picked up since this. People stopping to join looters, cheer them on or watch in disbelief. What started as maybe a dozen people is now several dozen. No police presence that I can see for these small businesses.
@MPRnews christine nguyen on Twitter
— MEBurks (@MEBurks)
May 28, 2020
On the Capitol grounds in St. Paul, buildings and offices of lawmakers, state court staff and judges have been evacuated out of precaution. Staff were urged to leave quickly and work from home for the time being.
‘It’s like a war came through here’
Reporting from Lake Street in Minneapolis Thursday morning, MPR News’ Jon Collins described the damage as “unbelievable devastation.”
The AutoZone near the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis, which was on fire Wednesday night, has been destroyed.
Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
“There's an industrial building across the street from me that's smoking. There's affordable housing that was being built that is still on fire ... there is a Wendy's that is completely demolished in the parking lot. Target has been looted. Cub has been looted ... and blockades everywhere,” he said.
People in the neighborhood expressed disbelief over the devastation as business owners began surveying and cleaning up the damage, which extends along Lake Street into the Uptown neighborhood.
The damage at Ingebretsen's Scandinavian Gifts & Foods Thursday.
Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
That includes Ingebretsen's, a gift store and meat market that’s been a fixture on Lake Street since the 1920s. Julie Ingebretsen, the granddaughter of the store’s founders, described the damage to the store as “unreal.”
Julie Ingebretsen on the damage at her store.
by Cathy Wurzer
“It’s like a war came through here last night,” she said. “Our windows were broken. I don’t think so much taking stuff, but just knocking shelves over, throwing stuff around, rummaging through drawers. It’s just destruction. And it makes me so sad, I can hardly stand it.”
Metro Transit said Blue Line light rail trains, which run along Hiawatha Avenue with a station at Lake Street, would not run until further notice, and that there would not be replacement bus service.
Minneapolis Council member Alondra Cano said city officials haven’t done enough to ensure that policing culture changes “so these wrongful killings stop.”
“It’s about the systems in place that are continuing to fail people, and we throw everything and the kitchen sink at them, and they’re still not producing the outcomes that we need,” she said.
Cano: More needs to be done to change police culture
by Cathy Wurzer
Cano said she believes the city should increase its support for the businesses affected by the devastation. She said many are locally owned and already facing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These are Minneapolis residents, Minneapolis voters,” she said. “Some of them obviously are immigrant entrepreneurs, and they face already so many other challenges with immigrant status, language barriers, general instability in such a difficult moment.”
‘Extremely dangerous situation’
The chaos Wednesday erupted a day after after four Minneapolis police officers were fired in the wake of the
video showing a white Minneapolis police officer with his knee on Floyd's neck Monday night. Handcuffed and face down, Floyd told the officer he couldn't breathe. He later died.
The video sparked waves of outrage here and across the county.
The anger is the result of long-simmering frustration over how people of color are treated by the criminal justice system, Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and activist, told MPR News Thursday morning.
“For black Americans, it’s very easy to look at the video and to know that something horrible and egregious and unlawful happened. It is not rocket science,” she said.
"White people who are conscious can look at that video and they can see the same things that we saw, which is a man murdered in broad daylight in front of our eyes, on video, and the officers — all four of them — their callous disregard for a black life and human life."
Earlier in the day Wednesday, Frey had
called for the officer to be prosecuted as he and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo urged peaceful protests.
By 9:30 p.m., Arradondo told Fox 9 News that while the vast majority of protesters were peaceful, there was looting happening as well as “significant property damage” and the “creation of Molotov cocktails.”
Looters carry items out of Target on Lake Street Wednesday.
Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
Protests, he said, “cannot be at the cost of others’ personal safety. We cannot have that.”
Later Wednesday night, the chief told MPR News that the demonstrations in Floyd’s name had been "hijacked" by some protesters and looters engaged in "criminal conduct."
Late Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz took to Twitter to urge people to leave the area around Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue because it had “evolved into an extremely dangerous situation.”
Another protest is set for 5 p.m. Thursday in downtown Minneapolis.
posted for fair use
Chaos gripped the Twin Cities Thursday night into Friday as peaceful protests gave way to spasms of looting and fire. Gov. Tim Walz called up the National Guard amid the unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody.
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