Derek chauvin not guilty4/2/2023 Protests outside the city’s police headquarters regularly spilled into violence, with protesters lobbing water bottles and the occasional rock at an array of law enforcement officers, and law enforcement responding by going after protesters – and sometimes journalists – with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. A little over a week ago, 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, was killed by police during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. Recent history, though, hasn’t been so peaceful. Speaking on Monday to reporters, top law-enforcement officials stood alongside local community leaders and vowed to protect property, allow peaceful protests, and try to de-escalate tensions before demonstrations turn violent. Minneapolis has a coordinated law-enforcement plan, called Operation Safety Net, that oversees planning and law-enforcement responses. “It’s not just numbers, it’s the strategic decisions that are incorporated in these things,” he said. Law enforcement leaders, for example, need to ensure proper crowd control training, and that officers from other jurisdictions are under a single command. More important than the size of the force, he said, is the expertise and planning behind it. But on the other hand, you have to be prepared, too,” in case protests flare again. “You don’t want to overmilitarize and make it appear that you’ve converted a sovereign state into a police state. “They’re between a rock and hard place,” said Eli Silverman, professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a longtime scholar of policing. City officials estimate the city suffered roughly $350 million in damage, mostly to commercial properties. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz faced withering criticism for not stepping in quicker to deploy the National Guard. Meanwhile hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of stores and other buildings have been boarded up across the city, from Absolute Bail Bonds to glass-walled downtown office towers to Floyd’s 99 Barbershop.īehind all the security are the days of violence that began with protests over Floyd’s death. The next they’ll be outside the Depression-era movie theater, or the popular Mexican grocery store or the liquor store ransacked by rioters during the protests that followed Floyd’s death. One day they’ll park their armored vehicles in front of the high-end kitchen store with its $160 bread knives and $400 cooking pots. It’s become normal in recent days to pass convoys of desert-tan military vehicles on nearby highways, and stumble across armed men and women standing guard. It leaves many wondering: How much is too much?Ĭoncrete barriers, chain-link fences and barbed wire now ring parts of downtown Minneapolis so that authorities can quickly close off the courthouse where the trial is being held. More than 3,000 National Guard soldiers, along with police officers, state police, sheriffs deputies and other law enforcement personnel have flooded the city in recent days, with a verdict looming in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged with murder in the death last year of George Floyd.īut in the city that has come to epitomize America’s debate over police killings, there are places today in Minneapolis that can feel almost like a police state. Chauvin was found guilty on all charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The jury of six white people and six Black or multiracial ones came back with its verdict Tuesday after about 10 hours of deliberations over two days.
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