Following reports of rioting and looting in Minneapolis, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz declared a state of emergency in the city on Aug. 27 and deployed both Minnesota State Patrol and Minnesota National Guard troops to assist law enforcement in restoring order. Minneapolis has been the center of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality ever since the killing of George Floyd on May 25.
According to the city’s Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, he requested assistance from the governor to help resolve the peace and order situation, adding that the unrest was more than the city’s police could handle. In addition, Frey also asked the Minnesota National Guard for help.
In response to the mayor’s request, Walz sent 150 State Patrol troopers and deployed the National Guard to assist. The State Patrol confirmed the governor’s order, saying that troopers will assist the Minneapolis Police Department in dispersing crowds to prevent looting and arresting any violators.
By the night of Aug. 27, order had been restored due to the combined efforts of local police, law enforcement, State Troopers and the National Guard. An 8 p.m. curfew has since been put into place in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.
Thirty people were arrested in Minneapolis within the first hour of the curfew with one illegal firearm seized, according to police spokesperson John Elder. Meanwhile, St. Paul reported no arrests made late Thursday.
Incident that triggered riots was actually a suicide, not homicide
The riots stemmed from an alleged homicide on August 26 involving a black victim who was supposedly shot by police. Police authorities, however, have said that the perpetrator shot and killed himself while being approached by police and that the officers did not use any weapons.
Minneapolis PD Chief Medaria Arradondo told reporters that false rumors about the suspect’s death at the hands of police were spread on social media. This prompted authorities to release video footage from city cameras proving that it was a suicide.
Arradondo also requested help from Nekima Levy Armstrong, an attorney and civil rights activist in the city, to circulate the video footage of the suspect’s death. Armstrong wasted no time by showing people the footage from her phone and posting on social media that it was clearly a suicide. She added that things would have gotten worse if there was no footage, which was necessary to quell the misinformation surrounding the incident, even though it was distressing to look at.
Mayor Frey agreed with Armstrong on releasing the video. In an Aug. 27 press conference, he said that the community’s distrust towards law enforcement made it a necessity to make the video public despite its disturbing nature. He further added that the video footage was released within 90 minutes after the incident happened.
Nevertheless, the current unrest in Minneapolis mirrored the riots that happened in the city a few months ago after Black Lives Matter protests were held in light of George Floyd’s death at the hands of local police. Some of these demonstrations devolved into chaos and unrest that some mayors requested assistance from the state governor to deploy additional manpower.
In Chicago, a group of aldermen wrote a letter to Republican Gov. J.B. Pritzker requesting the declaration of a state of emergency and the deployment of the Illinois National Guard to help law enforcement quell rioting and unrest. Democratic City Mayor Lori Lightfoot, however, expressed her opposition to deploying the National Guard there.
More news about the unrest and violence that come with Black Lives Matter protests can be found at Rioting.news.
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