MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Just outside the entrance to Smile Orthodontics, in a Minneapolis neighborhood with art breweries and trendy shops, two soldiers in jungle camouflage and body armor guarded Monday and hurled assault rifles over their backs. Snowflakes wave around them. A few steps from the Iron Door Pub, three more National Guard soldiers and a Minneapolis police officer stand in front of the street. A handful of other soldiers were scattered nearby, along with four camouflaged Humvees and a few police cars.
Across the street was a built-in building spray-painted in large yellow letters: ‘BLACK LIVES ARE ALL YEAR ROUND’.
Adam Martinez walked down the street as he paused briefly to stare at the scene.
“This city feels like it’s occupied by the military,” said Martinez, a commercial painter living in nearby St. Louis. Paul lives. “It’s so weird.”
More than 3,000 National Guard soldiers, along with police officers, state police, sheriff’s deputy officers and other law enforcers, have flooded the city in recent days, with a verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin., the former police officer charged with murder in the death last year of George Floyd.
But in the city that personified America’s debate on police killings, there are places in Minneapolis today that can feel almost like a police state.
This makes many people wonder: How much is too much?
Concrete barriers, chain fences and barbed wire are now ringing parts of downtown Minneapolis so authorities can quickly close the courthouse where the trial is being held. It has become normal over the past few days to overtake convoys of desert-brown military vehicles on nearby highways and guard over armed men and women.
One day, they park their armored vehicles in front of the luxury kitchen store with its $ 160 bread knives and $ 400 cooking pots. Next time, they’ll be outside the Depression-era movie theater, or the popular Mexican grocery store or liquor store looted by rioters during the protests that followed Floyd’s death.
Meanwhile, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of shops and other buildings have been planted on board the city, from Absolute Bail Bonds to glass-walled downtown office towers to Floyd’s 99 Barbershop.
Behind all the security are the days of violence that began with protests over Floyd’s death. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faced criticism for failing to step in to deploy the National Guard. According to city officials, the city suffered about $ 350 million in damage, mostly to commercial properties.
“They are in a difficult place,” said Eli Silverman, a professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a longtime police scientist. ‘You do not want to over-militarize and show that you have transformed a sovereign state into a police state. But on the other hand, you also have to be prepared, ”when protests resurface.
More important than the size of the force, he said, is the expertise and planning behind it. For example, law enforcement leaders must ensure proper crowd control training and that officers from other jurisdictions are under one command.
“It’s not just numbers, it’s the strategic decisions that are made in these things,” he said.
Minneapolis has a coordinated law enforcement plan called Operation Safety Net, which oversees responses to planning and law enforcement.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, top law enforcers stood with local community leaders and promised to protect property, allow peaceful protests and try to ease tensions before protests become violent.
Recent history, however, has not been so peaceful. Just over a week ago, 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a black man, was killed by police during a stop in the Brooklyn suburb of Minneapolis.
Protest rallies outside the city’s police headquarters regularly erupted in violence, with protesters rallying water bottles and occasionally disputing a crowd of law enforcement officials, and law enforcers responded by targeting protesters – and sometimes journalists. – with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.
“We know we have to do better. What happened over the past few days was not something we wanted, ”said Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson at the news conference. “But we had to act to keep the community safe. And I will never come back from anyone when it comes to keeping the province safe. ‘
Many here doubt the promises of law enforcement, which has long had a difficult relationship with the black community in the city.
Burhan Israfael, a community organizer living in Cedar-Riverside, a suburb of Minneapolis, with one of the largest East African communities in the country, said the presence of military vehicles and armed soldiers was frightening. He said the terror was hitting very sharply on the city’s many immigrants who had fled violence for the safety of the United States.
“I do not know anyone who has experienced and experienced something like this, and it feels comfortable to get outside,” he said. “To be confronted with the violent image of someone dressed in all the camouflage, parading on the massive weapons – is certainly disturbing.”
But many others believe that the city should be ready for trouble.
Reverend Ian Bethel, a leader in the city’s black church community, sounded almost angry on Monday when he spoke to law enforcement.
“We are here in a difficult time with all the emotions, anxiety and tension that most of us have not yet been able to express in a proper way,” he said. “But let me make it clear: one way you do not express what you have bound in you is through violence.”
Monday afternoon shortly after lawyers’ closing arguments and the Chauvin case to the jury, marched about 300 protesters outside the courthouse.
There was no sign of violence.
___
Associated Press authors Kathleen Hennessey and Mohamed Ibrahim contributed to this report.
___
Find AP’s full coverage of George Floyd’s death: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd