MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Just outside the entrance to Smile Orthodontics, in a Minneapolis neighborhood of craft breweries and trendy shops, two soldiers in jungle camouflage and body armor stood guard Monday with assault rifles over their backs. Snow gusts blew around them. A few steps further, at the Iron Door Pub, three more National Guard soldiers and a Minneapolis police officer stood outside. A handful of other soldiers were scattered nearby, along with four camouflaged Humvees and a few police cars.
Across the street, a boarded-up building had been painted in large yellow letters: “BLACK LIFE IS OUT ALL YEAR ROUND.”
Adam Martinez was walking down the street when he paused to stare at the scene.
“It feels like this town has been occupied by the military,” said Martinez, a commercial painter who lives in nearby St. Paul. “This is so weird.”
More than 3,000 National Guard soldiers, along with policemen, state police, sheriffs’ deputies and other law enforcement personnel have flooded the city in recent days, with a verdict lurking in Derek Chauvin’s trial., the former police officer charged with murder in the death of George Floyd last year
But in the city that epitomizes the American debate on police killings, there are places in Minneapolis these days that can almost feel like a police state.
Many wonder: how much is too much?
Concrete barriers, chain-link fences, and barbed wire now surround parts of downtown Minneapolis, so authorities can quickly close the courthouse where the trial is being held. It has become common in recent days to pass convoys of desert-brown military vehicles on nearby highways and encounter armed men and women standing guard.
One day they’ll park their armored vehicles in front of the luxury kitchen store with $ 160 bread knives and $ 400 cooking pots. Next time they’ll be outside the Depression-era cinema, or the popular Mexican grocery store or the liquor store run by rioters. looted during the protests after Floyd’s death.
In the meantime, hundreds and perhaps thousands of shops and other buildings in the city have been boarded up, from Absolute Bail Bonds to glass walls in the center of office towers to Floyd’s 99 Barbershop.
Behind all security are the days of violence that began with protests over Floyd’s death. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz faced devastating criticism for not stepping up to deploy the National Guard. City officials estimate that the city suffered about $ 350 million in damage, mostly to commercial properties.
“They’re in a rock-hard place,” said Eli Silverman, professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a longtime political scientist. “You don’t want to over-militarize and make it look like you’ve turned a sovereign state into a police state. But on the other hand, you also have to be prepared ”, in case the protests flare up again.
More important than the size of the force, he said, is the expertise and planning behind it. For example, law enforcement leaders must provide 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 go into these things,” he said.
Minneapolis has a coordinated law enforcement plan called Operation Safety Net that oversees planning and law enforcement action.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, top law enforcement officials stood next to local community leaders and pledged to protect properties, allow peaceful protests, and try to ease tensions before demonstrations turn violent.
Recent history, however, has not been so peaceful. Just over a week ago, 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a black man, was murdered by the police during a traffic stop in the suburb of Brooklyn Center in Minneapolis.
Protests outside the city’s police station regularly resulted in violence, with protesters hitting water bottles and the occasional rock at a series of law enforcement officers, and law enforcement officers responding by going after protesters – and sometimes journalists – with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber balls.
“We know we have to do better. What has happened in recent days was not something we wanted, ”said Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson at the press conference. “But we had to take action to keep the community safe. And I will not shy away from anyone when it comes to keeping this province safe. ”
Many here question the promises of law enforcement, which has long had a troubled relationship with the city’s black community.
Burhan Israfael, a community organizer who lives in Cedar-Riverside, a Minneapolis neighborhood with one of the largest East African communities in the country, said the presence of military vehicles and armed soldiers was terrifying. He said the terror is striking particularly hard on the many immigrants in the city who have fled the violence for the safety of the United States.
“I don’t know anyone who’s been through and through something like this that feels comfortable coming out,” he said. “To be confronted with the violent image of someone dressed in all that camouflage, sort of parade around those huge guns – 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, almost sounded angry Monday when he spoke next to law enforcement officials.
“We’re having a rough time here, we all have emotions, fears and stress that most of us haven’t been able to properly express yet,” he said. “But let me make this clear: one way you don’t express what you have bound in you is through violence.”
Monday afternoon, shortly after the lawyers’ closing arguments and the Chauvin case went to the jury, about 300 protesters marched 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