Minneapolis Has Failed the Community in Regards to Emergency Preparedness
How the city failed its community in a time of emergency
By: Nikhil Kumaran
Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, Minneapolis was a hotspot for local, state, and national news. Following the murder of George Floyd, the city broke into protests and riots that lasted 10 days. A report, conducted by an outside risk management firm, established that Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, failed to appropriately implement the proper emergency protocols when responding to these protests and riots.
According to the report, the city’s emergency operations plan is “well written, comprehensive, and consistent with nationally recognized practices,” but following the murder of Floyd, Minneapolis fell short in a number of ways.
The most prominent failure was the lack of communication. Police made inconsistent choices about using “less-lethal” weapons as crowd dispersants, and protesters were often met with a “no questions asked” approach. To prepare the report, consultants sifted through hours of body camera footage that showed officers using weapons from rubber bullets to tear gas. This, of course, did not help the already shattered relationship between the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and the public.
In a city council meeting, Chad McGinty, a former law enforcement officer, said that the lack of communication left “first responders with limited guidance.” Without any direction from leaders, Hennepin County fell into days of curfew, clashes between protestors and police, and property damage. This caused $500 million of damage in 10 days, according to the Star Tribune.
The report references interviewees, consisting of community members and small business owners, who say that it is “clear that there was no plan [and] no guidance.” They also say that it “felt like nobody was in charge—it was a state of emergency—the mayor and police chief would have been in charge, but they were in opposition to the City Council. It was lawless.”
This all resulted in a severe loss of trust in MPD.
Following the release of the report, many community members have said that their trust in both the government and the police is at an all-time low. Hearing the horror stories from protesters (including many students at the University of Minnesota) about dousing their eyes with milk to lessen the effects of tear gas was crazy to me. But everyone’s reactions were different then because we assumed those police officers were under orders given by the city.
However, this report tells us that this simply wasn’t the case, which is so much more frustrating.
In a statement to the Star Tribune, Frey said that he has asked city staff to create a plan for implementing the report’s recommendations. But at this point, we have to ask: how much can we trust Frey’s promises?
My skepticism comes from Frey’s handling of the highly controversial “no-knock warrants,” one of which resulted in Amir Locke’s death. Many critics say that Frey lied about “banning” these no-knock warrants, according to MPR News. Following his announcement, the MPD used no-knock warrants dozens of times and asked for at least 90 of them, according to Minnpost.
This report felt very lenient towards the police and directed the blame towards Frey. Because the report was conducted by former officers, I can understand why the language seemed sympathetic towards the MPD. For example, in the report, MPD personnel described emergency operations training facility operations as “chaotic and an embarrassment to the MPD,” while taking minimal accountability for their actions.
I remember watching the infamous bodycam footage of police officers talking about “hunting” protesters. I was disgusted as I heard them further discuss slashing people’s tires and laughing. I don’t think that this attitude came solely from the lack of direction from Frey. This is an attitude within MPD.
Protesters felt abandoned by the city.
Business owners felt abandoned by the city.
The community felt abandoned by the city.
Minneapolis has some serious work to do.