Minneapolis won’t have a curfew Friday night but will remain under a state of emergency until Monday morning, as the city tries to brace for the potential for more unrest.
Mayor Jacob Frey asked the City Council to extend the local emergency so they can call another curfew if the circumstances change and one is warranted.
“To be clear: The goal is to not have to enact additional curfews,” Frey said at the City Council meeting Friday morning. He asked council members to extend the state of emergency so they can remain prepared “if a precarious situation does arise.”
As they make decisions about how to protect the city during a summer of unrest, Minneapolis’ elected leaders are trying to balance the concerns of residents who want a larger law enforcement presence to prevent rioting and looting against the pain that triggers in communities that have historically been overpoliced.
Those concerns bubbled up during Friday morning’s City Council meeting, as elected officials weighed a variety of public safety issues: how to respond after this week’s unrest, whether to approve a temporary site for the Third Precinct that burned in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, and whether to revoke a ban that makes it difficult for business owners to place some types of protective coverings over their stores’ windows.
Many of those decisions will ultimately require collaboration between Frey and City Council.
In Minneapolis, the mayor can declare a state of emergency, which triggers the ability to institute a curfew. If the city wants that state of emergency to remain in effect for more than 72 hours, the City Council must ratify that.
Frey declared a temporary emergency Wednesday night after angry crowds gathered on Nicollet Mall following false social media reports that police had killed a man. The man died by suicide while police approached him in connection with a homicide.
That emergency would have expired Saturday night, but council agreed to extend it to Monday morning. Before they did, though, some council members asked Frey to clarify the point of curfews that have been used during unrest that has happened at various points since Floyd’s death.
Council Member Phillipe Cunningham, who represents part of the North Side, which has been hit particularly hard by a recent spike in violent crime, asked the mayor whether the point of curfew was to protect people’s safety or protect people’s property.
“I just want to name, for the record, that it makes us feel a certain kind of way on the North Side when it feels that the property of downtown has a larger priority than our lives here in north Minneapolis,” Cunningham said, adding that some people were shot during curfew.
Frey said the purpose of curfew is to protect people, prevent property damage and allow police to more easily distinguish peaceful protesters from arsonists and other destructive rioters. He asked Cunningham to clarify whether they wanted more law enforcement on the North Side.
“No,” Cunningham said, adding later: “I just wanted to name that juxtaposition of experience.”
The city’s leaders making decisions about public safety have heard from people whose experiences with law enforcement vary greatly.
The City Council had been expected to vote Friday on a lease for a temporary site for the Third Precinct at 2633 Minnehaha Ave. They decided to take more time to review that after Council Member Cam Gordon, who represents the area, said some resident raised concerns about their safety, noting the police precincts have been a focal points for protests and destruction.
“Probably, if this was a year ago, this wouldn’t have raised the same concerns,” Gordon said, “but everything about community safety has changed right now in the city of Minneapolis since the killing of George Floyd, and people are anxious to get involved and engaged and having the discussions about what the new community safety is.”
Separately, Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins and Council Member Lisa Goodman announced that they are working on a proposal that would make it easier for business owners to place retractable coverings over their windows. Some business owners have said they are frustrated by a city ordinance the prohibits them from installing security shutters on the outside of their businesses, noting that windows broken during unrest can cost thousands of dollars to replace.
“I do think this extraordinary time in our history calls for responsive flexibility from the City Council to be able to really re-look at these ordinances that may or may not necessarily serve our community in the ways that we want them to now,” Jenkins said.
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