Two years after George Floyd, Minneapolis practiced a better response
By Mike Kaszuba
More than two years after George Floyd’s murder touched off riots, police and city officials in Minneapolis braced for another round of civil unrest.
A delivery truck driving through the Hawthorne neighborhood in Minneapolis had struck a group of children. Two children were dead at the scene. A half hour later, a crowd estimated at 300 had gathered – and would later swell to 3,000. The delivery truck company office was set afire. Looting had begun. Media outlets reported that busloads of protestors were being recruited to converge on the city. City officials debated when to ask for help from the National Guard.
A social media post, stirring already-inflamed emotions, called the incident an “act of racially motivated terrorism.”
The incident was not real – but instead was an under-the-radar police exercise conducted in October 2022. The goal was to see if Minneapolis could better respond to the type of riots that had made worldwide headlines following Floyd’s murder by police after a traffic stop in May 2020.
Public Record Media (PRM), a non-profit based in Saint Paul, obtained a 55-page draft report on the exercise which attempted to address the response and communication breakdowns that marked the reaction by police and city officials to Floyd’s death. Though the city released the report as part of a public data request by PRM, the city largely did not answer related questions about the exercise, including whether other, similar exercises had been held after Floyd’s death or whether a critique of the police response in the 2022 exercise was performed.
The release of the report on the exercise comes as Minneapolis observes the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death and the ensuing riots.
The exercise included, among other things, a one-page, sample form that the mayor of Minneapolis would fill out to formally request the National Guard – a major point of controversy between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and city and state officials that led to delays in deploying troops during the response to Floyd’s death.
The form stated, for example, that “The City of Minneapolis is requesting that the National Guard deployment start on [date], [20XX] and end on [date], [20XX].
“The National Guard officer will stage, work and operate their mission at the following [designated locations],” the deployment request stated.
The mayor, according to exercise guidelines, would likely convene an “emergency cabinet”, weigh whether to impose a curfew and direct city officials, if necessary, to request the National Guard “per state guidelines.”
The exercise was coordinated by the city’s Office of Emergency Management, and stressed that the city had procedures in place to deal with such real-life emergencies. The exercise, according to the city report, would evaluate the “applicable City departments [in their response] to and [management of] a civil disturbance incident.”
The exercise meanwhile bluntly outlined the challenges Minneapolis officials would face in the initial hours of the hypothetical episode of civil unrest – many of which they faced in the early hours after Floyd’s death.
“This operational plan will serve as the mechanism to establish and support initial response operations and unified command during a large-scale civil disturbance,” the document stated.
Half of city’s fire districts would need police protection
In blunt language, the exercise stated that there would likely be no state mutual aid for 48 to 72 hours, the surrounding six-county metro area would not have law enforcement ready to assist and that three of the city’s six fire districts would need police protection. It added that there would be “scarce resource availability for extended operational periods” – meaning police would not be able to respond to other crime in the city as the riots unfolded.
It would take three days to mobilize the National Guard, participants in the exercise were told.
“Civil disturbance can spread from one neighborhood to the next and rapidly expand with little or no warning and may cause death, injury and damage,” the document added.
As part of the exercise, police were told to expect “overwhelming interest from the media.”
The exercise told participants that the police priorities should include preserving life, dispersing “disorderly and threatening crowds” and arresting law violators, including those responsible for property damage.
Other priorities, the exercise stated, should include upholding the “constitutional rights of free speech and assembly” and protecting “private businesses, residential homes and vital facilities.”
The priorities were noteworthy because of what had happened – and had gone wrong -- during the May 2020 riots.
In a controversial decision during the height of the riots, the 3rd precinct police headquarters in south Minneapolis was abandoned by police – a decision made by Frey, and the city’s police chief – as protestors tried to gain entry. Later, protestors set the building on fire. “In the decision between a building and life or death we decided to evacuate,” the mayor explained.
In addition, multiple journalists covering the riots in 2020 reported being detained and also injured, mostly by police, according to a list kept by the University of Minnesota’s journalism school.
In one example, Minneapolis Star Tribune report Chris Serres said he was hit by a rubber bullet. “I was twice ordered at gunpoint by Minneapolis police to hit the ground, warned that if I moved ‘an inch’ I’d be shot,” Serres said in a tweet, according to the journalism school. “This after being teargassed and hit in the groin by rubber bullet. [Waving] a Star Tribune press badge made no difference.”
Linda Tirado, a photo journalist covering the riots, said she was partially blinded when she was shot in the eye by police and, in 2024, entered hospice because of her injuries.
An “operational plan” for the October 2022 exercise meanwhile listed the weapons police would use for crowd control. Among them: “Chemical aerosols, chemical munitions or projectiles, [smoke] munitions or projectiles, marking rounds (40mm direct, exact or blunt impact projectiles or rounds), rubber bullets, ASP batons, riot sticks (as impact weapons), and light sound distraction devices (inert, CS, OC or CN blast balls).”
Seven city departments took part in the exercise, which took place on a Tuesday in October 2022, and included the city’s 911 emergency communications center, the office of emergency management, the city’s fire and police departments, the office of neighborhood safety and the city coordinator’s division of race and equity.
The documents obtained by PRM did not indicate how widely city officials disseminated the results of the exercise.
But the draft report stated that “the submission of after-action reports will be used as a method of documenting key successes and determining areas of improvement for future large-scale civil disturbance events.”
The exercise did however give its participants plenty to react to.
Prepare for looting in six neighborhoods
By 3 a.m. – 10 hours after the hypothetical incident began – police were told there were protests throughout the city, and random fires being set. Looting was occurring in six adjoining neighborhoods. Several truck terminals were set on fire.
In a follow-up data request after receiving the exercise report, PRM asked for correspondence among city officials related to the exercise – and details regarding any other so-called “tabletop exercises” that had been held following Floyd’s death.
In response, the city released three pages of data, and added that it had no other records on the exercise but that some data was being legally redacted under state law. The data that was released showed that a final planning meeting for the October 2022 was held in May of that year, five months before the event.
Even though more than two years had passed since the riots, the October 2022 civil unrest exercise came as Minneapolis officials were still dealing with the fall out.
Floyd’s death came on Monday, May 25, 2020 when he was stopped outside a convenience store in south Minneapolis and a police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for approximately eight minutes as he died. The episode, which was recorded on video, quickly went viral, prompting large-scale protests that ultimately led to thousands of Minnesota National Guard members being deployed in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Looting and arson took place across large areas of the Twin Cities. Minneapolis’ Third Precinct police station was attacked by protestors, abandoned by police and largely destroyed in a fire. At least two deaths occurred and more than 1,500 local businesses reported an estimated $500 million in damages.
Protests quickly spread across the country. At that point then-President Trump, who criticized the protests and Frey’s response, threatened to use active-duty federal soldiers to engage the protestors. “I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership,” Trump tweeted. His top military officials, including then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, cautioned against using federal military forces. None were subsequently deployed.
In a closely-watched trial that followed, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on state charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was also sentenced on federal charges of denying Floyd – who was captured on video saying, “I can’t breathe” – his civil rights.
In March 2022, seven months before the tabletop exercise, an 86-page after-action report heavily criticized the city’s response during the 2020 riots.
The report blamed Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, for failing to follow the city’s “well-written” and “comprehensive” emergency plans, said that police were inconsistent in using controversial munitions on crowds and added that a breakdown in communications and planning left residents feeling abandoned.
The report added that there was no clear evidence that police told people to disperse before firing at protestors and that, because of a lack of accountability and supervisory oversight, it was difficult to determine the amount of munitions used by police.
“There was a vast, vast void in consistent rules of engagement and control” regarding the use of chemical munitions and less-lethal rounds of munitions, one of the report’s researchers told Minneapolis City Council members, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Frey promised quick action to fix the problems identified in the report.
As the exercise neared, city grappled with riot fallout, related issues
But Minneapolis also faced other issues as police held the riot exercise in October 2022.
The city’s first-ever community safety commissioner, a position created after Floyd’s death, found himself embroiled in a social media argument with citizens about policing tactics just two weeks before the exercise.
Cedric Alexander, the community safety commissioner, responded to a social media post asking why empty city police cars were parked along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Wrote Alexander: “It shows an effort to increase police visibility throughout downtown and across the city if you didn’t see them you would complain about that wouldn’t you. Enough of the two faced talking from both sides of your mouth already.”
Alexander publicly apologized for his social media statements, but retired less than a year later.
“The twitter event is a mere distraction that I won’t allow to take me off course of our daily achievements towards public safety,” Alexander wrote in an Oct. 8, 2022 email to a local business leader.
“Lesson learned for me,” Alexander continued in the email obtained by PRM. “Don’t fight with others just continue to go do the work.”
The “tabletop exercise” was held on Oct. 25, 2022 – 16 days before the city’s police force faced more change with the swearing in of Brian O’Hara, its new police chief.
The more than 600 pages of documents obtained by PRM highlighted other issues – some of them related to the riots – the city continued to deal with.
The documents contained statistics that showed a city police department still reeling from Floyd’s death and the civil unrest. For example, staffing shortages continued in the 9-1-1 police call center. A mid-November 2022 report showed that there were 29 unfilled positions in the 85-person office. Meetings, meanwhile, were being held to boost morale, according to the documents.
In that same week in mid-November 2022, police responded to 3,245 incidents, including 2,557 9-1-1 calls. In addition, a police initiative known as Operation Endeavor had the previous weekend confiscated 23 guns, leading to 30 arrests.
In a two-year period following the riots and ending in 2022, a KSTP-TV, Ch. 5 report showed that 273 city police officers had left the department.
While not directly addressing what went wrong during the 2020 riots, the 2022 exercise stressed protocols for when – and how -- city officials should request the National Guard in the future. At the time of the riots, city and state officials gave conflicting accounts of when the National Guard was requested, and why it took them so long to deploy.
Events however also had moved faster in 2020 than Frey, Walz and other officials could react to them. On Thursday, May 28, as the need for the National Guard was still being finalized, Minneapolis police abandoned the 3rd precinct headquarters, which was then taken over by protestors.
Walz later criticized the “abject failure” of the city’s response, and said he would take control of the riot response. “I will assume responsibility,” he said.
Frey responded: “During a crisis is no time to point fingers and I refuse to do that.”
(Supporting documents for this article can be accessed by contacting Public Record Media at admin@publicrecordmedia.org , or at 651-556-1381)