After George Floyd’s death, pent-up frustrations, provocateurs and inexperienced leadership led to mayhem for three nights.
Two days after George Floyd died, the police chief of Minneapolis called the mayor around dinnertime. He needed help. What had begun as peaceful protests outside the Third Police Precinct was turning into mayhem.
“He said, ‘The Target is getting looted. We are not going to be able to handle this on our own,’” recalled Mayor Jacob Frey, who called Gov. Tim Walz, and asked for the National Guard.
But when Governor Walz asked for details on where to send soldiers, he was surprised to learn the city had no plan.
As the night wore on, dozens of buildings burst into flames, without a fire crew in sight. A six-story apartment building that was still under construction collapsed into a ball of fire. A high-tech factory was set ablaze. Residents called 911 desperate for help, but dispatchers were overwhelmed.
Over three nights, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage. The police precinct house itself was set on fire, after the mayor gave orders to evacuate the building. A month later, the city is still struggling to understand what happened and why: Not since the 1992 unrest in Los Angeles has an American city suffered such destructive riots.
The vast majority of protesters in Minneapolis, like others around the country, marched peacefully, and some tried to intervene to stop the destruction. To many, the damage was an understandable response to years of injustice at the hands of Minneapolis police, an explosion of anger that activists had warned was coming if the city did not reform law enforcement.
At the same time, it struck a close-knit, civic-minded community that was already struggling under the coronavirus pandemic. Fires and looting destroyed hundreds of businesses, among them a worker-owned bicycle co-op, a historic diner run by a husband and wife, and the new headquarters of a nonprofit organization that works with Native American teens.
A close examination of the events, including interviews with more than two dozen elected officials, activists, business owners and residents, suggests at least some of the destruction resulted from a breakdown in governance. The mayor and other local leaders, many of them relatively new to their roles, failed to anticipate the intensity of the unrest or put together an effective plan to counter it.
Mr. Frey has struggled to regain the confidence of Minneapolis residents. He has been slammed by business owners for not doing enough to protect their property. He has been pilloried by the police for ordering the abandonment of the precinct house. And he’s been booed and heckled by activists because he doesn’t support their demand to dismantle the police department.
When asked about his handling of the looting and fires, Mr. Frey said that in the moment he was faced with a series of impossible choices, all of them bad.
“I hope that in years and decades from now, we can look back at this time of great trauma and turmoil and recognize it as the moment where we rose up, united in purpose and finally created the change that we all envision,” Mr. Frey said.
And he stressed the unprecedented nature of the crisis — three nights of rioting in the midst of a pandemic. “There is no playbook for this,” he said.
The day after George Floyd died, Mr. Frey announced that all four officers involved had been fired. He also called for criminal charges to be filed.
“Whatever the investigation reveals, it does not change the simple truth that he should be with us this morning,” Mr. Frey said of Mr. Floyd in emotional remarks early Tuesday morning, standing next to the police chief, Medaria Arradondo. “Being Black in America should not be a death sentence.”
His swift, unequivocal statement won praise from activists and even some seasoned politicians. But others said the move dangerously alienated rank-and-file officers.
“Once Frey comes out and basically sides with the protesters, he has sent the signal that the police are on their own,” said Lawrence Jacobs, professor of public policy at the University of Minnesota. “If you are going to say something like that, you have to have a plan for what is going to happen, because you have now inflamed both sides of the issue.”
Elected two-and-a-half years earlier, at the age of 36, Mr. Frey had promised to remake the city’s public image after years of negative news stories about high-profile police killings. His meteoric rise in Minnesota politics stemmed from his ability to talk the language of social justice while at the same time wooing the business community with his charisma.
“I’m disgusted that Minneapolis is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons,” he said in a campaign ad in 2017. “Police shootings. Intolerance and inequality.”
His victory over his predecessor, Betsy Hodges, was all the more extraordinary, given his relatively recent ties to the city. A Northern Virginia native who was a professional runner for years, Mr.
