Business owners in Minneapolis have once again begun boarding up windows and storefronts as the city braces for the conclusion of the Derek Chauvin murder trial.
It’s a familiar scene for Minneapolis, which saw some of the worst rioting last summer of any American city in over two decades.
In the last several weeks, over 3,000 National Guard troops have been deployed into the city, with an additional 1,100 public safety officers. Authorities in the state call their mission Operation Safety Net.
On Sunday morning, two members of the National Guard were injured in a drive-by shooting. No serious injuries were reported, and Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke, who oversees the state’s National Guard, said the shooting “highlights the volatility and tension in our communities right now.”
Last week, Minneapolis public schools announced all learning would be virtual for the duration of the trial.
Much of the increased tension comes from the recent death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man who was mistakenly shot and killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb.
For days, riots have taken place in Brooklyn Center. City officials there recently implemented a 9 p.m. curfew in order to quell the violence that has resulted in looting and dozens of arrests.
The officer who killed Wright, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department, Kim Potter, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin’s defense attempted to sequester the jury after Wright’s death, but Judge Peter Cahill denied the request.
However, most attention from residents in the area remains on the fate of Chauvin, who faces two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter.
For several weeks, prosecutors have argued that the former Minneapolis police officer broke protocol and acted with reckless disregard for George Floyd’s life during an arrest last May.
Several current and former police officers, including the city’s police chief, all testified that Chauvin’s restraint technique was unnecessary.
On Monday, both sides introduced their closing arguments.
In his remarks, prosecutor Steve Schleicher highlighted the video of Floyd’s death — by far one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence introduced during the trial.
Schleicher was careful in reminding jurors that Chauvin’s guilt has nothing to do with politics and that a guilty verdict is not an indictment of policing generally.
“This is not a prosecution of the police. This is a prosecution of the defendant,” he said.
He added: “What the defendant did was not policing. What the defendant did was an assault. … He did what he did on purpose, and it killed George Floyd. That force for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. That killed George Floyd.”
Chauvin’s defense began by explaining the difficulty police officers have to make on a daily basis and that arrests are often fluid situations.
“They try to, a reasonable police officer, tries to predict or is at least cognizant and concerned about future behavior, based upon past behavior,” Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson said. “But the unpredictability of humans factors into the reasonable police officer’s analysis, too, because sometimes people take, reasonable police officers, take someone into custody with no problem, and suddenly they become a problem. It can change in an instant.”
Nelson then reiterated his argument that Floyd’s death was likely caused by a toxic combination of drugs and a heart condition. At one point in the trial, the defense called up an expert who surmised exhaust from the police car could have killed Floyd.
Rioting from last May cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars, with many of the buildings destroyed never replaced.
The riots also sparked a violent crime streak, with murders in Minneapolis reaching levels not seen for years.
Just before the trial began, a killing took place near George Floyd Square, named after the location of Floyd’s death. Although it was unrelated to the police, activists created an autonomous zone in the surrounding area and temporarily restricted access for whites.
Politicians in Washington have been closely watching the trial. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, traveled to Minneapolis last weekend and demanded a guilty verdict for Chauvin.
“I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,” Waters said, before asking protesters to get more “active [and] more confrontational.” “If we don’t [get it], we cannot go away. We’ve got to stay on the street.”
Multiple Republicans called for Waters’s expulsion from Congress over her remarks.
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In response, the White House distanced itself from Waters, with press secretary Jen Psaki saying President Joe Biden “always says protests must be peaceful. That’s what he continues to call for and what he continues to believe is the right way to approach responding.”
