In the spring of 2020, after people had taken to the streets in Minneapolis, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz admitted there was an “abject failure” in the response to the rioters who burned businesses and a police precinct.
Walz, now the Democrats’ 2024 vice presidential nominee, said during a press conference addressing the riots, “Minneapolis and St. Paul are on fire. The fire is still smoldering in our streets. The ashes are symbolic of decades and generations of pain, of anguish unheard,” PBS reported. He added that he received a call from a state senator who told him that her district was “on fire, no police, no firefighters, no social control, constituents locked in houses wondering what they were going to do.”
“That is an abject failure that cannot happen,” Walz added.
The governor, who had the authority to activate the National Guard, then shifted the responsibility to city leaders to quell the riots, saying requests for assistance from city leaders “never came.” After a Minneapolis police precinct was burning, Walz finally stepped in and took action, according to PBS.
The New York Times reported that Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey requested assistance from Walz two days after Floyd’s death as protests turned violent. The Minneapolis police chief also sent a written request to Walz for 600 National Guard troops hours after Frey reached out to the governor. However, it wasn’t until the next afternoon that the Minnesota governor issued an executive order authorizing the National Guard to be dispatched to Minneapolis.
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“Governor Walz had the ability and duty to use force and law enforcement to stop criminal violence, but he did not,” stated a 2020 Minnesota State Senate report on the response to the riots. “Governor Walz was not willing to do what was necessary to stop the rioting right away because he was having a philosophical debate about whether the use of force should be used to stop violence.”
Minneapolis officials estimated the rioting and looting in 2020 cost the city around $55 million in damages. Rioters set fire to at least 220 buildings following George Floyd’s death in police custody. Estimates in 2021, a year after the riots, put the total cost of damage to both Minneapolis and St. Paul at $500 million, according to the Star Tribune. Many of the businesses damaged in the riots remained closed a year after the unrest.
