On the Ground…

One Officers story from the Minneapolis Riots

Editors Note: This is hopefully the first of more stories from the actual events that transpired. These are all anecdotal from the Officer, who will remain anonymous, perspective and may not reflect everything that transpired across the city. They are telling things from their perspective and what they experienced. This should not in any way reflect the whole story of the Minneapolis Riots but just theirs. I have tried to keep things as unedited as possible so their story may be relayed. I want to thank the officer for sharing their story. I have bolded the questions I asked.

First for context could you tell me as best as you can your role? 

I am assigned to specialty Unit within the Minneapolis Police Department. We don’t conduct routine 911 response or routine patrols. That’s to provide some context as to why our team was assigned to where they were. Since we aren’t assigned to a specific precinct, we are able to respond to unique circumstances throughout the city.

When Floyd’s murder was first gathering attention and reactions, our boss told us to get our riot gear ready (hats and bats) and be ready to respond to where we’re needed. As things escalated, we were placed into a “strike team”. This unit comprised of our team members and several members of the SWAT team. This provided us access to more less lethal munitions and also gave us a small tactical team to cover us in the case we were in a lethal encounter.

Our strike team was given several different missions during the riots but the main function was to be a sort of quick response team that could be mobile and quickly respond to areas that needed officers.

What was your initial thoughts after the events thaT caused George Floyds Death?

To be blunt, I initially heard what happened and thought “just another use of force incident that’ll get misunderstood”. I finally watched the full video and was shocked. I can defend a lot of use of force incidents, but this…this was indefensible. I didn’t know any of the officers involved in this incident so I cannot attest to their mind set or level of training. I only had passing interactions with 2 of the younger officers while assisting in their firearms training. I haven’t met another cop yet, on my department and others, that have defended this act. It’s been universally condemned in the police community.

In your words walk me through what you saw and experienced during the escalation?

This could go on for a few hundred pages and to be honest, I’ve worked so many hours by now that all of the days have blended together. I’ll try and be concise. Day 1 was like most other protests. There was anger and lots of screaming. There was a large protest at the site of Floyd’s murder. There were probably close to a couple thousand people there at the time. The officers in the third precinct were staying away from the protest for obvious reasons.

A couple hours into the protest I heard that some officers in a squad had driven into the protest to answer a 911 call. Several seconds later, the officers were screaming for help and that they needed to be extracted from the area due to protesters surrounding their squad and becoming hostile. I can’t say for sure what happened to those officers to say the protesters were hostile since I was not on scene and did not talk to them afterwards.

Once the officers started yelling for backup, we started to mobilize our strike team to get them out of there. There was a lag in orders from command due to less than stellar communication and lack of leadership (more on that later). When we finally got the order to go in and get those cops out of there, we headed in with several squads and a lot of other cops.

As soon as I exited the squad, I was greeted by a mass of angry people. We were immediately taking rocks and bottles being thrown at us. We forced a path to the officers and opened up a route for them to get out of the area. We ran back to our squads to get out of there as quickly as possible. While we were getting out of there, squads were getting hit with rocks and multiple windows were broken out as were retreated. The situation got worse after we left and the crowd at the protest began to march towards the 3rd precinct, which already had a large amount of people there protesting.

We stood by with our strike team at the 3rd precinct and held the line while the crowd escalated. It started with water bottles and then quickly escalated to rocks and glass bottles. We held the line but started to hear rumors of the administration (admin) making plans to abandon the 3rd precinct. We all got hit multiple times with objects almost all of us had cuts and bruises to show for it. One of my team mates had a glass bottle hit him in the face, thankfully he was wearing his gas mask, but he still suffered a bloody nose, a bruised face and damage to his teeth.

The second and third night, things escalated even further. Now we were taking rocks and frozen water bottles constantly, along with large aerial fireworks. They were being thrown in large crowds and they were using protesters with their hands up as cover. This prevented us from hitting the violent offenders with 40mm impact rounds. Thousands of people quickly showed up and started taking over the Target parking lot, across from the 3rd precinct.

We pushed the protester line back to the target parking lot and were able to hold them with CS gas. This was the only really effective measure we had since it dispersed the larger crowds while the 40mm rounds were only good for targeting individuals that constantly hid in a crowd. We were able to hear the SWAT teams request permission via radio to use the CS rounds. It took several pleas from the SWAT team leaders on the ground to get permission to use CS gas. When permission was finally given, they were effective at keeping larger crowds at bay and from approaching the 3rd precinct perimeter.

It should be noted that several times during this, we were told that the rioters were monitoring our radio channels and knew of all our decisions as they were being aired. This was a constant operational security problem.

After holding for several hours, we received the word that we were to abandon the third precinct and evacuate the area. We pulled back to the squads and other transport vehicles we had in the precinct lot. Once we started doing this, the rioters immediately reacted and started to push against our barriers and try to force their way into our perimeter. It was absolute chaos as we tried hastily to get an evacuation plan in place and get all cops accounted for.

Once we had everyone, we were told to move out. The gate was still locked at the parking lot entrance so officers in the first vehicle had to ram the gate to get out of the lot. Several vehicles led the convoy with 30-40 officers on foot in the middle followed by more squads and a SWAT team element guarding their retreat. The rioters were literally on our heels as we evacuated from the lot. They were continuing to throw items at us and he heard sporadic gun fire directed at us.

It was pretty surreal as we retreated. I was on foot and providing cover to the officers in the middle of the convoy as we marched away. It was chaotic and disorganized but all officers were accounted for and evacuated to another police facility.

As I’m writing this, I’m remembering more and more details. I apologize if some of this is out of order. While defending the 3rd precinct, before it fell, we were holding the line for quite a while. Another of my partners had a large rock thrown at him while I was standing next to him. The rock hit his thumb and instantly started bleeding profusely. I got him into our medical area inside the precinct and learned that the tendon on his thumb had been severed and required surgery. He’s still recovering as I write this.

After the precinct fell, we were back in the area trying the secure parts of the burnt out buildings. We had a vehicle try and run my team over. It missed on its first pass and came back for another. I stopped just short of my team as we were scrambling for cover. The car turned its lights off and revved its engine at us like it was preparing for another pass. A SWAT team element was on scene and were ready to fire on the vehicle if started towards us again. Luckily, the driver thought twice and sped out of the area. Officers later caught that driver after he fled both in his car and then on foot. When apprehended, he said it was his twin brother driving and not him…

The third night (I think?) is when we started to push back. We were able to push back in areas in downtown and were fairly successful in preventing mass damage there. We then moved to the 5th precinct to defend that. The precinct was surrounded by several thousand protesters and rioters. Once the perimeter was starting to be breached, we got the order to move in with state patrol and other resources. We pushed back hard and slowly took back the area around the 5th precinct. Once the area was secured, it turned into us roving around and looking for pockets of looters and rioters. This continued until the break of dawn a couple of nights in a row.

I lost count how many times were fired at by both handguns and rifles. One of our SWAT team elements took several rounds in their transport van from an AK47. They managed to get out their van fast enough and were able to apprehend the shooter. Amazingly, no one was shot.

Once the curfew took place, we shifted back into a type of mobile response unit. We would respond to areas where there were reports of looters and rioters. Again, this lasted well into the early morning hours.

What do you believe went well and what were areas of failure from leadership during the past week?

Not much of anything went well. The communication was compromised and terrible from a command level. The chain of command was painfully slow and unwieldy. Permission to use chemical irritants to help disperse large crowds took too much time and left officers in danger. We heard absolutely nothing from our chief during this and that added to our low morale, along with the obvious hatred directed at us and having to abandon our precinct.

What went well was the leaders on the ground at the Sgt level and some lieutenants. Also, the officers I served next to during this performed beyond expectations. They kept level heads and never wanted to quit. I’m super proud to have worked with them during this gong show and they’ll never get the recognition they deserve for it.

This is also complicated topic and I can only offer what I perceived as weaknesses and failed responses. I’m not in the command post trying to organize over a thousand officers during this riot. I cant speak to those officers mind set and the reasons for some of their decisions. I’m pretty sure there will be extensive after action reports that will shed light on who made what commands and for what reasons they were made.

There is a lot of blaming of outside elements. What was/has been your experience been in any outside agendas/agents that fomented the destructive behavior?

This is a tough one for me to answer. It’s all very anecdotal since I can only talk about what I saw and did when this is a city wide event. As for outside agitators, I can’t say for sure. Of the actual arrests I made, about 60% were from the city or just outside it. There were a lot of people from further outside the metro area and only a couple of people that were out of state. Again, this is just what I witnessed with my strike team.

One aspect I can confidently speak to is the false notion that this was fomented by white supremacists. I talked to hundreds of cops and asked as many as I could and no one has seen any white nationalists or white supremacists causing damage or violence. I was extremely upset that some city leaders were perpetuating this myth even after it was debunked by state agencies even. It made our job more difficult by several factors.

Anything you want to share that you feel is important that people from the outside should know about what is actually happening on the ground.

I just want to reiterate that the officers on the ground have been absolutely outstanding in this. They’ve displayed courage and character that no one will see because of the circumstances. All of the cops on the ground here want nothing more than to protect this city and have real justice for Floyd. No one has defended that former cop’s actions, and no one wants bad cops out of our ranks more than other cops.

Our city leadership needs to be held accountable for their abject failures and we need to be held accountable for ours as well. I live and work in this city and it breaks my heart to be in this position. I’ve had people threaten me by name. I had to have my wife quickly pack up and leave the house for several days in the middle of this due to death threats and a possible leak of our personal information. I had one person on Facebook attempt to dox me when they learned that I was a Minneapolis officer.

This has caused me to reconsider living in the city…my city…it’s heart breaking to both me and my wife.