Is there any question about this? Not among the people who lived through it, especially the law-enforcement agencies in the Twin Cities in May and June of 2020. Furthermore, the record itself offers unusual clarity on how the riots unfolded, and how the response ... didn't.
Now that Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz as her running mate, however, the media suddenly seems very uninterested in delving into Walz' actual record as an executive in a crisis. They prefer to play Republicans Pounce!™ with his fabulist claims of combat duty in the National Guard, which former educator Walz now chalks up tp "bad grammar." Almost no media outlet has even bothered to remind people how Walz sat on his hands for nearly five days before finally authorizing the National Guard to restore order in Minneapolis -- days after allowing rioters to destroy the Minneapolis PD's Third Precinct building.
The Free Press' Leighton Woodhouse does ask the question, although he errs a bit on the timing:
Why did it take three days after Floyd was killed for the state of Minnesota to send in the National Guard to quell the violence and destruction? It’s a question that the people of Minneapolis are still asking.
That's not precisely correct. George Floyd died on May 25, and the rioting began late on May 26. On day 3 of the riot, May 28, Walz finally activated the National Guard, but only to provide force protection for fire and police personnel. Walz specifically turned down a Pentagon offer to deploy military-police units, which could have helped restore order on the streets of Minneapolis. It wasn't until May 30, on the fifth day of rioting and the morning after the mobs burned the Third Precinct to the ground, that Walz finally ordered full mobilization of the National Guard to restore order.
At that time, Walz admitted that he was in over his head in dealing with the rioters, who had taken on the characteristics of a "military operation." The Pentagon certainly understood that immediately and had tried to get both Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey to take action to stop it. Instead, Walz refused to authorize the Guard to take control of the streets, which resulted in their retreat from the Third Precinct along with the Minneapolis police officers who had been trapped in the building -- and who barely escaped with their lives.
If Walz had acted within the first hours of the riot to put it down, that building -- and others -- would still be standing. Walz instead danced around for days, nearly performing a literal version of the famous saying about Nero and Rome, until he had no choice but to act. Two people died in the rioting and the bill for damage done went well over a billion dollars.
And the lack of leadership lasted well beyond the riots, too. Remember George Floyd Square, Minneapolis' 'autonomous zone'? Walz and Frey spent most of their time attacking police in the weeks and months afterward, and so police would refuse to respond to that zone. Woodhouse talked to one business owner, an immigrant himself, who explained how that worked out for him. Badly, as it happens:
Mill City Auto Body Shop, across the street from Unity Foods, was one such immigrant-owned business. The owner, Dan, who declined to provide his last name, blames Walz for the lackluster response to the protest.After the riots, when the four-block area around George Floyd Square became an “autonomous zone” that police were not permitted to enter for more than a year, he said a man broke into his shop and attacked him. Dan woke up in the hospital with broken teeth, cuts on his face, and a concussion. “I almost died,” he said. Dan said that two days later, his attacker returned to the shop with what he believes was a machine gun. As the man strode around outside, Dan called the police, but he said the police refused to come help him. The police stayed on the line with him for three hours, but one officer told him, “Oh, sorry man, we have families. We can’t get over there.” Instead, Dan told me, they instructed him to meet them outside the barricaded area.
Walz' gutlessness didn't just victimize Minneapolis, its police, and its citizens for a few days. His cowardice in refusing to stand up for law and order extended for months and is matched only by his ruthless authoritarianism in enforcing his COVID-19 pandemic shutdown orders. Far from being a "mind your own damn business" governor, Walz set up an infamous snitch line to turn Minnesotans into spies on their neighbors and cracked down on peaceful assembly. And that was at the same time, literally, that Walz refused to stand up to violent criminals and radical bullies who victimized people like Dan and many others.
At least Woodhouse is asking the right questions, and publishing the answers. Where is the rest of the mainstream media when it comes to Walz' utter failure as an executive at the times it mattered most?
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