Long prior to this week’s clashes in between cops and demonstrators objecting cops brutality, the Minnesota State Patrol made a demand that foreshadowed the shape of the turmoil.
In a letter to a Pentagon program that repurposes weapons and armored cars from foreign wars for domestic police, the firm stated its SWAT team might utilize a mine-resistant vehicle for what it referred to not as authorities work however as “deployments.”
” The group does not have an automobile capable of offering any level of ballistic security which greatly increases the risks during deployments,” the agency composed. Requesting a “Stryker, Cougar, Caiman, MaxxPro, MRAP, or any similar car”– all lorries created to withstand surges from landmines or improvised bombs– the firm stated its SWAT group could utilize such a car for “high-risk warrants, hostage rescue, barricaded suspects, counter-drug activities, counter terrorist incidents, VIP motorcades, and devoted reaction to incidents at two nuclear reactor,” and the protection of the state Capitol.
The 2012 request was part of a pattern that almost always becomes obvious when officers respond to massive protests of cops violence.
The Minnesota State Patrol is among a number of companies reacting to the Minneapolis protests over the authorities killing of a Black man. And like law enforcement agencies prior to them– in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana– some of the officers are equipped for a fight.
” We constantly do this,” Minneapolis City board member Jeremiah Ellison said to MPR on Wednesday. “We produce a barrier, put the cops out there, put them in a line, put face masks, depersonalize them, make them look as frightening as possible, and we constantly get this outcome, and then we wish to blame community members.”
One night earlier, hundreds of citizens had actually gathered in Minneapolis near the spot where 46- year-old George Floyd passed away in cops custody. Floyd, a Black male, passed away shortly after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck while Floyd complained he could not breathe.
Minneapolis authorities officers used body armor and carried riot gear to face off with noticeably unarmed protesters who were wearing T-shirts and carrying signs. After some in the crowd started to break windows and spray graffiti, officers fired tear gas and foam pellets
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