Dismayed over lack of police reforms, activists vow to protest outside lawmakers' homes

Activists and relatives of those killed by law enforcement spent hours last week huddled inside the State Capitol rotunda, their voices reverberating as they shouted their insistence on new major police accountability reforms.

But when a late-night public safety bill vote yielded a far more modest slate of policing legislation than they sought, the group that had spent the session testifying to lawmakers and marching throughout the Twin Cities made plans to further ramp up their activism this summer. It will be, as they put it, "stage two."

"Many of these legislators are going home after this week," said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Minnesota. "What they don't realize is that they will not be going home ... peacefully because we will be coming to their homes, we will be demanding justice on their front lawns. We will be making sure they understand the pain that exists in our communities."

Protesters from across the political spectrum have made residential protests a more common but controversial tactic in the past year — ranging from demonstrations after George Floyd's death to conservative protests against Gov. Tim Walz's pandemic emergency powers.

Some cities like Lino Lakes and Hugo have moved to ban targeted residential protests after 2020 demonstrations outside the home of then-Minneapolis police union president Bob Kroll and his wife, WCCO reporter Liz Collin. The State Patrol meanwhile had to evacuate Gov. Tim Walz's son from the governor's residence as a group of pro-Trump protesters who celebrated the Jan. 6 insurrection marched to the St. Paul home's front gate.

Prosecutors' homes have also been targeted in the past year for protests over charging decisions made in the Floyd and Daunte Wright cases. Before Washington County Attorney Pete Orput asked Attorney General Keith Ellison to take over the prosecution of ex-Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter, Orput's home had been the site of multiple demonstrations.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, an attorney and civil rights activist, helped lead those protests and this week joined those at the Capitol voicing their displeasure with Democrats and Republicans alike over a public safety bill they called more friendly to police than focused on accountability.

Armstrong said she wanted to see a new special prosecutors office opened to focus on police killings and pushed Walz to "reopen the cases of all people killed at the hands of police."

"The problem isn't one bad apple like Derek Chauvin," she said. "The problem is a rotten system and we decry that narrative that pretends that there are just a few bad apples who are causing harm to communities of color when we know that racism and white supremacy are running rampant throughout far too many police departments across the state of Minnesota."

Democrats and activists pursued a dozen legislative proposals in the final weeks of the session — including citizen review boards for law enforcement, a ban on affiliation with white supremacist groups, ending the statute of limitations for wrongful death cases against police and prohibiting police from stopping motorists for minor equipment or registration violations.

But most of those measures fell by the wayside in the final public safety budget. Lawmakers agreed to new regulations on no-knock warrants and "sign and release" warranting to stop arrests for failure to appear in court for certain low-level charges. They also passed a measure for an "early warning system" for the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Board to better spot patterns of police misconduct.

The Legislature meanwhile also approved a new law criminalizing publication of law enforcement officers' home addresses — otherwise known as "doxing."

Republican lawmakers insisted that they would not agree to any provision that they deemed "anti-police" or that they believed would make officers' jobs more difficult.

After the public safety bill passed, Sen. Warren Limmer, the Maple Grove Republican who chairs the Senate's public safety and judiciary committee, said he planned to make "some inroads into communities of color this summer and fall, not only in the Twin Cities area but outstate."

"I want to dig into it myself. I might bring a few other legislators along, and dig into it a little bit," Limmer said. "Pursue issues rather than be fed issues. I think it's important for some legislators, especially in this area that raises so much concern, I think it's important for us to play the role of detective and go out and pursue some of these issues."

Walz meanwhile intervened this week to take executive action on policing and public safety. Activists and Democrats wanted new requirements that police departments turn over body camera footage to relatives of those killed in police encounters within 48 hours of the incident.

That measure failed, but Walz declared that state law enforcement officers now must release those recordings to families within five days and have a model policy for all state-level officers to wear body cameras.

Walz is also reviewing the POST Board's data collection efforts and wants to create a "dashboard" for the public to access. And he ordered $15 million in federal money to be spent on community violence intervention and public safety grants.

But activists like Toshira Garraway, who leads a coalition of families whose loved ones have been killed in police encounters, say they will be taking their advocacy beyond testimony in front of lawmakers after watching their efforts fall short this year.

"These legislators will not go home and live in peace and harmony in their homes while our families go home to our children where they have taken the fathers to our children, where they have taken the sons of mothers who are out here in the community in pain," Garraway said.

Stephen Montemayor • 612-673-1755

Twitter: @smontemayor