St. Paul City Council candidate banned from Target Field for a year

St. Paul City Council candidate David Martinez was detained at Target Field and banned from the stadium for a year on July 6, the day after he was arrested at George Latimer Central Library and banned from the library system for a month.

Martinez posted a cellphone video of his encounter with Target Field security guards and police to YouTube on Tuesday, with a caption saying he was "assaulted by the security team."

"No wonder people of color do not attend Minnesota Twins baseball games!" wrote Martinez, who is Puerto Rican.

Martinez, 38, is running against Mitra Jalali Nelson and Shirley Erstad for the open Fourth Ward City Council seat, which former City Council President Russ Stark left early this year. Martinez, who works as a project manager with the state of Minnesota, ran unsuccessfully for the St. Paul school board in 2013.

In an interview, Martinez said he attended the baseball game with friends and jumped over a barrier to speak to another friend who was in the concession area. Martinez said an usher told him he couldn't climb the barrier, so he returned to his seat using the stairs.

Later, a security guard came over to where Martinez and his friends were sitting and spoke to Martinez about climbing the barrier. The nearly eight-minute video, which contains explicit language, begins there.

The video shows the interaction between Martinez and the security guard escalating quickly. The guard appears to ask Martinez to leave his seat, and Martinez responds, "I'm not going." As the guard continues talking to him, Martinez becomes increasingly agitated and begins swearing at the guard.

"You're trying to get more people of color to the Twins game and guess what, white racist [expletive] are kicking them out," Martinez shouts.

"That's enough," the security guard says.

"No, you're enough," Martinez shouts back.

The guard then stands up and takes hold of Martinez's arms. "Don't touch me. You're about to get smacked," Martinez says, adding a threat to knock out the guard.

Martinez's friends can be heard trying to defuse the interaction. "Calmate," one says in Spanish, meaning, "Calm down."

Another security guard arrives around the fifth minute of the video and tries to escort Martinez from his seat, but Martinez goes limp and refuses to move. Then, suddenly, Martinez throws his body at the guard, grabbing onto his shorts and pushing him back. Several more guards and police officers appear and surround Martinez, blocking him from view.

The video ends with Martinez being led away from his seat in handcuffs.

Martinez said he was taken into a room at Target Field, given a sobriety test and a trespass notice form and then released. As with the July 5 incident at the library, which also involved a confrontation with a security guard, Martinez acknowledged that he could have behaved differently but said he wants to stand up against injustice.

Emma Nelson • 612-673-4509