zlacker

My first hunch is the arresting officers were scrubs, brought in from other jurisdictions to staff up in response to the riots.

In the after math of the 1999 WTO riots, many of the worst abuses were committed by LEOs brought in from the outlying areas. Scrubs who didn't have the same training as the locals (and state patrol). Nor have any kind of personal regard for the city and its people.

Even so, at the time, I was really struck by the comparison between our SPD and DC Metro. DC has more crowds, riots, protests, disturbances, etc. DC Metro has a lot more experience, training, professionalism. And it shows.

From my personal experiences in Seattle, there's no way I'd risk protesting in and around the Twin Cities, and risk some noobs shooting me.

(I'd like to believe I'd never riot.)

>>specia+(OP)
You are more or less correct. The arresting officers were State Patrol; they're from all over but they're not from the community.

I have protested in St. Paul and Minneapolis many times and in general SPPD have been decent at protests, and MPD has made an effort at protests. There has been a real effort to improve community relations but there are some notable bad apples (as long as Bob Kroll is speaking for MPD employees, we are going to have trouble -- listen to any interview with him to see why.) They have experience with the Super Bowl, many Black Lives Matters protests (Philando Castile was killed in 2016), and the RNC a while ago in St Paul. I was at the RNC protests and the interaction with the police was like a dance -- a relatively polite interaction with horses and concussion grenades, in which I honestly was not that worried about bodily harm -- until the Hennepin County law enforcement came in. Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey.

Everyday policing has been quite different than behavior at protests. And things are different now.

>>kaitai+58
Thank you for your misc replies, based on your firsthand experience and being onsite. Stay safe.

"Whenever you bring in suburban law enforcement to the city, things get dicey."

Exactly. That's what I was trying to say, thank you.

>>specia+(OP)
The outside officers were also acting on direct orders from the FBI and not SPD or the city mayor in the case of the WTO riots. Having been in said riots where idiots dressed in black started smashing things, thus drawing in the FBI (and there's been numerous accusations over the years that the Black Bloc groups were also under FBI direction). Getting whacked by a baton while I was filming was not fun but I got whacked because the officer missed his actual target who was standing slightly behind me and had been busy throwing bricks and then dodging in behind other people.