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MN Gov: Curfews Being Extended, National Guard Will Stand Down. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 01, 2020 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

MAYOR MCKINLEY PRICE, NEWPORT NEWS, VA: We all believe that we do need change, but there's a way of doing change. So it's our job to try and channel this energy and this, what we're witnessing now into constructive policy changes that's going to help everyone.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Mayor Warren, help me with this one. This is an exhausting time. We have been through three months of coronavirus. And now the country is being tested in a very different way. In terms of keeping your focus and keeping your priorities and I assume trying to tell people when you're out in the streets, be careful, we're at a very delicate moment in the pandemic. And now we have this social unrest. What is it like coming to work in the morning?

MAYOR LOVELY WARREN, ROCHESTER, NY: Well, you know, I think that is very important that we engaged and we don't just do it when we have problems that we do it all the time, and that we listen to our constituents.

So when our Black Lives Matter organization decided to put on their particular protest, we were out there with masks. We were out there with water. We were out there with hand sanitizer. And we had teams talking to people about the coronavirus and remaining safe.

But this is not something that we can just do at a moment in time. This is something that we must continue to do year round. And that's why in the city of Rochester, we have been proactive with community policing. We also have a police citizen review board that is led by citizens. Our city council put that in place. We regularly talk to our constituents and we understand the frustration and the pain.

But this is not a conversation and a discussion that can happen just when there's unrest. It is something that we need to do all the time. And make sure that we're creating opportunities for upward mobility. And also having those discussions around racism and around the collective action of people so that people can move out of poverty and up the stairway of poverty and that is something that we have to do together and not separately, and it has to be something that everyone is committed to.

KING: And Mayor Lucas on that point, how do we get progress that takes root and takes deep root. Because a lot of the people on the streets, they'll say, you know, OK, so now as George Floyd, we went through this when it was, you know, Mr. Castillo, we went through this when it was Mr. Brown, we've been through this so many times.

How do you have a constructive dialogue, and then have it take root so that when we're having this conversation in five years, it's about the progress that has been made, not about another person who has been killed?

MAYOR QUINTON LUCAS, KANSAS CITY, MO: You need to have tangible goals with what you're doing. You need to say that if I believe in changing criminal justice system, all right, what do we do? In my city I proposed decriminalizing marijuana offenses, right?

I'd propose making sure that fewer people are incarcerated for municipal ordinance violations. You need to make those pledges. You need to accomplish them. That's how you do it step by step. But the real way that we can do it fundamentally, I mean, if you look at that officer from Minneapolis with his knee on George Floyd, right, that's because there was a dehumanization going on.

He didn't see a person in the same way. So we need to change our personnel too. And I don't just mean a few people. We need to have more African-American officers. We need to have more folks that are represented in other leadership positions. We're mayors right now, but I think in our business community as well, to create that economic mobility the mayor was just talking about.

It's those sorts of things, it's those sorts of tangible measurements that you can look at numbers that you can see where our progress has been that will make a difference long term.

But more than anything, you have got to make sure the police are accountable. And in every department, we have to make sure that when something happens, people know what the result is that it's public, that the public knows the bad things that are going to happen will be answered by the public long term. Those officers won't remain on the force to kill someone later, like the situation we saw in Minneapolis.

KING: Mayor Lucas, Mayor Warren, Mayor Price, grateful, I'm very grateful for your time at this very testing time for the country and for each of your cities. Thank you very much for being with us.

WARREN: Thank you John.

PRICE: Thank you.

KING: Thank you. Thank you all.

We're waiting to hear from the Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz. He has a news conference scheduled any moment now. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:35:36]

KING: Take you straight to a news conference, the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): State patrol, police department, sheriff's departments, as well as those are out there making sure we maintain utilities and everything else.

Also, speaking of, I've been watching yesterday, the whole nature of why we do these things is to allow for that peaceful expression. We saw large peaceful protests focusing on the systemic changes that get to the heart of why we're in this situation.

And when I say, we, Minneapolis, St. Paul, the State of Minnesota, nationally, and as we've seen over the last 24 hours, internationally, a society that does not put equity and inclusion at the center of it is certainly going to eventually come to the places where we're at.

This is a moment of inflection. It's a moment of real change. It's a moment that those folks who are out there demanding this are not going to take a commission or a report. They're going to want fundamental change. And that is what I think -- that's one of the exciting things in the midst of all this. You can feel a sense of optimism coming back.

I just want to say you'll hear from some of the things in the updates where we're at. I don't want to paint a picture that this is over. But I do want to paint a picture that I think, we, as Minnesotans, have reground ourselves in the values that we care about.

It looks to me like there's a clear delineation between the folks who are rightfully pained and angered, wanting to see change and expressing it in lawful ways. And what we witnessed on several days earlier in the week, those that are bent on wanting destruction of the very communities that are most pained.

I think as citizens, as residents of Minnesota, we can continue to maintain that. And this gives us a space now for a time of unprecedented opportunity to address things that have been around in many cases decades or since the founding or prior to that.

So in moving forward and in that light, I want to talk a little bit about the posture we're in, in terms of law enforcement on the streets. I signed an executive order in consultation and leadership with the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We will be extending the curfew for two days but the times will change. It will go from 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.

And one of the reasons in this is, is Minnesotans have taken charge of this. The only way these things work is what we've seen the last two nights, the vast majority of people abide by this, those that not are able to address this. I do want to mention something. Some of you witnessed this on many of your stations in live T.V.

There were protesters that stayed out past the curfew. I think in some cases because of the tragic near miss with the truck, it disrupted some of their schedules. Some of them I think were very intent on going home and doing that because it was very clear. They were articulating very clearly a peaceful right to demonstrate.

But they also understood once they got out past that time, the interaction with the police that some of you witnessed a -- and it was it was gratifying, I think to see how citizens approached it and how our law enforcement approached it, the very humanized way, the very orderly way that people were processed and treated in some of the interactions between the two to understand each other was for me the way I think people expect to be expect this to happen.

So that curfew will go in place. We'll also think about the strategic levels of what we have. I will have General Jensen will be speaking about a transition to our National Guard troops back to their homes and their jobs because that's what they are. They take time out of their jobs, and many of them will be going back, some of them working as news reporters, some of them working as camera operators, some of them working as teachers, that will begin to happen.

And that will be done, as General Jensen will talk about in a very orderly and organized way. Our strategy we need to continue to keep in place. The Multi-Agency Command Center that would stood up will stay in place because we are managing communications. I think some of you now have witnessed the complexity of something like this. It doesn't look like the movies.

You have to get everybody on the same frequencies. You have to have communications to move people. And when you see an operation move in unison like you've seen the last few days with no prior training together, that's a testament to the leadership of all of these different agencies and that is the MACC. They'll continue to operate until the time comes when we transition back out of that.

[12:40:06]

I do think it is worth noting that this week there will be at least as we understand right now, a significant event with the funeral memorial of George Floyd. I believe is scheduled for Thursday. It will be an important event, both for the city of Minneapolis for Minnesota and for the nation to watch that process of celebrating a life that was taken in front of us, an opportunity for leadership.

And when I say leadership, what we're seeing now is where there are voids of leadership at certain levels, you're certainly seeing leaders in communities that have always been there, put their voices forward. So that will be in conjunction of making sure as we said yesterday, the idea of protecting peaceful protesters. And that brings me to yesterday, and you'll hear a little more detail on this, the incident with the truck that I think will live for many others forever.

I was watching that on the main cameras in the state emergency operation center in live time when it happened. And I was breathless as I watched it because I thought I was going to witness dozens or hundreds killed in the immediate crash. And then my fear was the intentional thought of detonating that truck.

As it turned out, and I don't want to speak ahead of this but the preliminary with the interviews of the driver was frustrated. They'll talk about how you close in sections and he got ahead of that and why they were X-ing people and I'll let them talk about the details of that.

But from the driver's perspective, he went around, saw the crowd, went around the other cars. He did break is what you see. But I think the amazing thing in this story was, first of all, that no one was hurt. The crowd then responding in many cases, just I'm sure adrenaline and fear and everything else was happening. But the driver noted afterwards, after he was told it didn't kill anybody.

He noted that the crowd, the vast majority, were protecting him, the protesters were protecting the driver who they had just seen appear to run into the crowd because they realized how dangerous the situation was.

And for those of you who are old enough to remember that horrific scene on that Los Angeles road during the Rodney King events where the driver was pulled from the vehicle and severely injured, peaceful protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul protected this person even after what we saw was appeared at the time to be an attempt to kill them.

I think that speaks volumes again. And I'm just -- I'm grateful to be able to tell that because I still am in shock of what I thought we might have to be talking about. I will note that that event did have some disruptive impact on movement of folks last night but it still worked out. I think, again, an amazing thing of no deaths, no injuries.

And last night report of one fire that is still under investigation, so can't be confirmed, it was by this, and it was immediately extinguished. So we've got an opportunity here. We've changed the direction of where this has gone. We've opened up incredibly important conversations.

Yesterday, we saw Attorney General Ellison assume the lead in the case to start with many more things that need to be done at this point in time. But Minnesota, this is our chance. And I would say this, with that curfew, it's June 1st, we're still in the middle of a pandemic. We are working simultaneous with this.

I'll give you a little bit of an update at the end, where we will talk about number of tests we're doing are still very up. We tested 22 long term care facilities. We are planning for massive mobile testing in the cities for folks. I would tell those of you who are out there peacefully protesting, again, if you're starting to get symptoms of COVID-19 please isolate.

We will have to do some contact tracing which I have not wrapped my mind around what that would look like in this size. But we want to massively test you. We want to get to you and get the help. We want to get a handle on that. By June 1st, we're having restaurants open up outside.

It's going to be 85 degrees this afternoon. We've got restaurants across the state that are ready to do that. This is a time for community to gather outside, gather outside in the early evening, experience what Minnesota has to offer and let's have some of that happen. Let's get some of those things back going again. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Commissioner Harrington Department of Public Safety.

JOHN HARRINGTON, MINNESOTA DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY: Thank you, Governor. John Harrington, Department of Public Safety.

We watched yesterday afternoon, as many of you did, two really startling events. We watched about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, as between 5 and 7,000 people came to demonstrate at U.S. Bank. We saw moms with their kids. We saw we saw elders from the community. We saw young people all coming together in what was a very large and a very peaceful demonstration at U.S. Bank Stadium.

[12:45:12]

We also saw that that group move on to the freeway. And then we saw what can only be described as that that moment. Well, I can't use that term in front of polite company. But when you saw the truck going into that crowd, and you just went because what you imagined you were going to see was bodies under the tires of that truck.

And when you didn't see the bodies under the tires of the truck, it was frankly, possibly a miracle. Because the driver was doing 70 miles an hour as we understand it are in that range. And even with hitting the brakes, and even with dry pavement, we were -- we got lucky or there was something miraculous happening there.

Once that happened, we continued our operational posture in terms of working through the curfew and working through our protests prevention, riot prevention model. The rapid response team moved, and you could literally see it in real time. You can see the rapid response team bikes and cars and trucks moving in to the protest area around the truck, making sure that we could control what we thought might turn into another really bad situation.

And the peace officers that responded to that responded with restraint and they responded with care. And they were able to contain this situation in such a way that we really did feel like we had some control over it. It took hours to continue to move that along.

And at the end of the night, we really did feel like the interaction was right at the right tone. We were having moms with their kids leave because they really worried. That was early on in this, it would not curfew, it was -- there was an opportunity for us to sort this out. We had folks who didn't want to leave and who were clearly there by design.

And we made, I think, good decisions throughout. Today, we started the morning out 7 o'clock in the morning, looking at the intel, looking for additional information, looking for signs that we were going to have disruption. We have a preventative control model that is operated, very similar to what we've had the last few days.

It's a combination of National Guard, local municipality, primarily Minneapolis and St. Paul, Ramsey and Hennepin County that are out working the streets today, prepared to rapidly respond if we have disruption or riots and also prepare to protect people's first amendment rights if folks are coming to protest.

And we have been working with community. We continue to work with community, whether it's at the memorial at 38 in Chicago, or at Little Earth or all over the Twin Cities area, peace officers have been working with community to keep the peace. That's what the community wants. And that's what we want.

This afternoon, we will move back into our more multi agency coordinated presence. We'll bring more folks in from suburbs and other sheriff's departments. And we'll continue to integrate them with the Minnesota State Patrol, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the Minnesota National Guard. And we will once again go out to patrol to make sure that the curfew is enforced, to make sure that lawful and peaceful demonstrations, their first amendment rights are protected, and to make sure that riotous behavior, arson, violence, robbery, looting is not allowed to be the story of the day.

At this time, I will turn it over to Major General Jon Jensen of the Minnesota National Guard.

MAJ. GEN. JON JENSEN, MINNESOTA NATIONAL GUARD: Good morning everyone. Major General Jon Jensen. I'm the Adjutant General of the Minnesota National Guard.

And as Governor Walz just announced this morning, we received guidance from the Governor, as it relates the demobilization of the Minnesota National Guard and the return of part of the Minnesota National Guard back to their hometown, and back to their armories.

This is not an order to return the entire organization back home. Any redeployment is coordinated with the MACC and approved by the Governor. Our plan will remain flexible and have a scalable tempo that we can accelerate as the security situation improve, delay, or even stop if the security situation worsens.

[12:50:01]

With over 7,000 Minnesota National Guardsmen currently mobilized, I am confident that we can reduce our presence while meeting the needs of the mission taskings received by the MACC, the State Patrol, and the Department of Safety.

You may see movement begin as early as this afternoon, as we take units, who are not required to respond in St. Paul or Minneapolis and allow them to return home and begin the process of returning back to their normal status as a citizen soldier.

In addition, I'd like to report that last night at 9:48 p.m. in the vicinity of Interstate I-35 in Washington Avenue, an unknown vehicle driving at a high rate of speed toward a Minnesota National Guardsmen and their police counterparts. The rapidly approaching vehicle refused to slow down as it approached our guardsman and our police officers. Initial questioning into our National Guardsmen indicate that this element responded with verbal and nonverbal signals for the vehicle to stop. The vehicle continued at a high rate of speed. Nonlethal methods were engaged on the vehicle to, again, to have the vehicle stop the vehicle continued at a high rate of speed.

At that time, in accordance with the escalation of force, our soldier fired three rounds from his rifle in response to a perceived and legitimate threat to him and the Minnesota police officers that he was in direct support of. The vehicle change course and fled the scene. At this time no injuries have been reported.

We have followed our procedures and reported this event to both the Governor's Office and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. As is required by regulation anytime a service member discharges their weapon, regardless of reason, we have assigned an investigating officer for this incident.

And finally, this week and specifically this weekend for sure, the Minnesota National Guard has seen the best and the worst of Minnesota. We've seen the devastation of a community. And we have seen great citizens coming back out picking up the pieces with their friends, with their neighbors, and strangers.

And we've had a small part of that. We've had the privilege and the honor to be a small part of that because Minneapolis and St. Paul are our communities too. We live here. We work here. And the Minnesota National Guard is here for you.

And now I'll be followed by Colonel Langer.

COL. MATT LANGER, MINNESOTA CHIEF OF THE STATE PATROL: Thanks General. My name is Matt Langer. And I have the honor and privilege of serving as chief of Minnesota State Patrol.

I'll be brief. Last night was kind of the textbook, civil disobedience issue that we are training to deal with on a regular basis. And I think people saw a very different strategy, frankly, a strategy that law enforcement likes much better than using chemical ammunitions and some of the actions that we saw last week that were absolutely necessary, but not our first choice.

So last night, I think people saw a much slower development of a crowd control strategy and a tactic with dispersal warnings and then an encirclement strategy that works in a very careful and methodical, safe, and easier way to take people into custody, most of which tend to want to be taken into custody for their actions for various reasons.

I echo the sentiment and I was proud to see the law enforcement officers, whether it was the troopers, the DNR conservation officers, the sheriff's deputies, and the police officers. You know, this is a multi-hour interaction. And I think what you'll see if you watch the news and see various reports, it warms my heart to see all of those peace officers interacting with all of those protesters under arrest, communicating, talking, laughing, and being human together. That is exactly what I like to see. And what we like to see. And what makes us proud.

Enough was said about this on the I-35W Bridge. I had the same visceral reaction as a traffic safety professional about what that could have been versus what it was. And one of the things we've said all along is that the freeway is just a very dangerous place to be when you're protesting.

And so there's many places to exercise your first amendment right. We continue to facilitate that, along with other law enforcement agencies. The freeway is just not the place to do it. And although we try as hard as we can to keep people safe, it's just really, really difficult. And yesterday was a shining example of what we said for a long, long time about the danger of those events on the freeways.

I tend to agree, nothing is sure of a miracle in terms of the lack of injury involved there and we're very thankful for that. Last but not least, we're prepared. We have our staffing and our resources, and as the Governor said, the Multi-Agency response is still there. The curfew adjustment has been announced.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[12:55:05]

KING: You're listening here to the briefing by the Governor of Minnesota and his security team, other law enforcement team. That's the head of state police up there right now. Governor Walz making the case, he called this a moment of inflection for Minnesota and the country, also making the case that he believes the dynamic has changed significantly since the violent, destructive protests. He said the protesters though want real change, fundamental change, not a commission and not a report, and he promised he would get that.

He also announced the curfew would stay in place for two more days. The hours changed a bit 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. And he announced the National Guard presence would scale back.

A quick break here, when we come back, Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage. Have a good afternoon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:00:00]