Transcripts For CSPAN Minnesota Gov. Walz Holds News Confere

Transcripts For CSPAN Minnesota Gov. Walz Holds News Conference 20240712

On our streets. It has been a very tough week, but to watch how saturday and sunday played out, a thank you to our Public Servants out there on many different fronts. National guard, state patrol, police department, sheriffs departments, as well as those who are out there making sure we maintained utilities and Everything Else. Also speaking of, 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 are in this situation. And when i say we, minneapolis, st. Paul, the state of minnesota, nationally and as we have 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 are at. This is a moment of inflection, it is a moment of real change, it is a moment that those folks who are out there demanding this are not going to take a commission or a report. They are going to want fundamental change. And that is what i think thats 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 will hear from some of the things in the updates where we are at. I do not want to paint a picture that this is over. But i do want to make a picture that i think we as minnesotans have regrounded ourselves in the values that we care about. It looks to me like there is 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 wonton 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 are in in terms of Law Enforcement on the street. 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, minnesotans have taken charge of this. The only way these things work is what we have seen the last two nights, the vast majority of people abide by this, those that do not are able to address this. I do want to mention something. Some of you witnessed this on many of your stations on live tv. There were protestors 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 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, and 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 and some of the interactions between the two, to understand each other was for me the way i think people expect this to happen. So that curfew will go in place. We will also think about the strategic levels of what we will have. General jensen will be speaking about a transition to our National Guard troops back to their homes and their jobs because thats 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 Multiagency Command Center that is 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 doesnt look like the movies. You have to get everybody on the same frequencies, you have to have communications to move people. When you see an operation move in unison like youve seen the last few days, with no prior training together, thats a testament to the leadership of all of these different agencies, and that is the mac, theyll continue to operate until the time comes until we transition back out of that. I do think it is worth noting, this week, there will be, at least as we understand right now a significant event with the funeral memorial of george floyd. I believe it 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. When i say leadership what we are seeing now is where there are voids of leadership at certain levels, youre 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 protestors. And that brings me to yesterday. You will hear a little more detail on this. The incident with the truck that i think will live for many of us forever. I was watching that on the mndot cameras in the state Emergency Operations 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 do not want to speak ahead of this, but the preliminary with the interviews of the driver was frustrated, theyll talk about how you close in sections and he got ahead of that and while they were exiting people, ill let them talk about the details of that, but from the drivers perspective, he went around it, saw the crowd, went around the other cars, he did brake 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 am sure adrenaline and fear and Everything Else was happening, but the driver noted afterwards, after he was told he didnt kill anybody, he noted that the crowd, the vast majority were protecting him, the protestors 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 protestors in minneapolis and st. Paul protected this person, even after what we saw appeared at the time to be an attempt to kill them. I think that speaks volumes again. And i am just i am 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 cant be confirmed it was by this and it was immediately extinguished. So we have got an opportunity here. We have changed the direction of where this has gone. We have 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 is june 1st, we are still in the middle of a pandemic. We are working simultaneously with this. Ill give you a little bit of an update at the end where we will talk about the number of tests we are doing are still up. We tested 22 longterm care facilities. We are planning for massive mobile testing in the cities for folks. I would tell those of you who were out there peacefully protesting, again, if youre starting to get symptoms of covid19, 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 you in and get the help. We want to get a handle on that. June 1 we are having restaurants open up outside. It is going to be 85 this afternoon. We have 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 lets have some of that happen. Lets get some of those things back going again. And with that id like to turn it over to commissioner harrington, department 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 00 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 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. At this time i will turn it over to Major General john jensen of the minnesota National Guard. Good morning, everyone. Major general john jensen, i am 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 to demobilization of the minnesota 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 mac and approved by the governor. Our plan will remain flexible and have a stable tempo that we can accelerate as the security situation improves, delay or even stop if the security situation worsens. 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 Tasks received by the mac, 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. Rly as this afternoon. As we take units who are not paulred to respond in st. 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 would like to report that last night at 940 8 p. M. , in the vicinity of interstate 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 changed 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 Governors Office and the chief of the National Guard bureau. As is required by regulation any time 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 is seeing the best and the worst of minnesota. We have 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 have had a small part of that. We have 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. Ill now be followed by colonel langer. Thanks, general. My names matt langer, i have the honor and privilege of serving as chief the Minnesota State patrol. Ill 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 munitions 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, 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 sheriffs deputies, the Police Officers, this is a multihour interaction, and i think what you will see, if you watch the news and see various reports, it warmed my heart to see all of those peace officers interacting with all of those protestors 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 the semi on the 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 have said all along, the freeway is just a very dangerous place to be when youre protesting. And, so, there is 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. Although we try as hard as we can to keep people safe, it is 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 short of a miracle in terms of the lack of injury involved there , and we are very thankful for that. Last but not least, we are prepared, we have our staffing and our resources and as the governor said, the multiagency response is still there. The curfew adjustment has been announced. And oftentimes you hear Law Enforcement directing, like, 10 00 and the requirement is that you obey the curfew and thats an order, but sometimes you do not hear, what id like to say, id like to ask people to cooperate with that 10 00 curfew. And maybe thats different, maybe thats not common, but thats our ask, and i am speaking collectively on behalf of Law Enforcement. We would like you to cooperate with that. And thats helpful for us. We will be there ready, we are willing, able to deal with what we have to but we know absolutely the vast vast majority of minnesotans and those who live around minneapolis and st. Paul are helping and they are trying and we just hope and pray for peaceful, genuine expression of First Amendment right and enough with the violence, enough with the property destruction and we look forward to that and thats my ask for the future here is that we get back to who we are in this state, minnesota, and we exercise those rights appropriately and cooperate much better than what we saw last week. With that, i think ill turn it over to mayor jacob frey. Mayor frey thank you. This has clearly been a crisis unlike any our city or state has ever seen, and i think it is becoming increasingly clear that it is one that demanded a statesupported and guardsized response. The governor mentioned just a little bit ago that we have not seen this kind of mobilization since world war ii. And i really do want to thank the governor for the support that we have gotten over the last several days. It has been absolutely essential for the safety and the welfare of the people of minneapolis. I am not going to get too much into the tanker truck as people who have previous spoke already have laid out the facts. But i do want to say that this just terrifying instance also shows a whole lot of bravery. Bravery by the protestors that were willing to look out for those around them, bravery by the peaceful protestors who were willing to help the individual driving the truck, our Police Officers made very quick and clear action to remove protestors from the bridge because we did not know what was on that tanker. W we did not know if it was explosives. We we did not know the intent of the individual driving. By their willingness to clear people from the bridge, we could very quickly get First Responders to the action. There was also an earlymorning fire, suspected arson, over in north minneapolis. And it is a reminder that we certainly still have a very long way to go, and although north minneapolis has not been the center of a whole lot of mobilization, some beautiful things are happening there as communities are rallying around one another, they are making sure to provide free food, looking out for your neighbor, and any time a single instance happens over there, i get 35

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