City of Minneapolis, MN Press Conferences, 1 Mar 2021

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From YouTube: March 1, 2021 Update on Operation Safety Net activities, one week ahead of the Derek Chauvin Trial

Description

Update from local, state and federal law enforcement partners on Operation Safety Net (OSN) activities, one week ahead of the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin.

There will be ongoing coordination and planning ahead of the trial. This information sharing is meant to prevent the violent disruption of peaceful protests.

A

Good afternoon, the chief medera are down to the minneapolis police department. uh Today.

A

This is a wonderful opportunity uh to come before you with distinguished leaders from representing both our local, our state, our county, our federal partners, as well as our minnesota national guard.

A

As many of you know, we have been planning for the upcoming trial for the last several months, approximately the last eight months, the planning that we are doing, which is entitled operation safety net, is guided under really two core principles: prevention of damage to property and crimes, as well as also ensuring first amendment constitutional rights for those who wish to peacefully gather and assemble and demonstrate.

A

We are here today to let not only the city of minneapolis, our counties representing st paul and throughout our metro, regional, regional area, but we're really here to let the state of minnesota know that we are very confident in the safety planning and preparation that all of the leaders that you're going to hear from talk about today.

A

And so with that I'd like to introduce my good friend and distinguished chief of police for the saint paul police department, chief todd axtell.

B

B

You hello, everyone, todd axe del st paul police department, so today really is a a powerful day for us to to be part of such a coalition of public safety professionals throughout the state of minnesota and the region coming together in this collaboration to talk about operation safety net in the east metro response group, it makes it abundantly clear that the region in the state is certainly well prepared for anything. That comes our way in the next couple of months.

B

In saint paul, we've heard from people who live in our city who work in our city who run businesses in our city, people who visit our city and people who plan on making their voices heard in our community and while they may have differing different and divergent views of what they would like to see.

B

One thing is abundantly clear, and that is everyone cares about our community in saint paul and so do we, the saint paul police department, cares about what happens in saint paul in saint paul, we're not just the police department or your your police department, and that's why we're proud to partner with operation safety, net, chief, aerodondo and all of our partners on this on the stage today with local state and federal partners.

B

None of us are big enough to handle the issues ahead of us with with one voice or one department, so we're coming together to make sure everyone stays safe in our community.

B

As I said, your local state and federal partners are well prepared, they're, certainly well trained, and they stand ready to keep the peace and maintain public safety through trusted service.

B

With respect and at the end of the day, we all want a safe community, and I want people to know in this state, in the cities of minneapolis and st paul, that you're in good hands we're going to move forward together to make sure everyone has the ability to express their first amendment rights and do it in a safe manner, so that property isn't damaged and people aren't injured and we are going to do everything we can to make sure that that happens. Thank you.

C

Hello, I'm sheriff dave hutchinson from hampton county sheriff's office. My agency is in charge of the court security. We we continue to plan and prepare for the next week. Jury selection with number one goal being protecting first amendment right, but also making sure we protect people and property.

C

The hennepin county sheriff's office will provide operation safety net with intelligence gathering as needed to help stop any sort of violence. We're gonna use technology, social media to kind of organize, so we can see what these organized groups are doing if it's non-violent or peaceful, and this intelligence is going to make us be able to spend our resources where we need to.

C

This was helpful. Last summer, after we had a few days of unrest to kind of get back on track and public safety and we're going to use utilize it this time as well- and I think it's important to note that these men and women up here and the men and women who are going to be on the streets or in our court facilities, know that we are taking this seriously we're trying to be as kind as we can be and sympathetic to the traumas. Some people feel, but don't mistake, our kindness for weakness.

C

We are prepared, as any city in america could be, and we are prepared, as we can be, to quell violence and destruction. The court process will go on and if people are being violent and destructive, they will get arrested and they will go to jail. We want this to be peaceful.

C

Everybody up here, wants peace and the way to get peace is to have justice, and the way to get justice is to have these trials go on with a peaceful resolution. Thank you. I'm gonna introduce the one, and only commissioner harrington.

D

One is probably too much so john harrington, commissioner department of public safety.

E

Two things I want to highlight, and- and the first I think is- is really important, which is that, according to our partners at the department of homeland security and our partners from the fbi, there is no imminent, credible local threat to the trial.

E

Today, that doesn't mean we're not tracking. It doesn't mean we're not asking all the right questions that we're not ringing all the right bells to try and make sure that as time goes on as we get, I think we're now seven days away from jury selection, we're a couple of weeks away from the when the trial will actually start in earnest. We're going to continue to gather information and the other piece that I think is incredibly important. Is that we're sharing the information?

E

There are no silos uh where the information is gonna get bottlenecked. uh If I've got it, everyone in this room will have it, and anyone else that has an operational need to know will have the information.

E

So we are absolutely in lockstep working to make sure that information sharing and intelligence gathering is going to go forward, because you cannot find an opponent that you don't know about.

E

You can't stop a bad thing from happening unless you know it's coming and there are ample opportunities, uh whether it's through social media or through declarations that individual groups, some of which were here before have made to make us, have a significant amount of concern. Enough concern that all of these folks up here have have put together operation safety net and have brought these folks together to make sure that nothing bad is going to happen.

E

Our information is going to inform our decisions, and so, as we move people into the right places at the right time, it is going to be absolutely essential that we have good information and I'm hoping that the folks that hear this, both from the news media and from the community, are going to share with us the information they have last summer.

E

A lot of the calls I had on on the fires and the arsons came from individual members of our community were calling me up to tell us about incendiary devices and bottles of gasoline that were that were cashed in their backyards and in their alleys.

E

I can tell you uh we moved on that information information we got from the community and because of that, uh the fbi and the u.s attorney has been able to prosecute 13 14 people on federal cases involving arson. We are going to use the information both to prevent bad things from happening and also to hold people accountable, and now I have the opportunity. It really is an opportunity, in my case, to introduce the acting u.s attorney. I think this is his first public appearance, anderson.

F

Good afternoon everybody, my name is anders folk, and I am the acting u.s attorney for the district of minnesota, and I want to thank you all for being here this afternoon, the united states attorney's office and all of our federal law enforcement partners, which includes, among others, the fbi, the atf and the us marshals service are all leaning in to ensure that public safety is maintained and, as importantly, that, everyone's first amendment rights are protected surrounding the upcoming trial.

F

As you can see by everyone's presence here this afternoon, this will be a shared effort. Local state, county and federal resources are going to be working together to ensure the safety of our community.

F

In addition to supporting state and local security measures, federal law enforcement will devote additional resources to respond to any acts or threats of violence, and my law enforcement partner fbi special agent in charge, michael paul, will discuss those with you here in a moment. Make no mistake.

F

We welcome everyone's right to be heard and as americans, we all understand the precious nature of our rights under the first amendment. Nothing could be more important.

F

We cannot, however, allow violence and destruction in accordance with our shared mission to maintain public safety, the united states attorney's office and our federal law enforcement partners will not hesitate to hold people accountable or groups accountable, who are engaged in violence, the destruction of property or threats to other in violation of federal law.

F

It's important that we work together to keep our communities safe, including reporting to law enforcement, any suspicious activity, as the commissioner noted, any threats any other acts of violence.

F

Thank you all, and let me turn the microphone over now to special agent in charge, michael paul, to discuss the federal effort in more.

G

G

Good afternoon my name is michael paul. I am the special agent in charge of the fbi's minneapolis field office, which serves minnesota and the dakotas. The minneapolis office has been an active participant in operation safety net planning since late last summer. I want to thank chief eridano for establishing a very meaningful and collaborative working group and for the invitation to speak today.

G

The fbi will be actively supporting the collective law enforcement effort to protect the twin cities and surrounding metropolitan area during the upcoming trials. The fbi has a robust and productive partnership with the minnesota law enforcement community and we've already committed significant time and resources to this particular joint effort.

G

Our involvement in operation safety net can be categorized generally into three core law enforcement functions, intelligence, critical incident response and investigations. The fbi is an intelligence driven organization. A key part of our national security mission is to lead and coordinate intelligence efforts which inform actions to protect the citizens of minnesota and the united states for both trials.

G

We will be facilitating an intelligence operations center or ioc, which integrates personnel from several federal state and local law enforcement partners, including the minneapolis police department, the saint paul police department, the hennepin county sheriff's office and the minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension just to name a few leading up to. During and after the trials. Our collective group of intelligence, analysts, special agents, law enforcement officers and national guard personnel will be working in the ioc to develop, assess and share intelligence among law enforcement partners.

G

Intelligence analysts in the fbi's 56 field offices across the country will also be sharing relevant intelligence as they collect it or produce it with us here in the twin cities.

G

While I can't discuss specific intelligence assets or investigative methods or means, I can tell you, the fbi is leveraging significant resources to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved in the trials. The fbi has been and continues to track any and all threats related to the trial. Today. I can also corroborate what commissioner harrington had to say. We don't have any current known, specific or credible threats.

G

However, we know from experience that the threat environment and the threat picture evolves daily. This is a fluid time of heightened rhetoric and publicize and politicize information across social media and the internet.

G

Threats can transition from aspirational to operational very quickly, and our job will be to sift through the threatening communications to determine which are true indicators of an escalation towards criminal activity or violence. If and when the threats cross, this threshold fbi minneapolis will work hard with the partners.

G

You see in front of you here today to disrupt and mitigate them before violence occurs, the fbi works hard to mitigate and disrupt violent actors, as do our partners, but in the event that there is a critical incident, the fbi is also prepared to respond with a variety of different specialty assets. We've collaborated closely with the local partners to offer specialized fbi response capabilities, including special weapons and tactics, resources, crisis, negotiators, evidence response, critical incident response, hazardous incident response and weapons of mass destruction response.

G

Additionally, we've secured regional and national fbi assets in the addition in the incident that additional resources are needed needed to bolster the local joint efforts beyond our intelligence and critical incident response, our office's core investigative resources will be prioritized to assess any investigative activity involving criminal or violent actions in violation of federal law. We'll work closely with our federal partners and the u.s attorney's office to leverage every potential federal statute to bring extremists to justice leading through the joint terrorism task force will be aggressive in this task.

G

Working within our established fbi policies and doj investigative guidelines to ensure the preservation of civil liberties, all of our fbi, personnel will be on duty or in a ready to ready to recall status, including our personnel resources throughout the tri-state area of responsibility.

G

Our work will not be unlike the efforts of last summer or earlier this year investigating and following up on extremist violence in the twin cities and washington d.c. As you know, those efforts continue today.

G

We ask that the public be vigilant and remain aware of their surroundings and report that suspicious activity to law enforcement quickly, so that we can take appropriate action.

G

Your tips and information regarding violence and criminal activity in the recent past have been critical, as was previously mentioned to all of our efforts to identify and investigate criminal extremists looking to damage or endanger minnesota communities.

G

If violence or other criminal activity should occur in the near future, we will announce some specific methods for citizens to share tips and video, or still shots with law enforcement at that time again, thank you for your participation in protecting the twin cities and the rights of those in our local communities and again, thank you to chief redondo for leading this effort, and I have the pleasure introducing next. Mr dew evans from bca.

H

Thank you uh and good afternoon. My name is drew evans, I'm the superintendent at the minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension, in addition to our role associated with the investigation of this matter that we'll be playing throughout the trial.

H

The minnesota fusion center will be supporting the fbi and our other partners from the minneapolis police department, the saint paul police department, hennepin county sheriff's office, ramsey, county sheriff's office, metro, transit pd among others, and the point of all that when it comes to the criminal intelligence that we will be examining is that our goal throughout this entire trial is to rema keep everyone safe.

H

If people want their voices heard that they wish to protest, we want to see it done in a peaceful manner and we will let the intelligence, as the commissioner said, guide our decision-making process and while there is no specific identifiable threat at this time, we reiterate that we need people to see something. That's suspicious or there's information about criminal activity.

H

That's planned that they relay that information to their police department to their sheriff's office, to the fbi, to the bca, because we are committed together to make sure that anyone who wishes to be in our state and commit criminal activity that jeopardizes the safety of our citizens or our businesses in the twin cities area that we stand ready to address that quickly, so that this trial can go on peacefully throughout that criminal behavior will be vetted through the multi-agency command center that will be routed there or through the police department.

H

Lastly, that we are not just focusing on the twin cities, metropolitan area. This is a statewide issue and if other areas of the state become a target for any other reason, that's exactly what this group is here to do and that we will respond appropriately and that we have resources dedicated at the state level to ensure that we're able to respond and assist our local partners as well. Much as the bca does, and others here do uh in every other day-to-day work.

H

And so with that, I will turn it over to colonel langer from the state.

I

Patrol good afternoon my name is matt langer. I have the honor and privilege of serving, as chief of the minnesota state patrol, just a few comments to wrap things up. I think what you've heard from my colleagues from the local county, state and federal level is a common theme here that planning, plus prevention, plus coordination, equals prevention and for us prince for us prevention equals success. That's our goal! First and foremost, the planning continues. It's complicated. It's complex.

I

There are a lot of moving parts and it's a dynamic plan that isn't sitting on a shelf, but it's evolving and getting better every single day, as information comes in for us to be as prepared as we possibly can. In fact, just last week there was a tabletop exercise involved involving over 90 professionals that came together and worked through potential scenarios that we might face to ensure that there's good coordination, there's good planning communication, appropriate resource allocation and an appropriate response to things that we hope never happen.

I

This week you can expect to see additional fortification of buildings around the twin cities, metropolitan area with fencing and barriers put up.

I

You can see that effort by driving around, but what you can't see are the dozens and dozens and dozens of professionals that are hard at work, literally around the clock to ensure that peace is maintained in the twin cities in minneapolis and across minnesota during this period in our state's history and, lastly, to those of you who have been concerned or expressed concern about the incredible preventative posture and the resources that will be deployed.

I

We hear you, we hear you and we understand your concern, but at the same time we just ask that you remember what it was like in may and june. Remember: the property destruction remember the violence, remember the challenges that prevented people from coming and expressing their first amendment rights and, last but not least, if you are coming to peacefully protest, this group of people standing up here with me welcomes you and you have our support. Thank you.