A violent weekend in Minneapolis left a dozen people dead or injured as a result of shootings in the city.
Police said they were called to the city’s Uptown neighborhood early Sunday morning on a report of multiple people shot. Police said they believe more than one shooter fired shots that hit 12 people and killed one: a black man named Cody Pollard.
“We have seen, unfortunately, over the past several months, an uptick in violent crime in Minneapolis,” Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said Sunday morning. “We are certainly doing our best to address that.”
Jacob Frey, the city’s mayor, released a statement following the weekend of violence.
“Violence and lawlessness serve no one,” Frey said. “The recent string of shootings across our city is only compounding our shared grief. It cannot and will not be tolerated. Chief Arradondo is reaching out to local, state, and federal partners for aid and MPD detectives are working to identify those responsible. Chief Arradondo has my full support.”
Jamie Liestman, the manager of a shoe store that was hit by gunfire, told WCCO that employees had just finished cleaning the establishment up after it was damaged during protests in the city following the death of George Floyd.
“There’s bullet holes in my store, and this window is broken,” Liestman said. “It’s super frustrating. We just got these windows replaced after the riot.”
Liestman continued: “This has nothing to do with George Floyd or the protests. This has to do with violence and guns in Uptown that’s been ignored for years.”
Following Floyd’s death, Minnesota launched a civil rights investigation regarding implicit bias and mistreatment of minorities by the Minneapolis Police Department.
After Floyd’s death, a veto-free majority of the Minneapolis City Council signed a pledge to dismantle the city police department as it is currently structured and reallocate funding to other areas of the city’s public safety budget.
It is unclear whether any changes to the department’s budget have been made as of Monday.
