Category: Minneapolis, Minnesota Local News

A man was killed in a house fire Friday afternoon in Minneapolis, and investigators were working to determine what started the blaze.

Minneapolis firefighters responded a little before 1 p.m. to reports of a fire in a two-story house at 4804 12th Av. S. They found heavy smoke coming from the first floor and chimney, fire officials said in a news release.

On Saturday, the man was identified as Edward Joseph Stack, 83, by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office. His death was considered an accident, the result of the “inhalation of products of combustion,” according to a statement from the office.

According to officials, crews had a hard time entering the home, locating the flames and laying hose lines because personal items and debris blocked the front and rear entrances.

Crews located the victim on the first floor and carried him out. The man, who according to neighbors lived alone, was declared dead at the scene. No one else was inside, Assistant Fire Chief Melanie Rucker said.

The fire spread to all floors of the house and through the roof, forcing crews to attack it from outside. A fire truck extended a ladder over the top of the fire to shoot water through a hole in the roof, and firefighters on the ground shot water through a second-story window.

Officials at a Minneapolis mosque fear it will be targeted again, two days after one of its members was injured in an alleged hit-and-run attack in the parking lot.

The attack was the latest in a string of incidents — from mosque burnings to Muslims being attacked at their mosques with pepper spray or, in one instance, a hammer — that have made Minnesota the leading state nationwide for mosque attacks, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“We are on edge,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR-MN said Friday at a news conference. “This was an attempted murder. … We need for our leaders to take this seriously.”

In Wednesday’s assault, a van slammed into Osman Ahmed, a member of the Alhikma mosque at 116 E. 32nd St., in the mosque parking lot just after he stepped out of his vehicle. Security video shows a van steering into Ahmed as he runs, knocking him to the pavement.

Ahmed, who spent a night at HCMC recovering, said he could see two hands holding the steering wheel as the van raced toward him but couldn’t see the driver. Witnesses and others led police to James E. Suttles, 37, of Minneapolis, who was arrested Wednesday evening and charged Friday with second-degree assault.

The criminal complaint against Suttles, who was being held at Hennepin County jail in lieu of $150,000 bail, does not include a count classifying what happened as a bias-motivated crime.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty acknowledged in a statement that Suttles has committed “prior violent incidents at this mosque. … If through further investigation we determine that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this incident was motivated by bias, we will prosecute accordingly.”

Mosque officials say Suttles has terrorized their community for four years, allegedly pepper-spraying one mosque member in 2021 and attacking another with a hammer in 2022.

The imam of Alhikma, Abdirazak Kaynan, said he’s very worried that Suttles will be released from jail and return to the mosque to hurt more people.

“We’ve reported multiple times and tell police this guy is going to kill someone,” said Kaynan.

Suttles was at the mosque again on May 19, just days after being given a tresspass violation, said Kaynan.

The incidents are among at least 21 attacks on Minnesota mosques in the past three years, said Hussein, who said CAIR chapters in each state share their data on mosque attacks. Among the incidents of vandalism reported last year, fires at the Mercy Mosque in Minneapolis and St. Paul’s Tawhid Islamic Center caused extensive damage and led to the arrests of two men.

Hussein urged state and federal officials to provide grants for things like security cameras and lights, strengthening of doors or security guards for mosques and other nonprofits targeted by hate crimes. Hussein said efforts to get state funds for such things failed during this year’s legislative session.

Mosque officials say they don’t know why Suttles targeted them in the first place, but he appeared at the mosque’s door shortly after it opened in 2020. He was first offered food and support, mosque leaders say, but Suttles turned increasingly violent and has been cited three times for trespassing.

“These incidents have been against various people who attend the mosque and not targeted at any one individual,” the complaint against Suttles read. “The leader stated people attending the mosque were very concerned for their safety and scared of [Suttles].”

Star Tribune staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this story.

200+ free outdoor concerts are scheduled at nine park venues, including two new Northside programs; 70+ movies will be shown on an inflatable movie screen at parks across the city!

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board recently announce the 2024 Music and Movies in the Parks lineup. This year Minneapolis Music in the Parks features more than 200 free outdoor concerts at nine park venues between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Movies in the Parks will host a free outdoor movie screening on an inflatable screen somewhere in the park system on more than 70 summer nights.

The entire schedule is posted at the Minneapolis Music and Movies in the Parks website. Subscribe to email updates on the Music and Movies page to receive the schedule for the upcoming week in your inbox every Sunday night.

Music and Movies Calendar / Music and Movies Map

A printed pocket map will be available at all rec centers, park restaurants and MPRB Headquarters. Concert performers and movie screenings may change throughout the summer, check online calendars for the most up-to-date information.

For years, Minneapolis has banned non-compostable, non-recyclable to-go containers. Starting Jan. 1, black plastic, which isn’t compatible with recycling equipment, was included in that ban’s enforcement.

With a fresh nudge from city inspectors, restaurants are getting up to speed.

“If you still have black plastic to-go containers, check with your supplier to see if you can return them,” reads a January notice from the city’s health department. The memo followed at least five other notices the department has sent to restaurants since the summer of 2023.

Technically, black plastic should have been to-go non grata since at least 2019, when the city formally declared the ubiquitous stuff “non-recyclable” because its lack of transparency makes it undetectable to recycling equipment sensors. As such, “black plastic is trash,” numerous city advisories state.

The city was in the process of updating its “Green-To-Go” rules when the pandemic hit, hammering restaurants and upsetting supply chains. Now, restaurants across the metro area, which saw a spike in takeout business during COVID, are increasingly subject to restrictions on how they can package their food.

Roseville is considering whether to join Edina and St. Louis Park in banning foam containers, which can technically be recycled but aren’t collected as recyclables because the market for them is so weak.

St. Paul’s ban on foam containers and black plastic took effect in 2022 and is based entirely on people notifying the city when they see a restaurant not following the rule. Since then, the city has received only four complaints, spokesman Casey Rodriguez said. But order enough takeout in St. Paul, and foam is sure to show up sooner or later.

Minneapolis’ history with regulating food containers dates back decades, but its modern incarnation took effect on Earth Day 2014, when the city “rebanned” polystyrene and updated its enforcement rules as part of its ambition to become “zero waste” by 2030. (The city’s current goal is to have 80% of refuse be placed into either the recycling bin or the compost heap by 2030.)

“The Green-to-Go ordinance was created to reduce the city’s waste stream and what ends up in landfills,” Cindy Weckwerth, Minneapolis’ environmental health director, said in a statement. “Removing take-out containers that are trash from the waste stream helps to move us closer to the city’s zero waste goals. We encourage all restaurants to do their part and use recyclable, compostable, or reusable to-go containers.”

Compliance and enforcement

According to city data from 2019, compliance hovers around 90% — meaning that one out of every ten restaurants inspected are found to be violating the rules.

Minneapolis enforces the ban through its health inspectors during restaurant inspections, as well as responding to complaints via 311.

Repeat violations could eventually put an establishment’s license in peril. However, city Health Department officials haven’t done anything like that.

“Our inspectors are focusing on education,” department spokesman Scott Wasserman said. “Health inspectors will call out the violation during an inspection or visit a food establishment if a complaint is made.”

Both the Minneapolis and St. Paul ordinances allow for flexibility if supplies of compostable or recyclable containers are hard to come by — a problem that arose as the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic and supply chains buckled.

‘Clean and pretty’

Foam containers aren’t piled up on counters in Minneapolis restaurants, the way it used to be, but black plastic wasn’t hard to find until recently. Several downtown restaurants told the Star Tribune that they learned of the ban from inspectors or newsletters and are serving their way through their old inventory or have recently converted.

That was the case with Mother Dough, a patisserie-themed cafe in Capella Tower, where bread and quiches are baked daily and salad is the side of choice — usually served in a black plastic bowl with a clear plastic lid.

“It looked clean and pretty, so when I learned we had to change, it took a little while to find the right containers,” pastry chef Tomi Sawyer said, noting that greens smeared along the bottom of a clear plastic bowl doesn’t exactly scream haute cuisine — but is increasingly being seen in restaurants complying with the city’s ban.

Sawyer said it cost slightly more to switch: a carton of 150 black plastic containers is $57.33, while the same size carton of clear plastic ones is $57.88. The restaurant also uses paper and cardboard containers, which can often be composted, and sometimes recycled if there’s not too much oil or grease on the container.

“I think we’ve got it figured out now,” she said.

Selwyn Jones counts the days.

On Saturday, it will be 1,461 days.

That’s exactly four years since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd — Jones’ nephew — on May 25, 2020.

Two weeks before Floyd left this world, he and Jones bonded over greasy catfish and sauced-up wings at A&J Fish & Chicken on Lake Street. An employee who knew the duo — Jones owns a motel in South Dakota and made trips to see his “big sister’s baby boy” in Minneapolis — said he’d see them again soon.

“Later, he told me, ‘Little did I know, he wouldn’t be back with you,’” Jones recalled. “Me and George used to go there and eat, man.”

Four years ago, the world changed through Floyd’s murder and his story. And while a collection of devoted individuals continue to uphold his life and legacy through their efforts, organizations and testimonies, we have reached a crucial stage.

Today, Floyd’s name, once echoed through a proverbial megaphone across the Twin Cities, has for some faded to a whisper. Floyd is now part of a traumatic past that feels like a memory more than a movement.

But Jones has a message for those who wonder what more they can do, four years later.

“Get moving, brotha,” he told me. “A lot of people are going, ‘OK, what do we do?’ Do something. Do something. Use this for fuel, so it’ll never happen to anybody else again.”

Jones has turned his nephew’s death into kerosene for a lamp that burns for progress and justice. He is a walking Rolodex with connections to the mothers, fathers, siblings and friends of others who have lost loved ones to police brutality and violence.

He recently met with the family of Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed in 2020 by a white father and son who saw Arbery running through their neighborhood in Georgia. Greg and Travis McMichael recently asked a federal appellate court to throw out their hate crime convictions.

Jones flew to Georgia in support of Arbery’s family, which has contested that request. There have also been recent trips to Chicago, Cleveland and Louisiana, all to continue his work as an advocate for families devastated by police misconduct.

And last month, he spoke at Harvard to advocate for the passage of the Medical Civil Rights Act, a bill in Massachusetts that would establish a right to emergency medical care during police interactions.

“Man, it’s pretty simple,” Jones said. “There isn’t a buffer in between them approaching you and killing you. But the Medical Civil Rights [Act] would basically state that if somebody yells, ‘I can’t breathe, my back hurts, my head hurts,’ you have to restrain them … and get them medical assistance in a timely fashion. So that watching my nephew with [Chauvin] with a knee on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, then another 10 minutes until the [paramedics arrived], you would be charged for that.”

I agreed to write this column four years ago because I wanted to do my small part to ensure Floyd’s legacy — and the issues connected to his murder — would be discussed in a community full of folks who were reluctant to address racism.

But there was another reason. Floyd’s daughter was just 6 years old when he was murdered. And I owed it to her, I believed, to help keep his name alive. I asked Jones about her when we talked this week.

“She’s doing fine, man,” he said. “She’s got a good support system around her.”

On the four-year anniversary of the murder of that little girl’s father, I think it’s prudent to not only question our commitment to Floyd’s legacy but to also remember the lives affected by his absence.

Jones was at a softball game enjoying the Memorial Day weekend when it happened. That afternoon, he thought he was following the coverage of another Black man who’d been killed by police, this time in Minneapolis.

“I had just gotten over watching Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and I’m still mad, you know?” Jones said about following the news that day. “It’s like, ‘Why in the world are they killing another black dude, man? When is this gonna stop?’

“And little did I know that five seconds later, I would find out that that was my big sister’s baby boy that I was looking at.”

One of the worst days of his life has catapulted him and others into a spotlight he’s using to demand change.

Recently, Jones celebrated his 58th birthday, 12 more years than Floyd got to live. Jones remains energized to advocate for systemic change to help other families avoid the tragedy he has endured.

Four years after Floyd’s murder, Jones continues to fight.

Because he refuses to forget.

“I remember the good days, you know?” he said. “I remember hanging out with him. I still remember his life. I still have the phone where I can look at it and see where he last texted me, ‘Happy Birthday, Unc,’ four years ago.”

In the working-class Phillips community of south Minneapolis, residents are frustrated by a seemingly endless cycle of homeless encampments popping up, being removed, and resurfacing blocks away — and skeptical of any promise of change.

In the West Phillips neighborhood, Melissae Bletsian watched as an encampment sprung up behind her home earlier this year, next to a sober house and treatment center. People would shoot up drugs and pass out in the alley, where first responders would try to revive them while children looked on from a playground. Gardens became outhouses. Gun violence traumatized neighbors. The camp was cleared only after an organized, relentless barrage of complaints from neighbors.

Bletsian and many of her neighbors have grown cynical, suspecting that had the encampments encroached on more affluent parts of town, they would have been handled far sooner. Instead, they’ve multiplied and moved, burned and been rebuilt, in the same few Minneapolis neighborhoods.

“Let’s not just pit one group of people against another group of people and then create these little neighborhood wars that are only happening in vulnerable neighborhoods,” Bletsian said.

Mayor Jacob Frey, who came into office in 2018 promising to end homelessness in five years, noted that the city has invested $363 million in affordable housing programs since 2018 and seen the average number of affordable housing units built each year double from the six-year period before Frey took office. But he acknowledged that addressing housing unaffordability and the fentanyl epidemic, and the encampments those issues have prompted, remains a work in progress.

“There’s work that has been productive and strategies that have been less so,” acknowledged Frey. “We are making progress. It’s not quick enough. We need a much more robust method of providing treatment for people in addiction. … It remains a revolving treadmill, where unless we’re providing treatment and a way out, there’s stagnation. And so this is an area where collectively, yes, we need to be doing a better job.”

It’s proven one of the most vexing issues of Frey’s time in office, with data showing encampments have grown exponentially in recent years.

Records obtained via a data request show that the city closed one encampment on its property in 2020. The following year, there were six. During those years, at the height of the pandemic, encampment sweeps were restricted by an order from Gov. Tim Walz.

Once the restrictions were removed, the number of encampment closures grew. In 2022 there were 26, and last year there were 58. Map it out and it’s clear the closures have prompted most encampments to move within a few blocks of north and south-central Minneapolis, and around the transit center at I-35W and Lake Street.

In the first months of 2024, the high-profile Camp Nenookaasi has moved repeatedly, prompted by city closures and, in one case, a large fire.

Nenookaasi organizer Christin Crabtree thinks the concentration of encampment response efforts under the city’s Regulatory Services Department is evidence camp residents are treated as a code violation to be cleaned up, rather than people with medical needs deserving a public health approach.

“Most of the people that I know who live at these camps have family in the community or grew up in these neighborhoods, or they’re connected with case management at services that are going to get them into housing,” Crabtree said. “At the same time, it’s not lost on me that the places that people are setting up camps are already under-resourced communities … and I think we are mistaken when we separate people into housed and unhoused.”

Merging lanes

Encampments tend to cluster in higher-poverty neighborhoods where there are more city-owned vacant, tax-forfeited and failed investment lots, said Erik Hansen, the city’s director of community planning and economic development. While many of those lots are in the pipeline for redevelopment into multifamily housing, they’ve been stalled by years of litigation over Minneapolis’ 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Passage of new legislation to save 2040 may soon revive them.

The city has traditionally focused on producing affordable housing, leaving Hennepin County to provide direct services to people experiencing homelessness. The separate lanes have created dilemmas: Outreach workers who contract with the county often criticize the city’s encampment closures for destabilizing clients as they wait for housing placements, but the city is beholden to neighborhoods tired of blight and trauma.

In a bid to shorten the county’s methodical but tedious “coordinated entry” system of housing those with the most complicated needs first, the city employed a new company, Helix, to move people from Nenookaasi directly into apartments, regardless of where they ranked on the county’s waiting list.

Still, the city and county have partnered on efforts including funding emergency shelters like Avivo Village. City officials cite Hennepin County’s homelessness census as evidence of progress, because from 2019 to 2023, the number of people identified as living unsheltered went from 603 to 469. But the tally conducted by county workers under grueling conditions one day each winter is widely understood to be an undercount and not reflective of summer populations.

Looking ahead, city officials say they are changing their strategy to tackle encampments from a health perspective.

Regulatory Services Director Enrique Velázquez said that while his department used to rigidly deny encampments toilets in order to avoid “normalizing” them, it’s relaxed that policy, recognizing that people without bathrooms will relieve themselves elsewhere.

And while the city’s Health Department doesn’t currently have a regular presence in encampments, Deputy Director Heidi Ritchie said that in the coming months it will deploy a mobile medical unit to provide wound care and dentistry to people in encampments.

Frey said he is pursuing the creation of a treatment facility “that provides compassionate care and a route out of addiction in a culturally sensitive way” in partnership with tribes. But the scope and potential locations have not been established.

Jeff Wheeler, Star TribuneNaomi Wilson, who lives in East Phillips, speaks at a demonstration on the Hennepin County Government Center Plaza in March. “We don’t have enough housing for the people who need it,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Shared understanding

Neighbors sometimes blame encampment residents for refusing services and accuse volunteers who outfit them with survival gear of being enablers.

Naomi Wilson, a volunteer with the Sanctuary Supply Depot, said she continues to serve encampments because in 2023, there were 4,000 instances of people who tried to reserve a bed in one of Hennepin County’s emergency shelters and were turned away — most for lack of space, some because they’d been banned. The year before that, 7,000 were turned away.

“Where are they supposed to go?” Wilson asked. “A lot of unhoused residents don’t feel safe in shelters as well, for a variety of reasons, and so until they’re able to get placed in housing, we get them tents and tarps and heaters.”

At the same time, encampment supporters sometimes dismiss the suffering of their neighbors, who argue that they too contend with generational trauma, have loved ones in recovery and value the humanity of those living on the streets.

“I think everyone actually agrees about that, that these are people, and we should just move beyond arguing that point,” said Happy Reynolds, who says she’s staying in south Minneapolis despite maddening problems with drug dealing and sex trafficking because it has been her family’s home for more than a century.

“We’re attacking [homelessness] in a way that isn’t really treating the disease. We’re just sort of allowing it to happen, and at least my experience is the city 100 percent allows our neighborhood to just kind of be dumped on.”

Richard Tsong-Taatarii, Star TribuneIn March, the city dumped concrete chunks across the lot where Camp Nenookaasi sat, near 28th Street and 11th Avenue, so that an encampment couldn’t spring up again there.

It’s impossible to miss Jordan Dye courtside at Target Center.

For starters, he is frequently changing the color of his neon hair. When he walks the sidelines before tip-off, camera crews and security guards stop to shake his hand. In photos with fans or Target Center staff, he’s always holding up a peace sign.

“It feels like the first time every time,” he said of the front-row fan experience. “So I gotta pinch myself, you know?”

The 32-year-old Twin Cities native, named after Michael Jordan, spent his youth developing passions for streetwear fashion and the Timberwolves franchise, which came together this season. It’s placed him squarely in the center of Wolves culture.

Dye is loud and animated. He jumps out of his seat at bad calls or incredible plays. His trash-talking (Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns once hurled a choice word at Dye mid-dribble that went viral) has earned him a few warning cards from refs. They are on display with other basketball memorabilia in his Minneapolis apartment.

An ESPN camera crew stopped by recently to interview Dye. They mic’d him up courtside at Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals against Denver for his commentary and fandom for an upcoming playoffs documentary.

Being a diehard Wolves fan earned him that spotlight. But Dye is also known for his local clothing line, Lamb Chops, which collaborated with the Timberwolves this season. His exclusive Wolves throwback-inspired hoodies, hats, sweatpants and shirts sold out at Target Center instantly. For a second collab release, Dye restocked 600 hoodies. They all flew off the shelves.

“We had energy and enthusiasm, and I would say optimism for what it would do, but it quite frankly exceeded our expectations in terms of the demand,” said Mike Grahl, head of Wolves and Lynx marketing. “The line wrapped around the concourse. … Fans were excited beyond belief.”

Grahl said when the team looks to work with an outside designer, they want it centered on the kind of authentic fan affinity that Dye exemplifies. “The NBA drives culture. It’s a league that goes beyond just the game of basketball,” he said. Dye’s fashion sensibility and “prominent face to Timberwolves fans” aligned with the team’s positive trajectory this season.

Dye’s success has been building for years — like the Wolves — and not just locally. Rap artists like the late Mac Miller wore Lamb Chops gear. Dye said it’s surreal seeing Wolves players like Jordan McLaughlin, Josh Minot and Jaylen Clark rep his brand. He’s also created custom jackets for the players’ wives.

In his own style, Dye is to the Timberwolves now what Bill Beise was to the franchise for decades. Dubbed the Wolves’ longtime “superfan,” Beise now bestows that title to Dye.

“He has that passion, you can certainly see that,” Beise said in a Friday phone interview while trading stocks. “And I think it’s wonderful for the team to have fans that are passionate like that. I’m so happy that he is in that position.”

Wolves television analyst Jim Petersen introduced the pair two seasons ago. Beise, 68, said he first learned of Dye when his daughter showed him a photo. It showed Dye dressed up like Beise at a game around Halloween.

“I was just lit up. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” said Beise, a former 20-year season ticket holder.

Beise’s signature look and pose — dressed in a suit, crouching courtside with a rolled-up program in hand — was depicted in bobbleheads the team distributed in 2003.

“I don’t know that I was deserving of a bobblehead,” Beise said. “I think Jordan would make a great bobblehead.”

Beise’s persona and presence at Target Center earned him the nickname “Coach.” The Star Tribune, in a 2015 profile, reported that Michael Jordan once walked over to Beise and asked why he spends money on a seat if he never sits in it.

Dye has his best friend and business partner to thank for his courtside seats. The friend didn’t want to be named for this story, but he described Dye as a dedicated fan who only misses a few games, both home and on the road, each season.

Dye started going to Wolves games with his dad when he was a kid. Twenty years ago, they attended Game 7 when the Wolves beat the Kings to reach the Western Conference finals for the first time. Last week they were in Denver, where Dye’s parents live, when the Wolves finally did it again.

In their family, love for the game runs deep.

“We had his first Air Jordans when he was coming home from the hospital,” said dad Dan Dye, who attended the first Timberwolves game at the Metrodome in 1989.

Decades ago, the family shared season tickets with a group of friends, but in the lean years, nobody wanted to go. The Dyes kept coming back, demonstrating a loyalty to the team like Beise.

“That was part of the experience going to the Wolves game was watching Bill,” Dan said. “It’s an honor and kind of fun to see that kind of torch being passed a little bit and to see how excited Bill gets about Jordan.”

Dye’s mom Alea is just as passionate. “I’m a good howler,” she said while demonstrating in a downtown coffee shop Friday morning. She wore Rudy Gobert socks and a Wolves jersey 10 hours away from tip-off of Game 2 against the Mavericks.

However long this playoff run lasts, Dye will be courtside at Target Center. It’s unknown if Beise will make an appearance, but he said he’s more excited now than he was 20 years ago for the Wolves and the community surrounding the team.

Beise said there are many lifelong fans in the arena from the courtside up to the 200 section.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the arena,” he said. “The team can feel passionate fans regardless of where they are.”

Are you a longtime Wolves fan or do you know one the Star Tribune should be writing about this playoff season? Reach out to reporter Kim Hyatt at kim.hyatt@startribune.com.

Nearly four years after the police killing of George Floyd, civil rights advocate Leslie Redmond posed a question to a panel of speakers Friday: What progress have we seen in the fight for racial justice, and what significant challenges remain?

Attorney and civil rights activist Nekima Levy Armstrong noted the four Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s murder were prosecuted and convicted, which she called a “sign of progress.”

“Around the country there have been a number of police officers who have been held accountable under the law and years ago that wouldn’t have happened,” she said.

But, Levy Armstrong added, people must not get comfortable. “A lot of folks here and elsewhere want to quickly move on as if George Floyd was never murdered, as if racial justice had never happened, and we have to be the vanguard of change and stand up for what is right,” she said.

Hundreds gathered Friday in Minneapolis for a day of remembrance hosted by the nonprofit Win Back to honor Floyd and to reflect, heal and rally against racial injustice. Saturday marks the four-year anniversary of Memorial Day 2020, when Floyd was murdered by police at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, spurring global protests and a racial reckoning that shined a harsh spotlight on Minneapolis’ inequities.

“Buildings burned to the ground … but our hearts still cry out from the pain,” said Redmond, executive director of Win Back and a former NAACP president, as she read from a poem following a breakfast at Courtyard Minneapolis Downtown.

“After 2020, nothing was ever supposed to be the same. Politicians and police made promises, corporations made declarations, yet basic human rights are still under attack. Now is not the time to sit back and relax because the city is still burning.”

Mayor Jacob Frey recalled how Floyd worked as a security guard near where he lived in northeast Minneapolis, engaging in “razor-sharp banter” with people walking by.

“He was a happy and uplifting person and we can all be unhappy and uplifted through his memory while recognizing the importance of the continuation of progress — we have to do better and we recognize in Minneapolis we have a sacred mission,” Frey said.

Toshira Garraway, founder of Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, said that since Floyd’s killing “people are believing our stories more now. But the acknowledgements of all the harm that has been done, we still have to work on that.”

Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office successfully led the prosecution against Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for murdering Floyd, noted that juries convicted all four officers charged in the case in state and federal court. He said juries are now more willing to convict in these cases.

But Ellison added that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to create national police reform has not passed. He raised a concern that some state attorneys general are fighting corporate diversity practices.

“We are in the middle of a backlash right here, right now,” said Ellison.

Memorialize the Movement, a group led by Black women that collects and preserves murals painted on plywood during the unrest following Floyd’s death, held a gathering at its south Minneapolis headquarters Friday to screen a film about its work and have a panel discussion.

Leesa Kelly, the group’s founder and executive director, said there’s still a long way to go when it comes to the treatment of Black and brown people in the Twin Cities. Still, she said, she’s proud of the work her group has done to highlight the art of Black people. Kelly said the group has collected more than 1,000 murals and will display the art Saturday.

“Not a lot has changed and that disappoints me, and yet, I have hope because the work that I’m doing is changing things,” she said.

Star Tribune staff writer Louis Krauss contributed to this story.

Patients and visitors at HCMC in Minneapolis may have been exposed to measles earlier this week when three infected children sought care at the downtown hospital.

The Minnesota Department of Health issued a public alert Friday for HCMC patients or visitors to check their vaccination status and monitor for symptoms if they received care from 11 p.m. Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday. The children were infected during a visit to Europe where measles is common, but did not attend local schools or child care facilities where they could have exposed others, the state health department stated.

The number of possible exposures at the hospital is unclear, but doctors have been alerted to the potential spread and will be watching for measles symptoms and asking sick patients if they recently sought care at HCMC. Symptoms typically emerge within seven to 21 days of exposure. People at risk for exposure can be considered for treatment with immune globulin therapy that boosts their immunity.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet, causing initial cold and fever symptoms followed by a characteristic rash that often spreads from the head to the rest of the body. The ease of airborne transmission of the virus was famously documented by a 1991 outbreak during a Special Olympics event at the Metrodome in Minneapolis where measles spread from an athlete on the field to fans in the upper stands.

The spread is limited in Minnesota by more than 92% of its children being vaccinated for measles by age two, but the infection still finds susceptible pockets across the state. Nine measles cases have been reported so far this year in Minnesota. In 2017, an outbreak in Minnesota started among unvaccinated Somali children in child care facilities and infected 75 people.

Measles rates are highest in Asian countries, such as India and Iraq, but elevated rates have been detected in European nations such as Romania, Ukraine and Greece. International travelers are encouraged to first check their status to make sure they have received two doses of the measles vaccine.

The state’s alert to doctors on Friday listed the vaccination status of the three infected children as unknown. They weren’t infectious during travel, the alert stated, but only upon their return to Minnesota and during their interaction with relatives and trip to the hospital.

Minneapolis has the green light to proceed with a pilot program that will allow the city to use cameras to catch speeders and drivers who run red lights, and mail them a ticket.

A provision in an omnibus bill passed in the final hours of the legislative session grants authority for the state’s largest city to institute a traffic enforcement camera program that can start as soon as Aug. 1, 2025, and run for four years.

“Minneapolis now has authority,” said Ethan Fawley, who coordinates the city’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic deaths within the next three years.

Over the next 15 months, Minneapolis will have to flesh out a plan on how the program would work, conduct community engagement and determine where up to 42 cameras can be placed, according to the law, in “geographically distinct areas and in multiple communities with differing socioeconomic conditions.” The city also will need to procure equipment and hire traffic camera enforcement agents.

The pilot gives Minneapolis a second chance at using technology that is already in place in more than 25 states and about 200 cities across the United States. The city rolled out a system known as PhotoCop in 2005, but it didn’t last long. The state Supreme Court ruled the program invalid because it conflicted with state law and forced vehicle owners who were cited to prove they were not the ones driving.

The new law will allow Mendota Heights to do the same, and gives the Minnesota Department of Transportation permission to run a similar program in work zones.

Under the law, drivers who are captured on camera going more than 10 mph over the speed limit would get a letter for the first offense and a $40 citation for subsequent offenses. That would double to $80 for drivers caught going 20 mph or more over the speed limit.

The money collected would be used for operating costs or to pay for traffic safety or traffic-calming projects.

Drivers could attend a traffic safety class once in lieu of paying the fine, according to the law. Tickets will be sent to vehicle owners but can be contested; an owner can provide a sworn statement stating they were not driving at the time of the offense.

“We are not sure how often that would be happening,” said Fawley while speaking at a traffic safety conference Thursday in Brooklyn Center. But the main goal of the pilot is to focus on “giving drivers a chance to change their behavior.”

Automated speed cameras, which are approved by the Federal Highway Administration , have shown to reduce fatalities and injuries by 20% to 37%, the agency said. Some studies have shown a dramatic drop in the number of drivers going more than 10 mph over the speed limit when cameras are present, FHWA says.

“We have not seen any other device that can get that good of compliance,” Fawley said.

Minneapolis would use the cameras at the outset to focus on speeders, but could expand the pilot to look for red light runners, Fawley said. Speeding is the leading cause of crashes leading to deaths and serious injuries in Minneapolis — an issue he said earlier this year is worse here than in many other parts of the country.

City data showed speeding contributed to 136 crashes, resulting in a fatality or serious injury between 2017 and 2021. Red light running came in fourth, with 85 crashes.

Speeding in work zones has also been a problem for MnDOT. The agency said the number of drivers going 15 mph or more over the speed limit has increased since 2020.

In a test program MnDOT ran in Maple Grove in November 2020 when Interstate 94 was under construction, the agency found just 36% of the more than 333,000 drivers who passed through the work zone obeyed the 60 mph speed limit.

The test found 60% of drivers going between 61 and 75 mph and 13% of motorists driving 76 mph or faster, including several clocked at 100 mph or more. Speeding was at its worst at 3 p.m.

“We hope putting something in front of them will make them slow down,” said MnDOT engineer Mark Wagner.

Violations won’t go on a driver’s record (though they would for commercial drivers) and can’t be used to revoke, suspend or cancel a license, the law says. Cameras can only capture the rear license plate and can’t be used as license plate readers.

It’s not yet clear who would administer traffic safety classes, what would be included in the curriculum and whether they would be in person or online. “A lot of work still has to be done,” Fawley said.