With Minneapolis burning during riots over the death of George Floyd in police custody in 2020, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz played a central role in the debate over policing and crime in the United States at the time.
Anti-police protests quickly spread from Minneapolis to the rest of the country. He was criticized for dragging his feet in helping city police quell the unrest, withholding the National Guard for days. Years later, he finally called rising crime "unacceptable" and stepped up state support for the embattled city. Then Vice President Harris, the Democrats' 2024 presidential nominee, named Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate and running mate of former President Trump, poked at Walz's 2020 record Tuesday, calling his addition to the Democrat ticket "an interesting tag team."
"If we remember the rioting in the summer of 2020, Tim Walz was the guy who let rioters burn down Minneapolis," he said of the riots that began in Minnesota in response to the death of Floyd while being arrested in Minneapolis. "And then Kamala Harris was the one who bailed the rioters out of jail."
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Rioting over Floyd's death in Minnesota soon led to fiery demonstrations across the country, as well as police morale and staffing issues that continue to this day, and Walz has been criticized for allowing the chaos to fester by delaying the deployment of the National Guard.
Then he got the state involved in the prosecution of Kim Potter, a White police officer involved in the death of a Black man. As recently as this year, Walz was accused of interfering in another unrelated police shooting case. But he hasn't posted to X about crime since April.
"Kamala has decided to lean into being the candidate of urban chaos," said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD inspector who has been critical of leftist police and bail policies in liberal-led cities. "She already had defunding and bail reform in her portfolio. Adding Walz firms up the Dems’ position as the party of burning cities and attacking cops in the name of progressive causes. Say what you want, she’s not hiding what she’s about."
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He took office in January 2019 and one of his first official moves was to create a diversity and equity commission.
But he's made a number of criminal justice reforms over the years, including a law that lowered the number of people on probation, a clean-slate act that wipes some criminal records, and a police reform law that bans chokeholds and requires officers to intervene if they witness a colleague using excessive force, according to the Marshall Project, a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice.
On Memorial Day 2020, racial tensions came to a head when a White police officer named Derek Chauvin appeared on video kneeling on Floyd's neck. Floyd, who was Black, later died, prompting repeated protests that devolved into rioting, arson and looting.
A jury found Chauvin guilty of murder. Three other officers were also fired and put on trial for lesser charges.
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Floyd's death and related riots led to calls to "defund" police around the country, increased oversight and tough work conditions for officers who have remained on the job in some of the bluest cities.
"It was truly the epicenter of the 2020 anti-police movement," said Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association. "The policies espoused by Gov. Walz are anti-police, pro-criminal and leaning toward Marxism in a lot of ways."
State crime statistics show spikes in 2020 and 2021 before violent crimes leveled off in 2022. The state's Department of Public Safety has not yet released numbers for 2023 or later.
In Minneapolis, which provided more recent numbers, homicides have dropped by more than 80% year-to-date compared to 2023, but they are almost near the full-year total of 2019. Motor vehicle thefts have risen steadily from just under 3,000 in 2019 to a high of 7,867 last year. There have already been 3,929 in 2024.
Assaults and robberies both saw substantial spikes in the city in 2020 and 2021 before dropping to levels that remain above 2019.
Walz called upward trending crime "unacceptable" in August 2022 after announcing state authorities would step in to help control the spikes in the Twin Cities.
And some of the numbers, shoplifting in particular, may be misleading, said Brantner Smith. Nationally, such crimes are trending upward, she said, but reporting is down as exasperated victims feel like nothing happens to repeat offenders.
The past four years have been hard on police morale, and departments around the country have been struggling to retain good officers and recruit new ones.
Minneapolis still hasn't recovered. And Chauvin, the former MPD officer convicted of murder in Floyd's death, was hospitalized in prison last year after an inmate looking for clout attacked him with a shank.
"The Minneapolis Police Department is still about 40% below where it needs to be, and that bleeds over into the surrounding area, the county, St. Paul, and even into the suburbs," Brantner Smith said.
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She also pointed to the case of Potter, a former Brooklyn Center police officer who shot and killed a felony suspect named Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in 2021.
At the time, Wright was wanted in connection with a firearms case and faced pending armed robbery charges. Potter repeatedly yelled "Taser!" on bodycam video before pulling out her gun and shooting him.
"We need to heal from 2020, and we now know so much more about not just the death of George Floyd but also the prosecution of Kim Potter," Brantner Smith said. "I don’t think anyone should forget that, the way Walz’s attorney general stepped in there and put her in prison for a terrible mistake that was not a criminal act, and it was not racial."
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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over the case from county authorities and upgraded the charges against Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter and served 16 months in prison.
As the state confronted police officers involved with suspects' fatalities, Harris publicly called for donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a group that posts bail for people accused of crimes. While she asked supporters to donate to help bail out the anti-police protesters, the group also posted bail for people jailed on unrelated charges.
One of them was George Howard, a domestic violence suspect. While he was free, he allegedly shot and killed another man in a road rage fight.
A year later, the same group helped Shawn Michael Tillman post bail. He then allegedly found a rival at a train station and shot him six times.
Representatives for Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Fox News' Max Bacall, Paul Steinhauser and Julia Johnson contributed to this report.
