A harrowing video shows dozens of riot police enforcing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s curfew order fanning out across a Minneapolis neighborhood and peppering residents with paintballs as they stood on their own porches and outside their front doors.
The newly resurfaced video, filmed on May 30, 2020 by Tanya Kersson right outside her home, looks like a scene from a dystopian movie. It shows a beige Humvee driving slowly down a quiet street in the Whittier neighborhood, followed by at least 25 heavily armored police officers.
Kersson is heard saying out loud, “Look at this, they just keep coming,” before being interrupted by several officers barking orders at the top of their voices.
“Go home! Come in! Go home right now, let’s go!” the policemen shouted as they marched down the street.
The woman continued to film, at which point an officer can be heard saying, “Light them up!”
Suddenly, the police fired paintballs at the woman and her guests, the flash from the gun barrel clearly visible in the fading light of dusk.
“Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up!” the resident shouted to her friends as they rushed out of the line of fire.
The muffled chorus of police shouts continued through the hastily slammed front door.
The incident came just days after the Minnesota governor, now Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, issued a draconian executive order imposing a strict 8 p.m. curfew for all of Minneapolis and St. Paul to quell violent riots following the killing of George Floyd.
The officers were filmed in the trendy Whittier neighborhood, home to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a popular restaurant. It is about two miles from the area where Floyd was killed, where rioting and looting raged for days.
“Since May 29, 2020, when I first issued a nighttime curfew, more than 400 people have been arrested, including more than 250 people arrested after the 8 p.m. curfew on May 31, 2020,” Walz wrote in the June 1 extension of the original order.
“Given that much of the destruction and violence has occurred in the dark, we must maintain a temporary nighttime curfew in coordination with the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.”
Ordering Minneapolis police to aggressively enforce the curfew against law-abiding citizens in their own homes wasn’t the only time Walz pitted the North Star State’s notoriously neighborly residents against each other.
Months before the police crackdown, Walz came under fire for setting up a “hotline” that allowed Minnesotans to report each other for violating social distancing protocols early in the pandemic.
Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-East Gull Lake) said on X at the time: “This is not necessary and it is not how Minnesotans want to treat each other. We can all show a little kindness to our neighbors as we manage our time and needs differently amid containment efforts.”
Republican state Rep. Mary Franson said on X that the hotline amounted to “snitching on the neighbors” and accused Walz of implementing large-scale government intrusion.
Kersson did not respond to a message from the Post seeking comment.
