During a press conference on Saturday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stated that the destruction of “long-term, institutional businesses” and “community institutions” isn’t being done by people from Minneapolis, but is being done by people “coming in largely from outside of the city, from outside of the region, to prey on everything that we have built over the last several decades.”
Frey said, “We’ve seen long-term, institutional businesses overridden. We’ve seen community institutions set on fire. And I want to be very, very clear, the people that are doing this are not Minneapolis residents. They are coming in largely from outside of the city, from outside of the region, to prey on everything that we have built over the last several decades. The dynamic has changed over the last several days. If you looked at Tuesday, it was largely peaceful protests, the vast majority peaceful, the vast majority of people from our city, with a small group of people looking to have intentional disturbance. Gradually, that shift was made, and we saw more and more people coming from outside of the city. We saw more and more people looking to cause violence in our communities.”
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