Minneapolis police fatally shoot man during stop
Chief plans to release police body cam footage on Thursday
Updated 11:15 p.m.
Minneapolis police say an officer shot and killed a man Wednesday evening at a gas station near 36th Street East and Cedar Avenue in south Minneapolis.
At about 6:15 p.m., officers confronted a man believed to be a “felony suspect” during a traffic stop, and shots were “exchanged,” police spokesperson John Elder told reporters.
Elder did not say what type of felony the man was stopped for. The man died at the scene.
A woman in the car was uninjured, and no officers were hurt, Elder said. The officers involved came from “a community response team” that worked on recent carjacking cases in the city, he added.
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The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is taking over the investigation. Elder said police body cameras were on and operational at the time of the shooting.
About an hour after the shooting, a crowd of about 100 people gathered around the scene. It’s less than a mile from 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, the intersection near where George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in May.
At a late Wednesday night briefing, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said he intended to release police body camera footage from the incident on Thursday. He appealed to residents gathered at the scene to stay calm.
"We want to do everything we can to protect everyone's First Amendment rights to freely assemble,” but destructive behavior will not be tolerated, he told reporters. "We need to keep our officers safe. We need to keep the community members safe and we need to preserve that crime scene so the facts can come out."
Mayor Jacob Frey said he was monitoring the situation.
“We know a life has been cut short and that trust between communities of color and law enforcement is fragile,” he said in a statement. “Rebuilding that trust will depend on complete transparency.”
He said he was working closely with Arradondo to gather all the facts.