Two years after George Floyd’s murder, the Minneapolis Police Department has again raised concerns about their interactions with the Black community in the city after two police snipers shot an armed young Black man who was having a mental health episode isolated in an apartment, the Associated Press reports.
Last Thursday, a neighbor called 9-1-1 after Andrew Tekle Sundberg, 20, started firing a gun, with some of the rounds entering a neighboring apartment. That led to a six-hour standoff with police during which police evacuated the neighboring residences. The standoff ended when two snipers fired simultaneously, killing Sundberg.
Police have not released what Sundberg did to force the snipers to fire, which would require a threatening move toward officers or a bystander. Sundberg’s parents, who adopted him from Ethiopia when he was a young child, have questioned police tactics and whether the order to fire was given because police were frustrated with the length of time they had been at the scene.
Joined by Sundberg’s parents, protestors marched in front of the apartments. Many carried signs honoring Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, cutting off his air supply and prompting a heart attack. Others remembered Amir Locke, who was shot by Minneapolis police after he reached for a gun seconds after police executing a “no-knock” warrant burst through the front door of an apartment where he was sleeping on the couch.
Civil rights activists have pointed to a series of episodes–in Minneapolis and nationwide–where white suspects were “waited out” to give them an opportunity to surrender, including a series of mass shootings in places like Buffalo and Highland Park, Illinois.