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All week at MPR News, we’ve been marking five years since George Floyd was murdered at the hands of Minneapolis police in south Minneapolis. We’ve been hearing from lawmakers and public officials and documentarians. 

But all of us who lived here in Minneapolis five years ago were direct witnesses to history. And for the journalists at MPR News, witnessing and documenting history was quite literally their job. 

Our Emily Reese sat down with MPR reporter Matt Sepic, host Nina Moini and visual journalist Ben Hovland to hear their reflections on May 2020.

Press play above to listen to their conversation, or read a transcript below, edited for time and clarity. 

The Minneapolis Police Department originally reported that a man had died “after medical incident during police interaction.” We didn’t find out until the video by witness Darnella Frazier that went viral that the news release was misleading. Did any of that change the way you think about information that we get from the police or the power of a video from a witness?

Whether or not they deliberately were misleading the public is a subject of debate. I don’t necessarily think that they were. The public information officer at the time wrote that, to my understanding, based on information that he got from other police officers. But it did go out, and it certainly was wrong, and it was certainly misleading and was completely contradicted by the facts on the ground.

I think that that time forced a lot of newsrooms and a lot of just journalists and people individually to sit with thinking about if something comes from an official source that we often rely on — you know, governmental agencies or law enforcement — that should not always be taken as fact of what happened.

In hindsight, it really felt like it was a moment when news organizations had to hold the mirror up to themselves to really reflect on how culpable are we in in sharing this information coming from these official sources, and how can we do it better? 

And it really makes a lot of us wonder how many more George Floyds were there prior to cell phone videos. This is something that Black communities have been saying for a long time, that there have been this level of brutality by police, but it just has not been believed by people in the mainstream media.

You three were out in the streets covering these protests for days and days. What are your most vivid memories from that time? What hits you first, the sights, the smells, the feelings?

 I would say the smell of buildings burning. That’s that acrid stench of all sorts of plastic and chemicals and building materials going up in smoke. And typically when there are fires, you hear fire trucks coming to put out the fires. That was the probably most frightening and eerie feeling that I had being out on the streets, on the ground, walking up and down Lake Street covering this — there were all these fires, but very few fire trucks. There was nobody coming to put these out.

One of the things that really stuck out to me following the smoke was just the community outpouring of support of people coming out to help businesses clean up on Lake Street during some of those later days that week, and just the show of support for folks in south Minneapolis trying to connect people who maybe didn’t have resources, who didn't have food, who didn't have clean water. And just seeing the community spirit of mutual aid coming together.

I spent a lot of time out during the daytime, and it was many, many people who were peacefully demonstrating. I remember kneeling down in the very front, because there was so much media in a big, giant circle. And then there was a circle of flowers after that. 

And then in the middle, they had set up microphones, and it was members of George Floyd’s family, his brother, I believe, Philonise Floyd. And I remember just being crouched way down in the front as a short journalist, and looking up at him, it just it did feel like one of those moments where you know that you’re witnessing something really powerful and a part of history, right?

And Ben as a photographer, you know, how did you decide where to go, who to follow, what to capture? How did that work for you?

I basically just tried to serve my neighbors and go where people weren’t necessarily comfortable, going to get photos, get reports, and share that with them, mostly through social media at the time.

Ben, do you feel that having that big camera around your neck made you a target for either protesters or police or anybody else who didn't want the world to see what they were up to?

 You know, I actually never felt in danger in any of the interactions I had with protesters. I actually was hit by a less lethal round outside the third precinct, and so that’s pretty much the only time that I ever felt really in danger and targeted was when I had both my cameras out, and all of a sudden I just feel a sharp sting on my thigh and realizing that I got hit.

 That was really hard. You know, it’s not about us as journalists, but to know that your colleagues could be unsafe was hard. 

Linda Tirado, a freelance photographer, lost an eye to one of these police projectiles. And that “less lethal” is the law enforcement term for them. But these devices certainly can really cause a lot of harm and injury to people. 

And there was a time where we did think a lot of the time when we’ve been out covering protests over the years, that having press credentials on us and clearly identifying ourselves as press would be enough to be able to be observing what was going on. And I think that really just kind of went out the window during that time. Matt, I think you had been told to run by police and just feeling in danger from law enforcement, that was something different for me.

We were told, in no uncertain terms, to get away from the fifth precinct building, and when I say we, I was out with our colleagues from the podcast “In The Dark.” This was after the third precinct on Lake Street got overrun. 

It seemed that police were fearful that a second precinct could be overrun, and they pushed the protest group away, you know, a block at a time. And I remember a cop yelling at us, saying, “I don’t care if you’re press, get away from here.” They had this 40-millimeter projectile launcher. This was outside the fifth precinct. So I was live on the air with Cathy Wurzer describing the situation. 

Matt and Nina, you both covered the complicated legal process that followed state and federal charges against the officers. What was that like?

One of the things that stands out to me was during the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a black driver named Daunte Wright was killed by a Brooklyn Center police officer, and it became an almost, “are you kidding me” moment for members of the community. 

And I remember at that time, in light of the third precinct in Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center police had erected a large barricade of fences around their police department. And so it seemed like all of the events that had happened a year or so prior to that had caused an even greater rift between law enforcement and members of the community. 

How has that relationship improved? Or has it improved over the last five years?

 I think one of my biggest takeaways is that five years is not a long time, and I think sometimes it’s human nature or nature of the media to want to button something up or make it make sense in a timeline. But I don’t think it’s a long amount of time in the grand scheme, and when you think about all of the history that exists. 

So it’s hard to say, when does a culture change, or has it changed? Or have relationships improved? Because people are not a monolith and people have different experiences.

Emily Reese

Host

Gretchen Brown

Author

Our Emily Reese sat down with MPR reporter Matt Sepic, host Nina Moini and visual journalist Ben Hovland to hear their reflections on May 2020.


Our Emily Reese sat down with MPR reporter Matt Sepic, host Nina Moini, and photographer Ben Hovland to hear their reflections on that time.

MPR News journalists reflect on George Floyd‘s murder and the uprising that followed

MPR News journalists Ben Hovland and Nina Moini

MPR News journalists reflect on George Floyd‘s murder and the uprising that followed

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