Star Tribune
Metro cities buying fencing to separate protesters, police
Cities and law enforcement agencies in the metro over the past several weeks have joined a group that plans to lease or buy fencing designed to thwart attacks on police stations.
The effort is rooted in the fear that what happened at the Minneapolis Third Precinct station during unrest following the police killing of George Floyd could happen elsewhere.
The “anti-scale” fencing is hard to climb, doesn’t tip easily and reduces the need for officers armed in riot gear, said Mark Ray, the Crystal public works director who was among a group who brainstormed the idea to have cities collectively buy fence.
It’s too expensive for most cities to buy such fencing, but by working together in what Ray calls the Fencing Consortium the cities would pay somewhere between $5,000 and $16,000 a year to maintain and store fencing at a metro warehouse, said Ray. The price range reflects the differing amount of fencing each city needs to encircle its police station. The assumption is that only one or maybe two cities at a time would ever need to deploy it.
“It’s a de-escalation tool,” said Ryan Murphy, of the St. Paul Police Department, which is a consortium member. The fencing protects the police station in the event of a quickly formed protest, but by keeping the protesters and police officers apart, it also helps prevent the protest from escalating into a confrontation.
The fencing is not available for concerts or planned protests, but exclusively for so-called “no notice” events that arise spontaneously, Ray said.
The anti-scale fencing is 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide; the sections interlock to form a wall. The fencing has gaps that are too small for fingers, making it hard to climb. A base extends on both sides of the fence by a couple of feet, and if people stand on the base in order to be near the fence, their weight makes the fencing more stable. Gates and doorways can be added where needed.
How it would work
If a law enforcement agency needs the fence, its request would go to the Fencing Consortium’s board, which currently has five members. The board would have to approve the deployment, and then a team made up of one to three staffers from each member agency would put out the fences.
“The hope of the consortium is that within eight hours of that phone call they would have something moving so the fence could be in place within 24 hours,” said Murphy.
Some 28 cities or law enforcement agencies have joined so far. St. Paul is a member but Minneapolis is not. The Fencing Consortium has made presentations to city councils in the metro about the project.
The cost per city depends on the length of their police station’s perimeter; the largest and thus most expensive in the group so far is Eden Prairie, Ray said.
The group asked the state Legislature to contribute $5 million to the project but was turned down in the 2022 legislative session. They plan to ask again next year because the cost has prevented some communities from joining, Ray said. “We’re trying to go back to the state to purchase the fence, because that will significantly reduce our cost,” he said. Some 50 agencies have expressed interest, and the consortium plans to go forward with or without state funding, said Ray.
Two-thirds of a mile
After talking to several fencing vendors, the group recently put out requests for bids to two vendors — ARX Perimeters and Premier Global Production. The consortium hopes to have a contract by Jan. 1, and the fencing three or four months later.
They hope to lease about 3,500 feet of fencing — or about two-thirds of a mile — for their first year of operation. Ray said the hope is that the consortium would eventually buy its own fencing.
The group’s origins go to the night the Minneapolis Third Precinct burned, said Murphy. “After the Third Precinct was burned down everyone in the industry looked at what do we have, and what can we do different and what can we do in the future if this were to come to our site?” said Murphy.
Fencing used during the Derek Chauvin trial was trucked in from Chicago. That’s too far away for spontaneous protests, and no one in the Twin Cities makes a suitable product. “The goal is to have the product stored in state so it’s readily deployable,” Murphy said.
Star Tribune
Housesitter in Edgerton, MN, charged with murdering girlfriend
A man has been charged with murder after his girlfriend was found dead in the residence where they were housesitting in far southwestern Minnesota.
Joseph James Benson, 35, of Edgerton was charged with second-degree murder last week in Pipestone County and attended his pretrial conference Tuesday.
According to charges, Benson told deputies that “there’s a dead body upstairs,” after law enforcement responded to a report of possible domestic assault at a home in Edgerton on Nov. 2.
When police entered the house, they said they found a woman lying face-up on the bathroom. The woman likely died of asphyxia, according to an autopsy at the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Police said the owner of the house had been on vacation in Florida and had asked Benson to watch over the home and take care of her dogs and birds.
The homeowner called police on the morning of Nov. 2, after concerns that Benson and his girlfriend, nicknamed “Panda,” had been fighting.
The homeowner said she had been talking to the housesitters via Snapchat, and that Benson had said his girlfriend was “freaking out and wanted to leave.”
Police said the homeowner told Benson, “I don’t care what you need to do, you get this taken care of.” She said that 20 minutes later, she received a SnapChat call from Benson, and after asked if things were taken care of, he quietly said, “Panda is gone.”
Star Tribune
Senate Republicans are gathering behind closed doors to pick a new majority leader
Unlike most previous contests, there is no clear front-runner going into the election. Because senators are casting secret ballots, the majority won’t say who they are voting for. And some may never tell.
”It’s a secret ballot and it’s a secret ballot for a reason,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who said early on he would support his home state colleague Thune. ”Each member chooses the leader that they think they can work with the best over this two year period of time.”
Rounds said that he prefers the way that Thune and Cornyn have ”handled it one-on-one with everybody,” but that he had talked to Scott as well. ”We’ve got three qualified individuals,” he said.
One thing all candidates agree on is change from McConnell, who called most of the shots as leader — a top demand from the far-right faction of the caucus who disagreed with McConnell on aid to Ukraine and increasingly turned on him as he feuded with Trump.
Thune, Scott and Cornyn said they would like to see more opportunity for individual senators to bring bills to the floor and offer amendments, and they have pledged to be better communicators within the conference than the often-reserved McConnell. At the forum on Tuesday evening, the three agreed on many of the issues discussed, according to senators leaving the meeting.
Thune, McConnell’s current No. 2, has been seen by colleagues as an incumbent of sorts, having taken over for several weeks last year when McConnell was absent due to medical reasons. He is well-liked among his fellow senators, and was seen for some time as the front-runner in the race. But Cornyn, who served as McConnell’s No. 2 before Thune, is also well-liked and has also won some commitments from colleagues.
Star Tribune
Pete Hegseth is Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary: 5 things to know
As President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration comes into clearer focus, one newly announced Cabinet pick may ring a bell for several Minnesotans. Trump has tapped “Fox and Friends” host Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense.
While he’s known to most of America as a Fox News personality, here are five things we learned from the Star Tribune archives and other media reports about Hegseth:
He grew up in Forest Lake
Hegseth graduated from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999, where he played football and basketball. He went on to attend Princeton University on an ROTC scholarship, where he continued playing basketball.
Hegseth served in the Army
Hegseth joined the Army after he graduated from Princeton and served with the 101st Airborne in 2005-06, according to the Star Tribune archives. In 2005, the then-lieutenant spoke to the newspaper about the conditions of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, where he defended the facility against criticism.
“Photographers sometimes take pictures that make it look like American soldiers are putting the detainees in dog cages,” he told Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten. “That’s very misleading.”
A year before that, three British Muslim prisoners had reported several instances of torture, forced drugging and religious persecution.
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