Star Tribune
Minneapolis Freedom Fighters will get apology from Mayor Jacob Frey and $800,000
The Minneapolis City Council has approved an $800,000 payout to settle a lawsuit related to the arrest of members of the Freedom Fighters, a grassroots security group, in the midst of violence after Winston Smith’s 2021 killing.
And, as part of the settlement approved 13-0 by the City Council Thursday, Mayor Jacob Frey will apologize in person to the men, their attorney said Friday.
The arrests were wrong, the eight men alleged in a 2022 federal lawsuit, because they were on the streets trying to keep the peace “doing exactly what Minneapolis city officials asked them to do.”
The Freedom Fighters are a militia of sorts that provides unpaid security during unrest. They are one of several largely Black groups that have been established in Minneapolis to provide both security — members have uniforms and carry AR-style rifles — and a buffer between police and protestors whose target is police. As a predictable pattern of protests, including arson and violence, emerged after police shootings of Black men, many city and community leaders came to rely on such unofficial teams.
The men were arrested during rioting in Uptown on June 4, 2021, a day after a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force shot and killed Smith, a 32-year-old Black man with an outstanding weapons warrant.
A state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension concluded Smith fired at police, and prosecutors ultimately cleared the officers of wrongdoing. But there were no body cameras, and in the immediate aftermath of his killing — just over a year after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer — some decried Smith’s killing and took to the streets.
Minneapolis public safety officials, including senior police officials, put out a call for grassroots security groups, including the Freedom Fighters, to assist in quelling any violence, according to the lawsuit.
Late in the night, one group of rioters lit a Dumpster on fire and rolled it into the street near Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street, about a half block from where the Freedom Fighters were standing watch. A group of police officers arrived and, even though some of them initially acknowledged the Freedom Fighters as having a legitimate role in keeping order, soon surrounded the group and arrested the men, the suit alleges.
They were released the next day.
After a closed-door discussion with city attorneys Thursday, city council members unanimously approved the settlement — $100,000 to each man and a yet-to-be determined payment of their legal fees — without discussion.
Fred Goetz, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in addition to those terms, Frey will personally apologize to the men in a private meeting. He said the city’s acknowledgment that the arrests were wrongful and the apology are significant.
“That’s important because the Freedom Fighters want to continue to be part of the city’s efforts to provide public safety,” Goetz said Friday.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
