A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MAY 24 , 2022
BY MARK BERMANViolent rampages c arried out b y
“active shooters” i ncreased signifi-
cantly in 2021, with 61 such shoot-
ings last year — u p from 40 in 2020
and double the number seen be-
fore the p andemic, according to an
FBI report released Monday.
The report examined a type of
violence that has b ecome a bleakly
consistent feature of American
life. For its analysis, the FBI de-
fined an active shooting attack as
one or more people killing or try-
ing to kill people in a populated
area; it left out cases deemed to be
due to factors including gang vio-
lence, self-defense or “contained
residential or domestic disputes.”
In 2021, these 61 attacks oc-
curred, on average, about every six
days in the United States. There
were 30 such shootings in both
2018 and 2019.
The report was released a little
more than a week after a gunman
stormed a Buffalo grocery store
and killed 10 people, joining a grim
fraternity of attacks that have cut
people down at schools, movie
theaters, nightclubs, bars, other
workplaces and houses of worship.
Officials have said the Buffalo
attack appeared to be a hate crime
fueled b y bigotry. Investigators be-
lieve that the attacker posted a
rambling, racist screed online de-
claring himself a white suprema-
cist before going to the store onMay 14 and shooting 13 people,
most of them Black.
About 1 in 5 of the active-shoot-
er attacks in the FBI report was
also a mass killing, which is feder-
ally defined as a single incident
with at least three victims. Others
killed fewer people — or in some
cases, no one at all.
In total, 103 people were killed
and 140 wounded in the 61 inci-
dents, a tally that did not include
any of the shooters, the FBI said.
The incidents included the at-
tack at a Boulder, Colo., grocery
store, in which a gunman killed 10
people; the rampage at a FedEx
facility in Indianapolis that killed
eight people; the massacres at
three Atlanta-area spas that killedeight people; and the shooting at
an Oxford, Mich., high school that
left four dead.
The report also h ighlighted what
it called “an emerging trend involv-
ing roving active shooters; specifi-
cally, shooters who shoot in multi-
ple l ocations, either in one day or in
various locations over several days.”
Nearly half the incidents in the
FBI’s count — “approximately 27”
of them, it said — involved one
person carrying out attacks in
multiple places.
About half the attacks took
place in what the report described
as “commerce-related environ-
ments,” which included grocery
stores a nd m anufacturing sites. In
most of those i ncidents, t he reportsaid, the relationship between the
attacker and these locations was
“unspecified,” though a handful of
shootings involved current or for-
mer employees of the businesses.
Shootings also t ook p lace at r es-
idences, government property,
schools, and a number of open
locations that included highways
and parks.
The FBI report joins other analy-
ses that the bureau and others have
published examining mass vio-
lence across America. It found that
most of the active-shooter attack-
ers were male — of the 61 shooters
examined, only one was female.
The report said the attackers
ranged in age from a 12-year-old
accused of shooting and injuringthree people at a middle school to
a 67-year-old accused of opening
fire at a health clinic and detonat-
ing explosive devices there, k illing
one and injuring four.
Thirty of the 61 attackers were
apprehended by law enforcement
officials, the report said. Eleven of
them took their own lives, while 14
were killed by law enforcement.
Two law enforcement officers were
killed during the 61 attacks, and
five were injured, the report said.
Four attackers “were killed by
armed citizens,” while another
died in a vehicle crash, the report
said. One attacker — who accord-
ing to the report opened fire at a
hookah lounge in Houston, injur-
ing five — remains at large.‘Active shooter’ attacks in 2021 doubled over recent years, FBI finds
housing and work opportunities
in communities of color, and ex-
pand access to funding for entre-
preneurs, businesses and first-
time home buyers. The group sug-
gested that the city’s overarching
goal should be to “recreate the
Black middle class.”
“It’s not going to happen over-
night, but we have to start the
work,” said Hill, who served as a
co-chair of the group.
A South Minneapolis native,
Hill played college basketball at
Ohio State and then professional-
ly overseas before returning home
to work as an investment adviser
— a career that he began after the
White father of one of the kids he
coached suggested he consider a
career in finance. It was the kind
of opportunity that Hill hopes to
pass on to other people of color,
describing himself as a “bridge”
between the Black community
and the corporate world of the
Twin Cities that remains over-
whelmingly White.
“Growing up, I never saw peo-
ple who looked like me, who were
advisers, who were doctors, any-
thing like that, so that’s why I live
in the community,” said Hill, who
until recently lived two blocks
from where Floyd was killed. “I
want to show people from my
community, all minority kids, that
you can be bigger than just an
athlete or an entertainer to make
it out of this place.”
But Hill also sees himself as a
way of connecting wealthy White
people to the Black communities
that need investment and sup-
port. “I think people are genuine
in that they want to help make
Minneapolis a better city and
bridge these gaps, but they don’t
know where to begin,” he said.
Still, Hill, who led protests
across the Twin Cities in the after-
math of Floyd’s death, continues
to be troubled by the racism he
sees.
In the recent state human
rights report on the practices of
the Minneapolis police, investiga-
tors claimed that officers had sur-
veilled Black leaders and organi-
zations in the community and
used the department’s covert
Twitter accounts to pose as a Black
resident and send a message criti-
cizing the local NAACP.
“It’s disheartening,” Hill said.
“But it proves that what we have
been saying as a community about
the police is true.... But we just
have to fight to continue towards
trust, truth and transparency.”
Hill describes himself as an op-
timist but admits he worries
about the pace of change. Last
month, he and other work group
members reached out to Frey’s
office to find out how the mayor
was planning to implement their
suggestions. A city official told
them they were still going
through the report. “I think the
commitment is there, but we have
to keep the pressure on,” he said.
Two years ago, he was among
the hundreds of activists standing
on the Interstate 35 bridge near
downtown Minneapolis to protest
for accountability over Floyd’s
death when a gas truck plowed
through barriers and drove into
the group, narrowly missing him.
Hill had thought of his family,
of what could have happened, but
as he looked around he marveled
at the diversity of the crowd, in-
cluding m ore young White people
than he’d seen at protests before.
“It gave me such hope,” Hill
said. “You have a large group of
people here who really do want to
make a difference... but it’s not
happening fast enough.”
“We have this unique opportu-
nity to really reset the system, but
we have to get it right,” Hill added.
“We can’t be back here in 20 or 30
years and say we had this chance
but did nothing with it.”accountability and affordable
housing. “But any progress is al-
ways met with opposition.”
And the last two years, the in-
equality that led her to run for
office has been laid at her door-
step — from the repeated com-
plaints she’s heard from other
Black people about the racism
they e ndured at the hands of po-
lice to the struggles of her low-in-
come neighbors to survive in a city
where many are increasingly
priced out.
After Floyd’s death, Jenkins led
the council to declare racism as a
public health emergency in Min-
neapolis — calling out what she
described as systemic issues that
have plagued Black residents and
led to Floyd’s killing, and forcing
the city to confront head-on the
disparities as it crafts future budg-
ets and policies, including its ap-
proach to public safety.
“Until we name this virus, this
disease that has infected America
for the past 400 years, we will
never ever resolve this issue,” Jen-
kins said at the time.
Jenkins was heartened to see
others around the Twin Cities j oin
in her call. But two years later, she
expressed concern about the slow
progress in fixing the systemic
issues that continue to challenge
Minneapolis.
“There have been a lot of foun-
dations, a lot of corporations, a lot
of institutions that have made
proclamations and statements
about addressing racism. But the
substantive changes, nothing has
really changed,” Jenkins said.
“Minneapolis remains this di-
chotomy because it one of the
most beautiful places.... It’s like
nowhere else. Minneapolis is it.
Except if you’re Black and low
income, it could be one of the
worst places to live in America.”
Last November, Minneapolis
Mayor Jacob Frey (D) convened a
working group of outside advisers
to suggest how the city could
shape its budget to speed up the
recovery from both the pandemic
and the 2020 unrest while also
seeking to dismantle racial and
economic disparities. Frey said
Minneapolis could not afford to
return to the “old normal.”
The group’s report, made pub-
lic in March, recommended that
the city invest in more affordabletimes as likely to die during or
after pregnancy than White
mothers, “regardless of education
levels and socioeconomic status,”
while deaths among Black infants
in Hennepin County, where Min-
neapolis is located, were 3.4 times
higher than for Whites.
“I don’t think there have been
many changes for the plight of
African Americans in Minneapo-
lis.... In some ways, it feels like
we are in a worse place t han where
we were two years ago,” said An-
drea Jenkins, the president of the
Minneapolis City Council, who
lives two blocks f rom the intersec-
tion where Floyd was killed.
Jenkins, a poet and activist who
grew up in Chicago before moving
to Minneapolis, made history in
2017 as the first Black openly
transgender woman elected to
public office in America. She
made headlines again in January,
when she was elected president of
the city council — the first trans
person to hold such a position in
the country.
“I think that’s progress,” said
Jenkins, who ran on a platform of
racial equality, including policewith the nearly $79,000 median
income reported by White fami-
lies — one of the largest income
gaps in the nation and one made
worse by the pandemic, which hit
Black Minnesotans harder than
Whites.
Less than a quarter of Black
families own their homes in the
Twin Cities, one of the lowest ho-
meownership rates in the nation
and one that has been in steady
decline over the last two decades,
according to a 2021 study of prop-
erty records and census data by
the Urban Institute. In contrast,
the region’s homeownership rate
among Whites has remained
above 70 percent since 2000 —
one of the highest rates in the
country.
A recent report by Urban
League Twin Cities found other
disparities, including in educa-
tion and health care. Graduation
rates were double for White stu-
dents compared with Black stu-
dents, who reported feeling less
cared for by educators then their
White counterparts felt. The re-
port also found that Black moth-
ers in the region are nearly threeto reopen after more than two
years clouded by the coronavirus
pandemic, Minnesota has en-
joyed a robust economic r ebound,
including a record $9.2 billion
state budget surplus that Walz
and lawmakers are debating how
to spend.
The state recently marked its
lowest unemployment rate on rec-
ord — 2.2 percent in April, one of
the lowest rates in the country,
prompting celebratory state-
ments from Walz and other elect-
ed officials. But the Black unem-
ployment rate was more than dou-
ble that of White Minnesotans —
6.7 percent vs. 2.8 percent, accord-
ing to the state Department of
Employment and Economic De-
velopment (DEED).
Across the Twin Cities, the me-
dian Black family income was just
under $42,000 i n 2020, according
to an analysis of Census Bureau
data by DEED, far from the nearly
$90,000 averaged by White fami-
lies that year.
In Minneapolis, the disparities
were even sharper, with Black
families on average earning just
under $28,000 in 2020, comparedMinneapolis residents say little
has changed since Floyd’s killing.
The signs that featured images of
Floyd’s face or demanded justice
for his death have vanished from
front yards, even as many of the
same tensions over race, policing
and inequality linger. While many
believe the commitment for
change is still there, some ques-
tion the urgency.
“A lthough everybody’s heart
seems to be in the right place,
their actions are not matching up
as fast.... We’re dealing with big,
deep cultural issues, systematic
issues that have built up for hun-
dreds of years, and that takes
time,” said PJ Hill, an adviser at
NorthRock Partners and vice
president of the Minneapolis
NAACP. “You worry about the
time that it is taking and whether
we are missing a moment.”
While Chauvin i s now in prison
serving a 22^1 / 2 -year murder sen-
tence, and the three other officers
at the scene were convicted in
February on federal civil rights
charges related to Floyd’s death, a
recent state investigation found
that the Minneapolis Police De-
partment continues to engage in
racially discriminatory policing —
targeting and using force on Black
people at a higher rate than
Whites even though Blacks make
up just 19 percent of the popula-
tion. Since Floyd’s death, two oth-
er Black men have been killed by
police, inflaming the trauma of a
city that remains deeply on edge.
That includes the fatal shoot-
ing of Amir Locke, who was killed
as officers executed a no-knock
warrant inside a downtown Min-
neapolis apartment in February.
Locke wasn’t the target of the
warrant, though police initially
described him as a “suspect.”
Locke’s death, which sparked
fresh protests, resulted in no
charges against the officers in-
volved.
Scott Redd, a former Minneap-
olis Public Schools official and a
relative of Locke’s, told reporters
that Locke would be alive if he
weren’t Black, and he echoed
what other Black residents have
long said about systemic racism in
the state, which they say has been
concealed by its reputation for
being “Minnesota nice.”
“We often call it Mississippi
with snow,” Redd said as he stood
with Locke’s parents the day after
their son was killed. “We have
some of the largest disparities
when it comes to education, em-
ployment, homeownership and
now justice. And we’re tired of it.”
Jeff Hayden couldn’t always
find the words to explain w hat it is
like being a Black person in Min-
neapolis, especially to his White
friends. And then one day, the
former state senator saw a film
that struck him as an apt meta-
phor.
“It’s like that movie, ‘Get Out,’ ”
Hayden said, referring to Jordan
Peele’s Oscar-winning 2017 racial
satire, which depicted a Black
man arriving into a world that
appeared nice on the surface but
turned out to be ominous under-
neath.
“In the film, everything is pleas-
ant — just like it is here. Minneap-
olis is a beautiful city, with down-
town and the lakes. People are
pleasant. It has this history of
great mayors. We have this dispro-
portionality of Fortune 500 com-
panies here, so there are great
jobs,” said Hayden, who until late
2020 represented the area where
Floyd was killed. “But for Black
people, it’s like, ‘What is going on
here?’... You look around, and
you dig into the data, and you
realize B lack people are doing ter-
rible here.”
As t he nation has slowly moved
MINNESOTA FROM A
Black Minneapolis residents see little urgency for change
SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
Thousands of demonstrators march through downtown Minneapolis on May 31, 2020, to protest the killing of George Floyd.DAVID JOLES/STAR TRIBUNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jeff Hayden, pictured while serving as a state senator in 2016, says “Minneapolis is a beautiful city,”
but “you look around, and you dig into the data, and you realize Black people are doing terrible here.”A six-part podcast | No-knock warrants can destroy Listen wherever you get your podcasts
Broken Doors lives. Why are they so easy to obtain and carry out? N0229 6x