At the beginning of January, the rehabilitation of Jacob Frey, the embattled mayor of Minneapolis, seemed nearly complete.
Back in 2020, Mr Frey, was the mayor whose police department murdered George Floyd. He was the leader whose police officers brutalised demonstrators and journalists during a summer of protests and riots. He was the man whose constituents, captured in a video that went many times viral, chanted “Shame!” and “Go home, Jacob!” at a rally, after he wouldn’t commit to defunding the police department. The last many Americans saw of Mr Frey, at least for a time, was the boyish mayor walking catatonically away from the crowd in a mask that read, “I can’t breathe,” the final words spoken by Black men like Eric Garner and Mr Floyd before police killed them.
