Gov. Tim Walz did not send police with paintball guns to enforce COVID-19 curfews

On Aug. 6, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate for the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential election. 

Since then, people on Instagram, X, Reddit and Threads have been sharing a video that appears to show armed, uniformed law enforcement walking down a residential street and firing at people recording them from front porches. The people sharing the video claim it depicts law enforcement shooting at people with paintballs to enforce COVID-19 lockdowns under Walz’s orders.

THE QUESTION

Does a viral video show law enforcement in Minnesota enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns with paintball guns under orders from Gov. Tim Walz? 

THE SOURCES

• Original video of law enforcement with paintball guns posted to X
• News stories from the HuffPost, Patch and The Independent reporting on the video days after it was posted
• Walz’s executive orders as governor of Minnesota
• Press releases from the Office of Governor Tim Walz

THE ANSWER

No, a viral video does not show Minnesota law enforcement enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns with paintball guns under order from Gov. Tim Walz.

WHAT WE FOUND

The video in the viral posts was recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 30, 2020, during Tim Walz’s administration. But the law enforcement in the video are not enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns; they’re using paintball guns to enforce a curfew put in place in response to the George Floyd protests.

Using reverse image search tools, VERIFY found the earliest version of the video published on May 30, 2020.

The person who first posted the video on X, Tanya Kerrsen, claims in the post that the National Guard and Minneapolis Police Department swept her residential street and shot paint canisters at her while she was on her front porch. Kerrsen used the hashtags  #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, #JusticeForGeorge and #BlackLivesMatter in the post.

Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, murdered George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020. Protests began that week and continued through the summer.

On May 28, 2020, Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to assist local law enforcement in Minneapolis and St. Paul. On May 29, Walz ordered a nighttime curfew for Minneapolis and St. Paul, which mandated most people not to travel on any public street or in a public place during the curfew.

Soon after the video was first posted, multiple news organizations reported that the video showed an incident during a curfew in response to the then-ongoing George Floyd protests. KARE, a sister site to VERIFY, reposted the video to its site on May 30 and credited it to Kerrsen.

Walz did issue a stay-at-home order in 2020 from March 27 to April 10 to fight the spread of COVID-19, but that was lifted before the video was recorded. After the stay-at-home order ended, the state maintained and then slowly eased restrictions on capacity and distance at events and gatherings. Walz ended all state restrictions on capacity and distance at both indoor and outdoor events on May 28, days before the video was recorded.

Neither Walz’s orders nor press statements included any mention of George Floyd related curfew enforcement with paintballs. VERIFY reached out to Walz’s office but did not hear back by time of publication.