The Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis is one of those faceless bureaucratic buildings, the kind of place you go to track down a birth certificate or a county record.

It's mostly court stuff.

John Collins from Minnesota Public Radio. He knows this building pretty well.

So it will be where people go when they have to pay a traffic ticket or contest one or maybe

get some sort of license or something. Sounds like a place you've been just for a normal life.

Oh yeah. I mean, I go for my job, I go there like pretty regularly.

But over the last few weeks, John watched the government center transform, close itself off.

There's a ring of perimeter fencing now, concertina wire.

Employees who work here are being told to stay home.

Court hearings have been moved out.

This building has a singular purpose now.

It will be the Chauvin trial, and that's pretty much it.

The Chauvin trial, as in the trial for the police officer accused of killing George Floyd.

Over the last year, George Floyd's death sparked an international

protest movement and amplified calls to defund the police. In Minneapolis, riot and protest

sometimes intermingled. A police precinct house was set on fire. Dozens of businesses were looted. And now,

this city is preparing for another public reckoning. Do you feel like the city, the county,

the state, do you feel like they're ready for what's about to happen?

I think the city probably city leaders are trying to predict exactly what they can do

to make sure that there's not a repeat of some of the more dangerous things that happened last year.

And, I mean, like, for instance, my neighborhood was surveilled by helicopters for, I don't know how long, weeks and weeks.

There were just helicopters all day long, every day, and we're starting to hear those helicopters again.

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