Some planning meetings for future trials will be the exception when the operation shuts down in April 2021. Emails obtained through a public records request show that OSN remained active and issued directives on how to handle protests that had nothing to do with the murder of George Floyd or the trials of the officers involved. The Minneapolis Police Department responded to protests in the city's Uptown neighborhood in October of 2021. The internal planning documents explained how officers should go about making arrests, how to book protesters, assigned roles, and laid out other procedures.
The documents confirmed what protesters had alleged was a new tactic of arresting demonstrators, refusing to say what charges they were facing, and either dropping them off blocks away or booking them in jail.
The Minneapolis Police Department sent an email to MIT Technology Review that said "OSN was a planned response to the Chauvin trial." The operation specific to OSN ended when that trial ended.
The statement delivered to the press on behalf of OSN conflicts with a senior leadership brief dated September 23, 2021.
In an email to MIT Technology Review dated October 25, 2021, Doug Neville, a spokesman for OSN and the deputy director of communications at the Department of Public Safety, said that it was not an ongoing operation.
That conflicts with the documents. The teams were meeting regularly. Purchase orders for police equipment continued. In one email exchange, a sergeant from the Minneapolis Police Department requested three redacted items prior to the Chauvin trial from Grainger, an industrial supply retail store. The officer asked for the supplies to be delivered in August because they still need them for the next set of trials.
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