The toppling of a statue of Christopher Columbus at the State Capitol, one in a spate of attacks on historic monuments around the nation, has prompted state officials to revisit their policies on public art even as they investigate the activists involved in the incident in St. Paul.
"I understand First Amendment rights, but there's a line there and when you cross it you're held criminally responsible," Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said Wednesday.
State investigators continue to try to determine who, beyond the American Indian Movement (AIM) official leading the protest, was involved in actually pulling down the statue two weeks ago. The investigation will then be turned over to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office for possible charges.
Mike Forcia, the AIM Twin Cities chairman and leader of the protest group at the statue site the day it was toppled, said Wednesday that he is still expecting to face criminal charges for what happened. "I'll accept it fully, whatever it is, 100 percent," Forcia said. "Whatever has happened to me is of little consequence compared to the conversation the state needs to have about this."
Forcia's attorney, Jack Rice, said he hopes authorities are open to a resolution that would allow those who pulled down the statue to explain their reasons in a public forum.
But while officials prepare potential criminal charges, the state government board that manages statues and art on the Capitol grounds meets Thursday to initiate a discussion about the public monuments it displays.
The AIM protesters pulled down the nearly 90-year-old statue on June 10, citing long-standing grievances with the 15th-century Genoese explorer and early colonizer of the Americas. It was one of many statues on public grounds felled by protesters in the nationwide reckoning over institutional racism that followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.
The statue is now being held in an "undisclosed location," according to Paul Mandell, the executive secretary of the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB). He said it would stay there while state leaders work on a new, more defined process for removing statues that offend modern sensibilities.