The Challenge of Police Reform

Despite the DOJ’s efforts some doubt the MPD will change

By H. Jiahong Pan

Contributing Writer n Friday, June 16, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had concluded its investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and disclosed that officers had engaged in patterns and practices of discriminatory policing.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the conduct—which included using excessive force and unlawfully discriminating against Black and Native people, as well as violating the rights of those exercising protected speech and those suffering a mental health crisis—violated the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. In addition to violating free speech and Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the MPD violated the Safe

Streets for All Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Civil Rights Act.

“The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd pos- sible,” said Attorney General Garland. “As one city leader told us, ‘These systemic issues didn’t just occur on May 25, 2020. There were instances that were being reported by the community long before.’”

The report, which was partially informed by Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) in its all-volunteer effort to collect over 2,000 testimonies from people affected by Minneapolis police officers’ misconduct, listed the following findings:

MPD officers shoot first, ask questions later, citing Mohamed Noor’s killing of Justine Damond in a Southwest Minneapolis alleyway in 2017. Noor is no longer with the MPD and has served his sentence in prison;

MPD officers tend to tase children and people with behavioral health issues;

MPD officers use excessive force on people accused of minor offenses or no offense at all, including confronting and pinning against the hood of a car at gunpoint a teenager accused of taking a $5 burrito without paying;

MPD officers did not ensure the safety of those in their custody. Aside from failing to get medical help for George Floyd, they also failed to get an ambulance for a woman detained by police who was having an asthma attack;

MPD officers stop Black and Native American people six times more often than White people, and stopped collecting racial data for the people they stopped after May 25, 2020;

MPD officers retaliated against those exercising their right to free speech, including assaulting journalists and bystanders who were criticizing their work, actions protected under the Constitution, regardless of whether or not profanity was used;

MPD officers responded unnecessarily and overacted to people experiencing mental health crises, at times escalating those situations; Marginalized communities were no strangers to Minneapolis Police Department

■ See DOJ on page 5