MINNEAPOLIS – The Justice Department said on Friday that the Minneapolis police routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people, used deadly force without justification, and trampled the First Amendment rights of protesters and journalists – damning findings that grew out of a multiyear investigation and may lead to a court-enforced overhaul.
The federal review was touched off by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis officer in 2020 – a crime that led to protests and unrest across the country.
But the Justice Department’s scathing 89-page report looked well beyond that killing, describing a police force impervious to accountability whose officers beat, shot and detained people unjustly and patrolled without the trust of residents.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking at a news conference in Minneapolis, said Floyd’s “death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and around the world,” and that “the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible”.
The murder of Floyd, who was captured on video saying “I can’t breathe” while he was pinned to the ground by Officer Derek Chauvin, focused international attention on the Minneapolis Police Department. But many people in the city had complained for years about police excesses.
The Justice Department investigators described “numerous incidents in which officers responded to a person’s statement that they could not breathe with a version of, ‘You can breathe; you’re talking right now’. ”
The Justice Department’s report was almost uniformly critical, painting a disturbing portrait of a dysfunctional law enforcement agency where illegal conduct was common, racism was pervasive and misconduct was tolerated.
In many cases, investigators found, officers fired weapons without assessing the threat they faced; used neck restraints even in interactions that did not lead to an arrest; and used their tasers, sometimes without warning, on pedestrians and drivers who had committed minor offenses or no offense at all.
“This is not a secret,” said Ms Bridgette Stewart, a lifelong Minnesotan who is Black. “This is something that’s been going on in Minnesota for many, many, many, many years.”
Minneapolis officials promised to negotiate with the Justice Department to reach an overhaul agreement – known as a consent decree – that would be monitored in federal court and would force specific changes to the Police Department.
“This work is foundational to the very health of our city,” said Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis. “We have the power here to affect lasting change, to affect generational change, and we embrace that.” NYTIMES
