Minneapolis Police Used Illegal, Abusive Practices for Years, DOJ Finds
“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.”
Officials said negotiating a consent decree could take months, and Mr. Frey suggested that some potential sticking points were already emerging. Earlier this year, Minneapolis entered into a separate consent decree in state court with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which reached some of the same damaging conclusions about the city’s police after its own investigation.
Mr. Frey said the city would want there to be a single monitor overseeing both the state agreement and any federal agreement, and would need assurances that the two agreements would not contradict each other. Justice Department officials emphasized that their report included separate violations of federal law that would need to be monitored by a federal judge, not a state official.
Sgt. Sherral Schmidt, the president of the union representing Minneapolis officers, said her organization had not been provided with a copy of the federal report before its public release. She said union leaders were reviewing it and intended to comment on its findings later.
The report includes several cases that are painfully familiar to many people in Minneapolis — the fatal police shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed white woman; a Christmas tree at a police station with racist decorations; racist remarks by an officer to young Somali people about “Black Hawk Down” — as well as others that were not widely known. It described an incident when an officer threw a handcuffed man to the ground face-first; another when an officer drew his gun on a teenager over the suspected theft of a $5 burrito; and another when an officer repeatedly punched a protester who was already restrained.
Source: The New York Times
