The Minneapolis Police Department has been engaged in a pattern of racial profiling for at least a decade, according to findings released Wednesday from a two-year investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights launched in the wake of the murder. of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white city police officer.
The report says that the Police Department’s data “demonstrates significant racial disparities in officers’ use of force, traffic stops, citations and arrests.” And it says officers “have covertly used social media to surveil Black individuals and organizations unrelated to criminal activity, and maintains a culture in which some police officers and supervisors use racist, misogynistic and disrespectful language with impunity.”
The report says the department will work with the city to negotiate a consent decree — a court-enforced agreement — to require changes. As part of that process, the agency will meet with community members, police officers, city employees and other parties to gather opinions on what should be included.
Human Rights Commissioner Rebeca Lucero said at a press conference after the report was published that it does not specifically point to any police officer or municipal leader.
“This investigation is not about an individual or an incident,” Lucero said.
The report says the city and Police Department “need not wait to institute immediate changes to begin addressing the causes of discrimination that undermine the city’s public safety system and harm community members.” The report lists several steps the city can take now, including implementing stronger internal oversight to hold officers accountable for their conduct, more training and better communication with the public about critical incidents like police-involved shootings.
The state launched its investigation just a week after Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020. Police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to the black man’s neck for nine and a half minutes in an incident that sparked worldwide protests against racism and police brutality. Chauvin, who is white, was convicted last year of murder. Three other officers in the case — Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — were convicted earlier this year of violating Floyd’s civil rights in a federal case and face a state trial in June.
The rights commission report concluded that the pattern of use of race in policing in Minneapolis was due to “ineffective oversight and accountability structures and ineffective training that have reinforced a culture that is averse to accountability and does not support police officers.” officers” and that the city and police leaders did not act quickly enough “to respond to well-known racial disparities.”
State investigators reviewed decades of data, including data on traffic stops, searches, arrests, use of force, and examined policies and training. They also invited citizens to submit their own stories of encounters with the Minneapolis police.
The Minnesota Department of Human Rights is the state’s civil rights watchdog agency. Among its tasks is to monitor compliance with the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which, among other things, makes it illegal for the police to discriminate on the basis of race.
–
