United states

Minneapolis officials have been found to be involved in racist police

The Minneapolis Police Department routinely engages in many forms of racially discriminatory policing, fails to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and has used fake social media accounts to target black people and organizations, according to a horrific investigation released Wednesday by the US Department of Human Rights.

The department has a “culture that cannot be supervised and accountable,” and city and department heads have failed to act with the “necessary urgency, coordination and intent” to correct their problems, the investigation concluded.

Minneapolis police have been under intense scrutiny since mobile phone cameras filmed the murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a police officer during an arrest on May 25, 2020. The state’s human rights investigation began about a week later. The department is also under a similar investigation by the Federal Ministry of Justice.

Both investigations can lead to consent orders, agreements that are monitored by observers and enforced by the courts. Such agreements usually include a long list of necessary changes, indicators and deadlines. The State Department of Human Rights is seeking public comment on what such a decree of consent should include.

His investigation found that officers stopped, searched, arrested, issued tickets, used force and killed blacks and indigenous people with a higher percentage of whites. Although blacks make up approximately 19 percent of the population, in 10 years of data, 63 percent of cases where officers registered the use of force were against blacks, the report said.

The department does not have enough data to consider attitudes towards other racial and ethnic groups, Rebecca Lucero, the state commissioner for human rights, told a news conference.

Investigators examined 700 hours of footage from body cameras, finding that officials and oversight bodies had used racist, misogynistic and disrespectful language to suspects, witnesses, bystanders – and to each other. The report provides an exhaustive list of insults officers used against women and blacks.

The disrespect was so blatant that local prosecutors said it was difficult to present camera footage of jurors, according to the report: “When MPD officials shout obscene words at community members, it challenges prosecutors to do their job.” .

Officials used “hidden social media accounts,” which the report said were “unrelated to any actual or alleged criminal activity,” to monitor and engage with selected officials, blacks and organizations, sometimes presenting themselves. for community members to engage or comment. In one case, the report said, an employee pretended to be a black resident to send a message criticizing the NAACP.

Mr Floyd was killed after two recruits responded to a call that he had tried to use a counterfeit $ 20 bill in a shop. Mr. Floyd refused to board the patrol car. Field training officer Derek Chauvin and his partner arrived to provide reinforcements. Mr. Chauvin forced Mr. Floyd to step on the sidewalk and kneel on his neck for more than nine minutes while his partner stood guard and the two recruits helped nail Mr. Floyd down.

Mr. Chauvin was convicted of murder and pleaded guilty to federal violations of civil rights. The other three police officers have been convicted of non-interference or failure to provide medical care and are still charged by the state with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.

Although field training officers like Mr. Chauvin have enormous power over recruits, the department does not offer ongoing instructions for them, the investigation found, a omission that it said “complements the competition-based police.” It cites a 2020 case in which a trainee allowed an intern to search a black woman who was unarmed, but said that searching a drunken white man who admitted he had a knife in his bag would be loss of trainee time.

The investigation found that the department still fails to authorize employees to intervene when they see something wrong. On the first day of training in 2021, the report said, recruits were told that “immediate and unquestionable compliance is in order.”

This attitude is flowing – MPD employees demand unquestionable compliance with “even the most trivial interactions”, said members of the community of investigators. More than 2,000 residents were interviewed.

After this academic class, the department began peer intervention training for all officers.

Mayor Jacob Frey and the police department have highlighted numerous policy changes since Mr Floyd’s assassination, including a strangulation ban and neck restraints and an update on the department’s use of force policy.

But officials said they had to wait a year or more to hear the details. In the case of the new policy on the use of force, which includes new restrictions on restrictions, investigators found that employees were given only a 15-minute “PowerPoint presentation with a story” about the changes.

The department lacks top-down reporting measures, investigators found. They said more than a third of the staff targeted for training, the lightest form of intervention, did not receive it and that supervisors did not report excessive use of force.

The report cites a 2017 case in which a police officer hit an unarmed 14-year-old in his bedroom with a flashlight and strangled him unconscious, all because the teenager did not stand up quickly enough when he was ordered to do so. A supervisor approved the employee’s actions.

The report says that those responsible for investigating misconduct often do not review body recordings or pay tribute to employees in front of witnesses. It says the department’s home affairs department handled a quarter of the complaints incorrectly, while the Police Behavior Review Service, which includes civilian investigators, handled half of the complaints it investigates incorrectly.

As of noon on Wednesday, the police department and Mayor Frey’s office had not yet responded to requests for comment.