U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials announced on Friday the results of a more than two-year investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department likely to yield another court-enforceable agreement after officials found patterns of unlawful discriminatory policing, among other violations.
The pattern-or-practice investigation, launched a day after a jury convicted former MPD officer Derek Chauvin for Floyd’s murder in April 2021, found that officers stopped, searched and used force disproportionately against Black and Native American residents. Officers were six times more likely to stop a Black or Native American person than a white person, according to federal officials’ review of about 187,000 traffic and pedestrian stops.
“Our review focused on MPD as a whole, not on the actions of any individual officer. We observed many MPD officers who did their difficult work with professionalism, courage, and respect,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible.”
Officers also regularly used excessive force, and violated the rights of journalists and protesters who took to the streets in the days after George Floyd’s murder, the DOJ found.
Unjustified force
Federal investigators from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division examined all types of force used by officers, and did a comprehensive review of the department’s policies, training and supervision. They found unreasonable use of tasers by MPD officers, unjust deathly force, routine excessive force when no force was needed and use of lethal force techniques like neck restraints without warning.
“We found that MPD unconstitutionally uses bodily force and pepper spray against people who have committed minor offenses or no offense at all. In addition, we saw repeated instances of excessive force against kids without appropriate attempts to de-escalate the situation,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. ”In one instance, an MPD officer wearing street clothes drew his gun and pinned a teenager to the hood of a car for allegedly taking a $5 burrito without paying.”
Investigators concluded that officers also failed to intervene in situations where colleagues used excessive force, and regularly showed indifference to the wellbeing of those in their custody. Federal officials found several instances in which officers disregarded the claims of people in custody that they couldn’t breathe, in which officers said if they could speak, they could breathe.
Officials also reviewed 19 police shootings, many of them deadly, and one death while in custody between January 2016 and August 2022, deeming many of them unconstitutional uses of deadly force. One of them was the 2017 killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, who was fatally shot in an alley behind her home by then-MPD officer Mohamed Noor because he said she had spooked him as she ran up to their squad car to report a sexual assault.
In addition to force incidents, investigators also reviewed MPD’s accountability process, from complaint intake and investigation to discipline, finding several instances where officers weren’t held accountable for racist behavior unless they experienced community backlash. Garland cited one encounter with Somali teens where an officer referenced an infamous American special forces raid in Mogadishu in the early 1990s, stating “I’m proud of that… We didn’t finish the job over there… if we had… you guys wouldn’t be over here right now.”
Multiple investigations
The conclusion of the federal investigation comes after the Minnesota Department of Human rights conducted its own investigation into Minneapolis and its police department, finding racially discriminatory policing practices, including racial disparities in traffic stops and racist or disrespectful language when dealing with the public.
MDHR and the city have come to an agreement on a 140-page court-enforceable settlement agreement that features dozens of changes to MPD policies, practices and procedures. The city and the state have laid out in their agreement that they’ll modify it to avoid overlap in the case of a federal consent decree.
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One main difference between the state and federal investigations is that the former examined MPD practices over a 10 year period that ended in June 2020, while the latter looked at MPD treatment of protesters and journalists in the events after Floyd’s murder. According to federal officials, MPD retaliated against protesters and members of the press during the unrest in 2020, violating the First Amendment.
One incident involved an officer forcefully pushing a journalist’s head down into the pavement after identifying themselves as press, then another walked by and pepper sprayed the journalist. Officials said officers beat protesters during a March 2021 protest, while another held his knee down on the neck of a different protester.
During the more than two-year-long investigation, federal officials also met with Minneapolis residents and community members to solicit their interactions with MPD officers, using the thousands of accounts they obtained to help inform their findings.
Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, has been assisting federal investigators in gathering community accounts and experiences with MPD since the investigation began. Gross said that while she is disappointed the treatment by MPD officers of people experiencing homelessness wasn’t examined by investigators, she is pleased with the report.
“The fingerprints of members of our community are all over this document, and I think it’s excellent,” she said during a Friday news conference after the DOJ presentation.
DOJ officials said the city has agreed to negotiate toward a consent decree, and recommend 28 “remedial measures” (the list begins on page 85 of the report) that may serve as a framework for the ensuing agreement.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, one of several city officials at the DOJ press conference, including MPD Chief Brian O’Hara, thanked federal officials for their work in the process.
“Thank you for a report that is thoughtful, deliberate, objective and thorough,” Frey said. “We are going to use these findings to better policing in the city of Minneapolis.”
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