DOJ Report Confirms Minneapolis PD Full Of Derek Chauvinists

So that's bad!

The US Department of Justice released a blistering report Friday on policing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, finding that cops in the Minneapolis Police Department routinely violated constitutional rights and used excessive force — including deadly force — against the citizenry they're at least formally expected to protect. The report, which was launched by the DOJ following the murder conviction of former cop Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd in May 2020, also found that racism and racial profiling were common in MPD, seldom resulting in discipline unless an especially awful incident was caught on camera and made the news.

The policing culture in Minneapolis is frankly sociopathic: Cops protect their colleagues by not stopping or reporting abuses, and serve heavy doses of violence to anyone they want, particularly minorities, poor people, and people with mental illness.

Here's US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday, summarizing the report's findings:

 youtu.be 

While Garland offered the mandatory attaboys in blue to the MPD officers who "did their difficult work with professionalism, courage and respect" — both of them — Garland said that the "patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible."

The report details all sorts of conduct that you'd want to call "rogue," except for how it seemed to be the norm for Minneapolis cops, like the fact that minority people are routinely stopped far out of proportion compared to white people. MPD cops stop Black people 6.5 times more frequently than the rate for white people, and that goes up to 7.9 times as often for Native Americans. In 71.7 percent of traffic stops, there was no citation or arrest, and out of 32,000 vehicle stops in 2018, police seized only 97 guns, so that was some impressive protecting the public.

 The 89-page report (PDF link) also found that following, the killing of George Floyd, MPD officers took swift action to prevent future reports of racist behavior — by failing to record the race and gender of people who were stopped, even though the department required that information in police reports.

We estimate the percentage of daily stops with known race data recorded dropped from about 71% just before May 25, 2020, to about 35% afterwards, a drop of roughly 36 percentage points. This sudden decrease in MPD officers recording racial data continued throughout the next two years.

See, Minneapolis doesn't hire stupid racist cops. It hires clever racist cops. The report notes that some white officers were also not the least bit hesitant to spout racist stereotypes while talking to Black officers; one Black cop said that after reporting such behavior, they didn't receive backup they'd requested during dangerous calls, so the message was plenty clear. Some white cops seemed to go out of their way to let members of the public know they were racist, as in a late 2020 incident in which a woman called to report a man leaving flyers on cars' windshields threatening Black Lives Matter supporters.

She told us that the officer who answered said Black Lives Matter was a “terrorist” organization and stated: “We are going to make sure you and all of the Black Lives supporters are wiped off the face of the Earth.” He said, “I think you should file a complaint, and I want you to do it well, so let me spell my first and my last name so you get it right. Then I’ll give you my badge number.” The woman asked to speak to a supervisor, but the officer refused to transfer her or take her contact information.

The police department didn't interview her for seven months, and didn't even investigate her complaint as an instance of bias, instead relabeling it as a failure to do "professional policing" — which it then concluded had "no merit." The same cop had been reported for at least nine earlier complaints since 2017, none of which resulted in any action. And of course, he's still with the department.

In a notorious 2015 incident that resulted in a cop getting fired because it made the news, an officer pulled over four Somali-American teenagers and approached the car with his gun already drawn, threatening one of the teens,

“If you fuck with me, I’m gonna break your leg before you even get a chance to run.” When the teen asked why he was being arrested, the officer replied, “Because I feel like arresting you.” Later, when one of the teens told the officer, “[Y]ou’re a racist, bro,” the officer responded: “Yep, and I’m proud of it.” He added, “Do you remember what happened in Black Hawk Down when we killed a bunch of you folk? 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.” ( Ellipses in original -- Dok Zoom )

None of the other cops on the call reported Officer Nice Racist, either, and the department only investigated the incident weeks later. Even after firing the cop, the department refused to release the full comments until a public records lawsuit forced it to.

And then there was the precinct Christmas tree decorated with, as Mayor Jacob Frey put it, "super racist stuff":

pack of Newport cigarettes, malt liquor cans, Funyuns, police tape, and a Popeyes cup: “ [...] The officers were fired and the inspector of the precinct was demoted after the community found out about the tree. The inspector of the precinct was seen on video walking by, laughing at it, and failing to take action[.]

The disciplinary action didn't impress other police supervisors, who told DOJ investigators it was only a joke and nobody had any bad intent, haw haw.

And there's just so much more, like the woman who approached a parked cop car to report a sexual assault — but before she could, the cop shot and killed her because she'd startled him. Or the incident in which Derek Chauvin kneeled for nearly 15 minutes on the neck of a Black teenager, who survived, thank God. Chauvin wasn't reported by the other officers on the scene, as required by department policy, and in fact, the report says,

Between 2016 and the present, the only officers who were disciplined for violating the failure-to-intervene policy during that time period were the officers who failed to stop Derek Chauvin from murdering George Floyd.

Minneapolis hired a new police chief, Brian O'Hara, who's been charged with cleaning up the MPD; he said Friday that the department is committed to becoming "the kind of police department that every Minneapolis resident deserves." And maybe the likely consent decree the city and DOJ will come up with will help, if the police union lets it.

[ DOJ press release / DOJ full report (PDF file) / AP / NYT ]

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