The Minneapolis Police Department routinely used excessive force and discriminated against Black and Native American people in the years before one of its officers killed George Floyd, federal authorities said Friday.
In an 89-page report that followed a more than two-year federal civil rights investigation, the Justice Department excoriated the Minneapolis police force as an agency that put officers and local residents at unnecessary risk, failed to act upon repeated warnings about biased behavior and countenanced the “systemic problems” that gave way to Floyd’s death in 2020.
The report’s release came a little more than three years after Floyd, a Black man, was filmed gasping for air while pinned down by Derek Chauvin, a White police officer in Minneapolis, on Memorial Day in 2020. Floyd’s death helped ignite nationwide protests over policing and social and racial injustice, and Chauvin was convicted of murder the following year.
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The Justice Department launched its civil rights investigation immediately after he was convicted. Appearing Friday at a federal courthouse in Minneapolis, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the investigation’s results and depicted Floyd’s death not as an isolated episode, but instead a tragedy enabled by the deep-rooted issues within the Minneapolis police.
Many Minneapolis police officers were observed during the investigation acting properly, Garland said at the news conference. “But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible,” he said.
“As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and on the world,” Garland said. “His loss is still felt deeply by those who loved and knew him and by many who did not. George Floyd should be alive today.”
Garland said the Justice Department, the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis police had agreed in principle to negotiate toward a federal consent decree — a court-approved reform order that can be used to ensure changes within a local law enforcement agency.
The Justice Department released a copy of the signed agreement, which was dated Thursday, and said an independent third-party monitor will be appointed to help assess whether the consent decree’s goals are being achieved.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) appeared with Garland on Friday. He touted progress on improving police conduct since Floyd’s killing but said more change is needed.
“To take real action, we first have to acknowledge where we’ve been, the pain we’ve caused,” Frey said.
The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report.
President Biden called the findings “disturbing” and said in a statement that the report highlighted the need for Congress to pass a criminal justice reform bill. After a legislative bill inspired by Floyd’s death failed on Capitol Hill in 2021, Biden last year announced a list of executive actions on policing that fell short of the demands from liberal civil rights groups.
The Justice Department report presented a dire portrayal of the Minneapolis department as a place where officers use force recklessly, including against people who criticized or questioned them; face little to no accountability for allegations of wrongdoing; and patrolled the streets with “deficient and inadequate training.”
Investigators concluded that they “have reasonable cause to believe that” the city of Minneapolis and its police department “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution and federal law.”
These issues, the report said, encompassed things as significant as how police use force and which people are subject to the most intensive law enforcement scrutiny.
The report is rife with examples of police using improper force, even in cases when no force was necessary, according to investigators.
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Authorities examined police shootings between January 2016 and August 2022, finding 19 such incidents and saying that while “this number is relatively small,” a significant share were unconstitutional. “At times, officers shot at people without first determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others,” the report said.
The federal probe also concluded that officers “frequently used neck restraints without warning.”
After Chauvin was recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck, the Minneapolis police banned neck restraints and chokeholds. But officers continued to employ the tactic after it was banned, investigators said.
Again and again, police are depicted in the report lashing out with unneeded force, including yanking a handcuffed man to the ground, hitting his head on the pavement. Officers were “quick to use force on unarmed people, even without reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a crime or are a threat,” the report said. Investigators also said they found numerous examples of police giving someone an order, and then almost immediately using force on them.
The Justice Department concluded June 16 that the Minneapolis police has a history of excessive force and discriminating against racial minorities. (Video: Reuters)
Officers who use force are subjected to minimal reviews, with supervisors often failing to assess whether the force was reasonable at all and failing to consider evidence, the report said.
Investigators concluded that the Minneapolis police disproportionately stopped and searched Black and Native American people, and used force more frequently during stops of these people than they do during stops of White people under similar circumstances.
Between May 25, 2020, and Aug. 9, 2022, the report said, police searched Black residents 22 percent more often than White people in stops under similar circumstances. Native Americans were searched 23 percent more often than White people.
The Minneapolis police force “has long been on notice about racial disparities and officers’ failure to document data on race during stops,” which they are required to do, the report said.
But the data being documented suddenly began to dry up after Floyd’s death in 2020, the report said, as officers in many cases did not report racial data on stops and searches over the next two years, investigators said.
A lack of accountability is presented in the report as a pervasive problem for the Minneapolis police, and one that directly contributes to the other issues highlighted in the report, the Justice Department said. The Minneapolis police “accountability system is fundamentally flawed,” the report said, calling it “an opaque maze.”
Ben Crump, an attorney for the Floyd family, and other attorneys pointed to the breadth of the report’s allegations of wrongdoing, including the unjustified uses of force and discrimination.
“Each alone is deeply disturbing, and the cumulative effect of these unconstitutional patterns and practices on the community and individual lives is devastating,” the attorneys said in a statement.
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Investigators said they reviewed thousands of documents, body-camera videos and incident reports; analyzed data on uses of force, stops and calls for service; accompanied officers on more than 50 ride-alongs; and interviewed residents, police officers, city employees and local leaders, among many others.
The Justice Department’s findings echoed repeated claims made by residents over the years about the Minneapolis police, and they also are similar in many ways to a state investigation that concluded last year that the department was riddled with unnecessarily aggressive behavior and lacking oversight.
In March, the Minneapolis City Council approved a tentative agreement with the city’s human rights department to settle that investigation. That move was widely seen as a precursor to federal action. City leaders said they will seek to collaborate with federal authorities to streamline the reform efforts.
Federal authorities praised Minneapolis officials for moving forward on efforts to improve the police department while the Justice Department probe was underway. The consent decree that federal and local officials will negotiate is likely to include hundreds of specific actions that city and police leaders will be required to pursue in the coming years under the oversight of a federal court-appointed monitor.
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The Minneapolis findings marked the latest effort by the Justice Department to bring the weight of the federal government to bear on places where police uses of force against Black people fueled unrest and public outcries.
When Garland launched the Minneapolis investigation, it marked his bid to reinvigorate the use of “pattern or practice” probes that had become a staple of the Justice Department during the Obama administration. In such investigations, federal authorities undertake a sweeping review of a local police department’s use-of-force polices, training, disciplinary measures, data collection and public transparency efforts.
The department moved away from those investigations during the Trump administration, which viewed such efforts as federal overreach. Under Garland, the Justice Department has launched investigations into police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville and Phoenix, along with other probes.
In March, the department released findings from its investigation into the Louisville Police Department sparked by the fatal police shooting in 2020 of Breonna Taylor. That report offered a similarly withering assessment of officer misconduct in that city.
The Justice Department also has prosecuted individual officers for misconduct, including winning convictions against Chauvin and three other officers in Minneapolis involved in Floyd’s death.
While noting that the Minneapolis police force “has a strained relationship with the community it serves,” the report also pointed to the turmoil still facing the department — including the departure of hundreds of officers in recent years.
As of last month, there were 585 sworn Minneapolis police officers, the report said, down from 892 in 2018.
Garland aimed some of his remarks at Minneapolis officers, saying, “For you to succeed, your police department must provide you with clear policies and consistent training that explain and reinforce constitutional boundaries and responsibilities. It must give you the support you need to do your jobs safely and effectively … This agreement is an important step toward providing you with the support and resources you need to do your job effectively and lawfully.”
Brian O’Hara, who was hired last year as the new Minneapolis police chief, appeared alongside Garland, Frey and other officials on Friday to address the report. He previously worked in Newark, helping navigate a federal consent decree issued in 2016 following a lengthy Justice Department probe there that identified constitutional violations.
The goal in Minneapolis, O’Hara said, is having a department that earns greater faith from local residents.
“We acknowledge the pain, anger, frustration, fear and sense of vulnerability that many people in our community have endured,” he said.
O’Hara said he was speaking on behalf of the police department “to affirm our commitment to moving forward together.”