U.S. Department of Justice Denounces Minneapolis Police History of Abuse and Racism

Merrick Garland, US attorney general, presents the conclusions of the report, this Friday in Minneapolis.STEPHEN MATUREN (AFP)

Police reform that in 2020 appeared to result from protests over the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a white officer remains pending, despite the Joe Biden Administration's promise to undertake a thorough review of excessive use of force and other manifestations of police brutality. Nothing or very little has changed since then: Blacks and Hispanics remain the usual suspects, interrogated and arrested daily on U.S. streets at a disproportionate rate compared to any white American. Hence, the conclusions of an investigation launched in 2021 in the wake of Floyd's death have not surprised anyone. Minneapolis police officers routinely use excessive force and discriminate against blacks and Native Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in presenting the investigation it promoted. That is, the evidence, documented, of systemic racism in the institution.

In addition to outside abuse, city police also frequently resort to using tasers and opening fire unnecessarily, according to the report; also to discriminate against people with disabilities and unduly repress protesters and journalists. The investigation was launched in April 2021 after a white white former police officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murdering Floyd, a black man, whom he suffocated with the pressure of his knee on his neck while keeping Floyd handcuffed and lying on the ground for more than nine minutes.

The promised police reform will have to be addressed now, thanks to the report's findings. It will be part of an agreement, or consent decree, that will be negotiated with the Justice Department and overseen by a federal judge, Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced.

"We found that the Minneapolis Police Department routinely uses excessive force, often when it is not necessary, including unjust lethal force and unreasonable use of stun guns," Garland said at a news conference in Minneapolis federal court.

Garland, flanked by the city's mayor and police chief at the news conference, said police officers shoot people without assessing whether there is any threat and systematically violate residents' civil rights. "Many officers do their difficult work with professionalism, courage and respect, but the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible," the attorney general said.

Floyd's killing in May 2020, captured on a bystander's mobile phone video, triggered the largest wave of protests against police brutality and racism in the US, with aftershocks around the world. He also focused on common incidents in which African-Americans were victims of police errors or abuse, such as the murder of the young Breonna Taylor in 2020, shortly before that of Floyd, for the "aggressive style, especially against blacks" of the police, according to another report from the Department of Justice last March. An investigation by civil rights NGOs recently found that the NYPD question and arrest blacks and Hispanics on the street at a rate incomparable to that suffered by whites.

Many in Minneapolis spoke out in May 2020, as Floyd's last words resounded during his agony ("I can't breathe... I can't breathe"), that police officer Chauvin's excessive use of force was not an exceptional case, but one more case of routine police abuse against black residents. The report presented Friday in Minneapolis corroborates this, recording several incidents in which the city's police officers "were not held accountable for their racist conduct" until there was a public outcry for their intervention.

Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years in prison for murder in June 2021 and 20 more years after pleading guilty to excessive use of force and discrimination. Three other officers involved in the case have also been tried and convicted on federal and state charges.

Since the Floyd case, with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, scrutiny of policing against minorities has increased, although Biden's promised police reform has not been substantiated except circumstantially, and only now, as a result of the report, is that of the Minneapolis department undertaken, instead of a systematic or general one of all the metropolitan departments of the country. So far, Justice has negotiated similar federal oversight agreements in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore and Cleveland. The negotiation with Minneapolis police is expected to last several months. Last year, two years after Floyd's death, Biden resorted to an executive order to limit the use of weapons and force, but only federal, not local, and skipping the legislative route and with it the opposition of Republicans.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey welcomed the report's findings without surprise. "The data and facts that DOJ has presented in these findings are consistent with what communities of color have been telling us for many years, in fact, generations."

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