Star Tribune
Results of federal investigation into Minneapolis police met with hope, skepticism
On Friday morning, John Pope answered his phone while boarding a flight to Atlanta. The U.S. Department of Justice had just released the results of a scathing federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, including 28 recommendations for institutional change.
The report was deeply personal for the 20-year-old Minneapolis man. He received a $7.5 million settlement from the city this year stemming from a 2017 instance of excessive force involving Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, when Pope was 14. But even though Chauvin now sits behind bars for George Floyd’s murder, and even though the report details a history of Minneapolis police misconduct while paving a path forward, Pope remained skeptical about any lasting change.
“You can talk about change all you want — it’s not going to change if they don’t put forth the effort,” Pope said. “It has to be a culture of change, like any business. If they’re not willing to change the culture, then nothing will change.”
Those who have felt the sting of the injustices exposed in the report experienced three simultaneous emotions after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stood at a lectern in Minneapolis:
Recognition that these findings are unsurprising, with problems long embedded in the department.
Hope that federal government involvement will spur meaningful change.
And skepticism that such an ingrained culture — in the Police Department itself, and also in a city the report calls “marked by stark racial inequality” — can transform any time soon.
But many recognized the report’s release as a historic moment.
“Everybody’s going to hear about it, not just the select few that had encounters with MPD,” Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, said from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Anything on paper is still not a concrete thing. But I have faith everything’s changing for the better. The same thing I saw when the world came together for 9/11, the same thing I saw when the world came together for my brother. I see the love. I see the compassion.”
Marcia Howard — a lead community activist at George Floyd Square, the site of Floyd’s murder — was moved to tears when she read the report.
“The next part is, what are you going to do about it?” Howard said. “They are admitting that we are under abusive, terroristic threat every single day that we walk the streets of Minneapolis. Do we wait until the police attempt to police themselves?”
Still, Howard feels cautiously hopeful.
So does Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt. She has experienced the breadth of police-community interactions: as a Black girl growing up in the Twin Cities who disliked and mistrusted police, and later as a police officer and now sheriff who sees the need for reform in a profession vital to the community.
“Court-enforceable settlement agreements lay out helpful guidelines, but they do not amount to the culture change that residents deserve,” Witt said. “If we can identify that these unjustifiable acts of racism or indecency occurred, are the people who perpetuated this type of culture still there? And what do we do about them?”
The federal report comes three years after Floyd’s murder sparked worldwide protests and destructive riots that shook the Twin Cities for nearly a week.
A central theme of the report was that this wasn’t about one rogue police officer; rather, a longstanding department culture hasn’t supported staffers with proper training or held officers accountable for even the most grievous abuses of power, instead enabling misconduct.
“We acknowledge the considerable daily challenges that come with being an MPD officer,” the report read, noting that hundreds of officers have left the force since May 2020, and the low morale of remaining officers. “The challenges of the last few years have only exacerbated that toll for some MPD officers.”
Calls to the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association were not immediately returned Friday.
The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis released a statement late Friday saying that the report “will merely be used by those who are inclined to have an anti police bias to justify their beliefs while those who are more pro-police will question the report’s findings. As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Over the years, there have been exponentially more instances of heroic and selfless acts performed by dedicated officers in harrowing circumstances than those described in the report.”
Jeff Storms, a Minneapolis civil rights attorney who was part of the team that brought the civil suit on behalf of Floyd’s family, said he hopes federal government involvement gives teeth to reform efforts. Minneapolis police, he added, won’t reform on their own.
Storms wants the consent decree to go beyond what he’s seen as empty promises from politicians during past flashpoints.
“The police union has played an important role in frustrating change, but politicians use the union as the bogeyman or scapegoat,” Storms said. “All of this works together.”
For Andre “Buddy” Locke, whose son Amir Locke was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer last year during the execution of a no-knock warrant in a homicide investigation, the recommendations of the report weren’t as powerful as its symbolism: The day saw the attorney general of the United States come to Minneapolis and call out not just the Police Department, but the whole city.
“A lot of our white brothers and sisters, they live in a different type of circumstances than Black and brown people, a different life,” Locke said. “If you need the statistics, well, today you got them.”
However, Locke noted the mixed message of the federal report coming at the same time as the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office moving to dismiss the family’s civil suit. It was an “amazing day,” he said, but also “a slap in the face.”
Rachel Thunder, a member of the American Indian Movement, said the report confirmed what she’s heard for years about discrimination against Native Americans, and she noted her own arrest at a peaceful gathering: “I know from experience that MPD is weaponized against our freedom of speech and right to protest.”
Community leaders fighting police brutality held a news conference at City Hall shortly after the report’s release. Some raised concerns that because the Police Department probe only went back to 2016, it didn’t address the full scope of the problem.
Civil rights leader Nekima Levy Armstrong noted there hasn’t been a movement to remove officers with a history of abuse, and no redress for families who lost loved ones to police violence in cases where the officers involved were not held accountable.
Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, praised the report as robust and well-documented but expressed disappointment that it didn’t address the Police Department’s treatment of homeless people, given the controversy over police raids on homeless encampments. She also called for strong oversight of the consent decree.
“We want real monitors who are going to hold the city accountable for their results,” Gross said.
Don Damond, fiancé of Justine Ruszczyk who was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2017, noted that the report reached similar conclusions — and had similar recommendations — as the state Department of Human Rights report released last year.
Damond does not believe in abolishing or defunding police. He believes transformation can happen — ploddingly and bumpily.
“Accountability and change happens slowly, especially in cultures where people have their heels dug in,” Damond said. “They’re fish – they don’t even know they’re in water. Now people are calling out the water.”
When the Minnesota Supreme Court this week declined to hear an appeal by the University of St. Thomas regarding the environmental impact of its new hockey/basketball arena under construction, neighbor and arena foe Dan Kennedy said the “ethical” thing for the university to do was stop construction until neighbor concerns are addressed.
Not going to happen, university officials said Thursday.
While a public review of a revised Environmental Assessment Worksheet continues through Nov. 7, construction of the 5,000-seat Lee and Penny Anderson Arena continues. In an e-mail Thursday, a university spokesman said the arena is expected to be completed in fall 2025.
“The University of St. Thomas is aware of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision to deny its petition to appeal and is reviewing the potential impacts of this decision,” an emailed statement from St. Thomas said. “Last week, the City of St. Paul published an updated EAW for public comment, and that process will continue. Construction of the Lee & Penny Anderson Arena will also continue, as permitted by law.”
But Kennedy said he believes that decision is not only wrong, but illegal. Because the state Court of Appeals this summer ruled the project’s first environmental review was inadequate, its site plans and building permits are invalid, said the president of Advocates for Responsible Development.
“We need somebody to specifically tell the University of St. Thomas that they must comply with the law,” Kennedy said. “This is an institution of higher learning, with a law school. They should comply with the law.”
Kennedy said he thought the Minnesota Court of Appeals had insisted on exactly that. In August, the appellate court ordered the city and university to conduct a new Environmental Assessment Worksheet. The previous assessment didn’t do enough to study the arena’s potential harm to the neighborhood’s parking, traffic and air quality, the court ruled.
“The reason why is that more sunlight in the morning time helps reinforce waking up, and having less light in the evening is less stimulation,” he said. “So when we’re winding down, preparing for sleep, having fewer hours of sunlight in the evening can help promote that process of falling asleep.”
Akingbola acknowledges that it can be sad to walk out of work or school when it’s already dark out, but in the long run, standard time is the way to go.
The U.S. already tried daylight savings year round in 1974
Despite the medical advice, there have been calls in recent years to make daylight savings time permanent.
Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, tried to pass a bill as recently as 2021 to make daylight savings time permanent, but it did not pass the Legislature.
The U.S. tried once before. According to Minnesota Star Tribune archives, due to an energy crisis, President Richard Nixon passed a law in January 1974 that made daylight savings a year-round thing.
A month into it, the Minneapolis Tribune ran an article saying there were calls to reverse the decision because there were more accidents in the pre-dawn darkness, particularly involving school children waiting for the bus. Under daylight savings time in January, sunrise wasn’t until well after 8 a.m. in Minnesota.
Karl-Anthony Towns may be in New York City, but his heart is in Minnesota.
On Wednesday night, Towns had some sweet seats for a Billie Eilish show at Madison Square Garden with his partner, Jordyn Woods, when she caught him watching the Timberwolves play the Chicago Bulls in a preseason game on his phone. Her video, posted to her Instagram story, made rounds on social media Thursday.
In the video, flames are literally spewing out from Eilish’s stage, lights are flashing all around and others in the crowd are head bobbing. And there is Towns, holding his phone in both hands and muttering to himself as the Timberwolves are down 88-75 late in the third quarter in a meaningless game.
“I promise he was enjoying the concert,” Woods wrote in the video’s caption.
The Wolves would go on to lose that game, 125-123. A nail-biter.
Towns’ trade to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle and others stunned the NBA world and all of Minnesota, where he was a beloved player for nine seasons and a leader on a team rapidly ascending toward championship contention.
“It was a lot of emotions,” Towns said. “Some amazing moments and times in nine years of my life in Minnesota, a place that I’ve called home. Guys who are not just teammates to me but brothers. We were like brothers. It definitely was a wild day, definitely coming to work.”
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