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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland today accused the Minneapolis Police Department of a pattern of bias and excessive force, the product of a wide-ranging federal investigation into the department following the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
Floyd, who was Black, was killed May 25 by a white Minneapolis police officer while others stood by, touching off months of protests. Today, Garland said the federal investigation revealed long-standing problems existed in the department before that moment.
« The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible, » Garland said.
The DOJ investigation has determined that the MPD has a pattern of four distinct types of violations of civil rights:
With regard to racial bias, Garland says the Department found MPD officers « stopped Black and Native American people nearly six times more often than white people in situations that did not result in arrest or citation, given their shares of the population. »
Garland says investigators also found several examples of officers who were not held accountable for racist conduct « until there was a public outcry. »
The DOJ found MPD officers had a pattern of being too quick to fire their weapons, as well as an over-reliance on Tasers, even on people who were not being violent.
They also focused on examples of officers pepper-spraying or otherwise « punishing » protestors and journalists, especially during the unrest of 2020 and 2021.
These findings now give the Justice Department leverage to enter into a « consent decree » with Minneapolis — essentially, a reform plan that’s controlled by a federal court. Similar arrangements have been in place for years in cities such as Baltimore and Seattle.
