DOJ investigation into Minneapolis police finds race discrimination and excessive force.

SURPRISE!

NYT: What Has Happened in Minneapolis Since George Floyd Was Murdered: A 2022 state review found that racial discrimination was endemic in the Police Department.

Highlights:

In Minneapolis, there has been a long history of police brutality complaints. In the five years before Mr. Floyd’s murder, nearly 60 percent of the instances in which the police used force were against Black residents, though only about 20 percent of Minneapolis’s residents are Black.

Is "percent of residents" really the relevant comparison? How about "percent of violent criminals"? FBI Crime Report:

Or "percent of cop-killers"? Police officers are 400 times as likely to be killed by a black criminal as an unarmed black is to be killed by a cop.

NYT cont’:

In those years, other Minneapolis police officers who killed Black men faced no charges. That included the 2015 shooting of Jamar Clark, 24, who was shot, prosecutors said, after he tried to grab an officer’s gun; and the 2018 shooting of Thurman Blevins, 31, who was armed and shot while running through an alley as he yelled, “Please don’t shoot me.”

***

[D]uring mass protests in Minneapolis after Mr. Floyd’s death… a majority of the City Council at one point pledged to dismantle the Police Department.

But voters there decided in November 2021 not to replace the Police Department with a public safety agency, with 56 percent voting against the ballot measure. 

ONLY 56% VOTING AGAINST DEFUNDING THE POLICE???

Minneapolis had about 900 sworn officers before Mr. Floyd was killed. Resignations and retirements have cut the force to about 600 officers. 

Who could’ve seen that coming?

In those years, other Minneapolis police officers who killed Black men faced no charges. That included the 2015 shooting of Jamar Clark, 24, who was shot, prosecutors said, after he tried to grab an officer’s gun; 

Even Obama’s DOJ declined to prosecute the officers for this shooting - after an extensive investigation:

“According to the officers, Clark was taken to the ground un-handcuffed, Officer Ringgenberg fell on top of Clark and landed with his back facing Clark.  Officer Ringgenberg stated that while he was in this position, Clark grabbed his gun and tried to pull it out of his holster, and that he (Officer Ringgenberg) shouted this information to his partner, Officer Schwarze.  The officers stated that Officer Schwarze ordered Clark to release the gun, but Officer Ringgenberg continued to shout that Clark had his gun and that Officer Schwarze should shoot Clark.  Officer Schwarze stated that, fearing for his life based on what he heard from Officer Ringgenberg and based on Clark’s and Officer Ringgenberg’s body positioning, he shot Clark….

“[B]ased on this extensive investigation, the Justice Department concluded that the evidence suggests that Clark was not handcuffed during this incident.  Although approximately half of the civilian eyewitnesses interviewed by the FBI reported having seen handcuffs on Clark [the apocryphal claims "civilian witnesses" are always the best part of these investigations!] (and other witnesses believed, based on Clark’s body positioning, that he was handcuffed) these witnesses’ accounts varied significantly in the details of when he was handcuffed, what position he was in when he was handcuffed and even whether one or both hands were handcuffed.  These conflicting witness accounts seriously undermine the degree to which they could be used to either disprove the officers’ accounts or to affirmatively establish that Clark was handcuffed.

“Additionally, the relevant physical evidence, while not conclusive, tends to support the officers’ account.”  

Can we debit the cost of these vast and costly investigations to any reparations payments?

Back to the Times two (TWO) examples of other Minneapolis police officers who killed black men but faced no charges: