Credit: Screen shot / City of Minneapolis
Fourteen months ago, investigators with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights issued a blistering report on the Minneapolis Police Department.
The 72-page document confirmed what many Minneapolis residents already suspected: The city’s police department used harsher tactics against people of color and Indigenous individuals than they did against their white neighbors.
To many critics, the names of Black men killed by MPD officers — including Terrence Franklin, Jamar Clark and George Floyd— were only the most high-profile examples of this pattern. The state’s report did note that all but one of the people killed by MPD officers between 2010 and February 2022 have been men of color.
But the bulk of the state’s report focused on painting a stark picture of day-to-day policing in Minneapolis.
“What pains me in this is that we needed a report to validate what Black people have been saying for decades,” said Saray Garnett-Hochuli, who is Black and led the city’s Department of Regulatory Services, […]
Unfortunately, I have experienced this myself when I took a trip up through NYC and got off at the bus terminal at “grand Central” Station, I believe it was. I walked outside and looked up and down the street and on one end there were about half a dozen of “New Yorks finest”: Police officers, and on the other end of the street were a gang of Black Men. I chose to go down toward the gang of black men, because they seemed happy and the police officers looked at me like I was a vagabond who didn’t belong on their streets. The gang of Black Men were actually very polite and I enjoyed talking with them, even though I was a white outsider, they were kind to me. The police made me feel afraid!