DOJ releases scathing federal report on Minneapolis police

The Minneapolis Police Department engaged in the systemic use of excessive force and discriminated against racial minorities in the years leading up to the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020, federal authorities said Friday.

In a scathing 89-page report released after a more than two-year federal civil rights investigation, the Justice Department excoriated the Minneapolis police force as an agency that put officers and local residents at unnecessary risk and failed to act upon repeated warnings about biased behavior.

Specifically, the report criticizes the Minneapolis police for: using “dangerous tactics and weapons” – including neck restraints and Tasers – against people for petty offense or no crimes; punishing residents who criticized the police; patrolling neighborhoods differently based on their racial makeup; and discriminating against those with behavioral health disabilities.

The report called the department’s accountability structures “fundamentally flawed,” with internal misconduct investigations getting lost in an “opaque maze” as senior managers dismissed legitimate complaints without investigation and routinely mischaracterizing the allegations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the results of the investigation Friday morning, and depicted Floyd’s death not as an isolated episode, but instead as a tragedy enabled by the police department’s entrenched issues.

Garland emphasized that many Minneapolis police officers were observed during the investigation acting properly. “But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible,” he said.

Garland said the Justice Department and Minneapolis officials had agreed in principle to negotiate toward a consent decree, a court-enforceable reform agreement that can be used to ensure changes within a local law enforcement agency.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, appearing alongside Garland on Friday, said the city had made changes since Floyd’s killing, but he emphasized that more was needed.

“To take real action, we first have to acknowledge where we’ve been, the pain we’ve caused and to take a hard look at the specifics that need to be changed,” Frey said.

The report’s release came several weeks after the third anniversary of Floyd’s killing on May 25, 2020, by Minneapolis police officers.

The findings echo repeated claims made by residents over the years about the Minneapolis police force, and they also are similar in many ways to a state investigation that concluded last year that the department was riddled with unnecessarily aggressive behavior and lacking oversight.

The federal report carries with it the imprimatur of the Justice Department and the likely promise of a federal court order mandating changes. The step carries significant weight in a city where there have long been tensions between the police force and local residents, particularly Black people in north Minneapolis, that have repeatedly fueled protests and drawn nationwide scrutiny.

The Justice Department’s report praises the city and department for already moving ahead with reforms. At the same time, it lays out a brutal assessment of how the department has policed Minneapolis, describing wanton, unnecessary acts of violence and then, when residents complain about officers, a complete failure to act. Federal authorities said Minneapolis officials cooperated in the probe, and the two sides are expected to negotiate a consent decree that will mandate broad changes within the police department. The plan is likely to include hundreds of specific actions that city and police leaders will be required to pursue in the coming years under the oversight of a federal court-appointed monitor.

In March, the Minneapolis City Council approved a tentative agreement with the city’s human rights department to settle a separate state investigation into the city’s policing that found officers had routinely engaged in racially discriminatory policing for at least a decade. That move was widely seen as a precursor to federal action. City leaders said they will seek to collaborate with federal authorities to streamline the reform efforts.

Legal experts said Justice officials had a broader mandate than state investigators, and their findings could lay the groundwork for more comprehensive changes for the Minneapolis police and also be used as a guide for other police departments seeking to make improvements.

“It’s really important in a democracy for there to be not only an avenue for this kind of investigation to happen but for the findings of that investigation to be made public so we understand the need for a really onerous [legal] agreement that can make change and empower people,” Christy Lopez, who worked in Justice’s civil rights division during the Obama administration and helped oversee the federal investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., police department, said in an interview.

The federal report punctuated a series of Justice Department actions aimed at bringing accountability in several high-profile cases involving Black victims in 2020 that sparked months of social justice protests across the country.

In March, Justice officials released similar findings from an investigation into the Louisville Police Department sparked by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor. Federal prosecutors have secured criminal convictions against four former Minneapolis officers involved in Floyd’s death and charged four former Louisville officers with federal crimes related to Taylor’s killing. And prosecutors won federal hate crime convictions against three White men who chased and fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia subdivision.

Garland launched the investigation into the Minneapolis police in April 2021, seeking to reinvigorate the use of “pattern or practice” probes that had become a staple of the Justice Department during the Obama administration. In such investigations, federal authorities undertake a sweeping review of a local police department’s use-of-force polices, training, disciplinary measures, data collection and public transparency efforts.

The department moved away from those investigations during the Trump administration, which viewed such efforts as federal overreach.

The Minneapolis probe took more than two years to complete as federal investigators reviewed thousands of internal documents and thousands of hours of body-camera footage, examined disciplinary records, conducted facility visits, and interviewed officers, residents, community leaders and local officials. The findings buttress long-standing complaints from community leaders and residents of abusive policing from a department that currently has more than 700 police officers.In a scathing report last year, the Minneapolis human rights department found the police had routinely engaged in racially discriminatory policing for at least a decade and had failed to properly train and hold its officers accountable for misconduct. After months of negotiations between city and state officials, the council voted unanimously to approve a 144-page “court-enforceable settlement.”

The settlement called for scores of mandated reforms including new rules limiting the use of force. It also brought fresh restrictions on stops, searches and arrests, and a ban on stopping cars for low-level offenses like expired license tabs or failing to signal. The settlement also laid out new requirements on officer wellness and training, such as mandatory instruction on issues of race.

Last year, the city selected Brian O’Hara, a veteran police officer who most recently served as deputy mayor of Newark, as the city’s new police chief – the first person hired from outside the department for that role in 16 years.

Frey, the mayor, whose office maintains administrative control over the police department, touted O’Hara’s hiring as an effort to bring necessary change to the struggling agency. In addition to navigating a post pandemic uptick in violent crime and widespread distrust across the city, the department had seen more than a third of its officers quit the force, many citing post-traumatic stress disorder from the fiery protests that erupted in parts of the city in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing.

Investigators in the federal report said they found low morale among the city’s police force, which in May had 585 sworn officers, down from 892 in 2018.

Frey and other city officials have cited O’Hara’s experience in navigating a federal consent decree issued in 2016 in Newark, a majority Black city, where a lengthy Justice Department probe had found numerous constitutional violations, such as excessive use of force that primarily targeted Black residents.

Local officials and community leaders have credited the effort with spurring change in Newark’s policing involving a revamp of its use of force policies, tougher sanctions on problem officers and more diverse hiring. In 2020, while still under a federal monitor, Newark officials announced its officers had not fired a single gunshot that entire calendar year.

Speaking on Friday alongside Garland, Frey and other officials, O’Hara described the goal of having a department that earned greater faith from local residents.

“We acknowledge the pain, anger, frustration, fear and sense of vulnerability that many people in our community have endured,” he said. O’Hara said he was speaking on behalf of the police department “to affirm our commitment to moving forward together.”

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Bailey reported from Minneapolis.