The Death of George Floyd Prompts Calls for Police Reform
The death of George Floyd shows how incredibly hard it is to change police culture. Minneapolis embraced the pillars of President Barack Obama's 2015 Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing. It did almost everything the report asked for. As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, the mayor and City Council appointed a reform-minded African-American police chief "who emphasized a guardian mentality instead of a warrior one. They held listening sessions with the community and updated policies to create more transparency and accountability. They promoted officer wellness by offering yoga and meditation classes." Yet none of this stopped the tragedy of May 25, 2020.
On May 31, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter told protesters in the Twin Cities to channel their passions for good. “Take that energy,” Carter said, “and use it not to destroy our neighborhoods but to destroy the historic culture [of injustice], to destroy the systemic racism, to destroy, in specific, the laws, the legal precedents, the police union contracts — all of the things that make it so difficult to hold someone accountable when a life like George Floyd’s is so wrongfully taken.”
Carter’s focus on “police union contracts” as a source of the problem in holding officers accountable for excessive force was appropriate and his message resonated. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey agreed, noting, “For years in Minneapolis, police chiefs and elected officials committed to change have been thwarted by police union protections and laws that severely limit accountability.”
President Trump with MPD Union President Bob Kroll at a 2019 rally in Minneapolis
Critics say the union has essentially run the Minneapolis Police Department, but the Floyd case presents a serious threat to its power. Police Chief Arradondo announced that the city end bargaining negotiations because the union has historically stood “in the way of progress.” Critics of the union point especially to the role played by union president Bob Kroll (many protesters, questioning his racial attitudes, adopted the slogan “KKKroll”) in blocking attempts to discipline officers who engaged in misconduct. Former City Council aide Sean Broom told a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter, “He’s their bulldog when they have to go in to anything in the disciplinary process. Bob Kroll has shown himself to be an extraordinary advocate on their behalf. That’s why he was elected, that’s why he was reelected.” Kroll found an ally in President Trump. When the president had a campaign rally in Minneapolis in October 2019, Trump brought Kroll on stage, and touted him as a folk hero “pouring out his guts” to stand up to the city’s liberal establishment. (Kroll, however, refused to defend the actions of Chauvin. On June 23, he told "CBS This Morning,” that Floyd’s arrest looked and sounded "horrible” and added, “We’ve got a pretty good picture of what Chauvin did. It’s easy to form judgment there and terminate.”)
Labor arbitration rulings in Minnesota go a long way towards explaining why police misconduct has been so difficult to rein in. Six months before Floyd’s death, for example, a fired Minneapolis police officer was reinstated to his job by a state arbitrator. The officer, in 2016, had beaten a handcuffed, intoxicated man who kicked him, producing what the arbitrator described as “a pool of blood.” Even though the officer had violated policy and shown no remorse, he was returned to duty as a “training officer.” and had performed well while his case went through channels following the 2016 beating incident. According to the arbitrator, a two-week unpaid suspension was sufficient punishment for the bloody beating.
Minnesota state law requires every police department in the state to allow all discipline to be appealed to binding arbitration. Arbitrators frequently reduce terminations to suspensions, with fired cops being put back on the job about half the time. Why allow arbitrators to second guess the judgment calls of police chiefs, who might be better expected that an arbitrator to know when a police officer has shown he or she lacks the self-control and respect for the law that an officer needs to have? That’s a good question. The Minnesota Police Chiefs Association has argued in the courts that the arbitration system should not be applied to “police officers, who by the very nature of their positions, hold the trust and safety of the public in their hands.” But, in a 2019 decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that police officers were not exceptions to the general law allowing arbitration for all public employees. If change in the arbitration policy is to come, it will have to come from the Minnesota State Legislature.
And it will be, until state policymakers finally decide to do more than talk about accountability. Of course, the legislature has other police reform options it could consider, including changes in the state licensing board for police officers or mandating additional training in the use of restraint techniques and the use of force in general.
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo
Most complaints against Minneapolis officers never reach the arbitration stage. Only 3% of all complaints result in discipline, a number far lower than most metropolitan police districts. The Minneapolis civilian review authority and the MPD more often to “coaching” officers accused of misconduct. Retired Minneapolis police officials suggested that the MPD relies heavily on coaching because it offers quick corrective action. They told a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune that it’s “faster and more effective to stick an officer in the hot seat in their supervisor’s office than to deal with paperwork, combative union representatives and hearings.”
The MPD does not categorize “coaching” as “discipline, and records of complaint resolution not involving discipline are sealed, so the public cannot know what the conduct “coached” was. It’s likely that some of the 16 misconduct complaints against Officer Chauvin that were addressed by coaching, but there is no way of determining whether that was the case. This lack of transparency is another reform issue likely to be re-examined in the wake of Floyd’s death. Velma Korbel, head of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, said that the state’s Department of Human Rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department underway will consider changes to the policy for handling citizen complaints. Korbel said, “I think everything should be on the table. Now is the time.”
Two weeks after Floyd’s death, The House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Division of the Minnesota legislature began considering proposals to reform police practices and use-of-deadly-force cases. Floyd’s nephew asked the committee to ban chokeholds, a proposal that has bipartisan support. The sister of a man Chauvin shot in 2008 called for greater transparency concerning the handling of officer complaints. Another proposal under consideration would put prosecution of deadly officer-involved cases in the hands of Attorney General’s office. The association that represents Minnesota county attorneys voted to support the proposed change. Another proposal, with primarily Democratic support would change the state’s use-of-force standard. Under the proposal, force could only be used when the risk of death or great bodily harm to an officer or another person is “imminent”, as opposed to the current language which allows force when the risk is “apparent.”
On July 21, 2020, Minnesota legislators, in special session, passed legislation that substantially changed the state’s criminal justice system. The legislation included a ban on chokeholds and neck restraints — such as the one used on Floyd. It also prohibited warrior-style training for officers, improved data collection relating to deadly force encounters, required officers to intervene in life-threatening situations such as the one involving George Floyd, and created a new state unit to investigate such cases. Finally, the legislation created a panel of expert arbitrators to handle police misconduct cases and established incentives for officers to live in the communities they police.
Mayor Jacob Frey being jeered by protesters for not supporting defunding of the MPD
A majority of the Minneapolis Council would like to take reform to a more radical level, declaring their intention to completely defund the MPD and replace it with something new—perhaps neighborhood-based entities charged with not only securing the peace, but social justice as well. Although Mayor Frey has indicated that he opposes abolishing the MPD, a veto-proof majority of city council members have said they intend to do just that. Minneapolis might soon be conducting an experiment in law enforcement reform that is bound to attract a lot of national attention.
On June 26, The council voted unanimously to advance a proposal that would create a new Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. Within that, the city would have the option to create a division that includes “licensed peace officers,” but it would not be required to do so. Because the City Charter requires that a police force be maintained, a citywide vote to change the charter would be required before the Council proposal could become effective. Minneapolis might soon be conducting an experiment in law enforcement reform that is bound to attract a lot of national attention.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the House bill “is going nowhere in the Senate.” Republicans rallied around legislation that focused on improved officer training in uses of force, discourage the use of chokeholds, and establish a system for local departments to better report police-citizen encounters that result in serious injury or death. But, on June 23, Senate Democrats said they also had the votes to block the weaker Senate bill from getting the necessary 60 votes to advance. It's an election year and everyone wants to play politics, so it seems unlikely even modest reforms will be able to make it through Congress in 2020.
Not to be left out, Donald Trump, on June 17, signed an executive order, adopting ideas from the Senate plan, that encouraged better police practices and created a national database to track officers with a history of excessive use of force complaints.
Problems in the Third Precinct
Some police departments and precincts have worse reputations than others for civil liberties abuses. According to a story by Libor Jany and Andy Mannix in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (6/7/20), “Long before former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, the Third Precinct in south Minneapolis had a reputation for being home to police officers who played by their own rules.” Minneapolis cops reportedly often say, to describe the Third Precinct’s style of policing, “There’s the way that the MPD does things, and then there’s the way they do it ‘in Threes.’” Civil rights attorney Paul Applebaum described the Third as “a playground for rogue cops.” Defenders of the Third admit the precinct has a few problem cops, put say to place blame on the entire precinct is unfair.
Between 2007 and 2017, the city paid out $2.1 million to settle lawsuits brought against Third Precinct officers, a far greater amount than for any other precinct in the city. Greg Hestness, a retired Minneapolis deputy chief, attributes the precinct’s swaggering culture dates to the 1980s. He says that mass transfers from downtown’s First Precinct and the recently closed Sixth Precinct produced a combustible mix of “old timers” and “young Vietnam vets.”
As is the case with most large cities in the United States, a disproportionate number of use-of-force cases involve African Americans. About 20% of the population of Minneapolis is black, and about 40% people of color. Yet African-Americans are involved in 63% of the use-of-force cases and people of color, 73%. Complaints against officers continued to rise against officers despite the implementation of de-escalation training and body cameras.
Of course, as the spreading protests across the country suggests, the problematic use of force by police is not just a problem in Minneapolis. A Washington Post story reported that in the year 2015 officers fatally shot nearly 1,000 people, the highest number ever recorded to that point. In the years that followed, similar numbers of people have been shot and killed by police, bringing the total number for the five-year period beginning in 2015 to 5,400. Obviously, many of those killings were fully justified by the circumstances, and the large majority of those shot were armed, but the totals are shocking.
Floyd Fallout Causes Decline in Police Morale
In the first two weeks after the death of George Floyd, at least seven Minneapolis police officers resigned from the department, and more than a dozen more began the process of resigning.
According to a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune “morale has sunk to new lows” and “officers reported feeling misunderstood and squeezed by all sides: by the state probe; by protesters, who hurled bricks and epithets their way; by city leaders, who surrendered a police station that later burned on national television, and by the media.” Many officers reported being especially upset by the decision of Mayor Frey to abandon the Third Precinct police station. To them, it suggested the Mayor was siding with the protesters over law enforcement. The MPD had, as of June 2020, 850 officers, about forty short of the number authorized. The director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association said the effects from Floyd’s death would make it an uphill battle to recruit and retain officers.