Minneapolis, MN
City is sued by family of Leneal Frazier, killed in collision with speeding officer Brian Cummings at Minneapolis intersection
The family of a driver killed in a collision with a speeding Minneapolis police car in 2021 sued the city Thursday, pointing out that its officers have a long history of causing deadly crashes and that it knew but never disciplined the officer involved for his penchant for reckless pursuits.
The federal civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota on behalf of the sister and other relatives of 40-year-old Leneal Frazier.
Frazier’s SUV was hit at the intersection of N. Lyndale and 41st avenues by a car driven by officer Brian Cummings as he sped through a red light in pursuit of a carjacking suspect on July 6, 2021.
The suit asks for unspecified monetary damages for the family and an injunction to ensure that the city’s police officers no longer engage in similar pursuits.
A spokesman told the Star Tribune that the city had no immediate comment.
Cummings, a 14-year veteran with the Minneapolis Police Department, pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide in Hennepin County District Court in April 2023. He was sentenced to a nine-month term combining time in the workhouse and on electronic home monitoring.
Many of the contentions in the suit are directed at the history of police pursuits in Minneapolis and how they have often led to deadly crashes. It also argues that Black drivers are disproportionately subjected to pursuits.
Cummings began the chase after spotting a Kia Sportage with no license plate near W. Broadway and N. Lyndale Avenue that matched the description of a vehicle that was carjacked three days earlier. The Kia’s driver, James J. Jones-Drain, fled the scene of the crash but was later arrested and charged with fleeing police and auto theft.
“In at least 15 fatalities caused by an MPD pursuit, 13 of the drivers were Black,” including Frazier, the suit says. “These pursuits are also more likely to be initiated in and continued through neighborhoods with a disproportionately high number of Black residents compared to other Minneapolis neighborhoods with predominantly white residents.”
The suit also says Minneapolis police pursuits have ended in crashes roughly 24% of the time since 2021, a far higher proportion than for any other police department in Minnesota, according to state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data.
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) knew that the practice of its officers, and Cummings in particular, “engaging in dangerous high-speed pursuits had the natural and probable consequence of causing significant injury and/or death of MPD officers,” the suit continues.
“Despite the proven danger of MPD’s proclivity for unnecessary, high-speed pursuits, MPD Chief Brian O’Hara announced in 2023 that he was planning on relaxing the MPD’s pursuit policy.”
O’Hara did just that 14 months ago when he allowed officers to chase suspects involved in certain firearm-related offenses, a change he said was needed to counter a rise in gun violence.
Cummings was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but it included numerous allegations against him — from the night of the crash and during his career with the Minneapolis police force:
- Cummings was involved in at least 12 high-speed pursuits in 2021, including the one that killed Frazier, and he knew the driver was Black in nine of those chases. His 12 pursuits accounted for 10% of all chases by Minneapolis officers. Cummings was never disciplined for his sometimes dangerous chases.
- Even though the 3-mile pursuit he initiated before the deadly crash was not deemed an emergency, Cummings ran eight stop signs and lied to his sergeant by reporting he was going 40 mph but actually was traveling more than 80 mph. At one point, he topped 100 mph.
- He had run a red light at 89 mph when he broadsided Frazier’s SUV.
- Cummings’ statements at the crash scene showed no concern for Frazier. “[Expletive], I just got this car back,” the suit contends he said. Cummings approached a dying Frazier still pinned in the wreckage, said nothing to the driver and walked away.
Neither Cummings nor his attorney was available for comment.
Frazier was the uncle of Darnella Frazier, the young woman whose cellphone video of George Floyd’s death in May 2020 helped convict fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murder.
A halt on the construction of data centers in Minneapolis took effect in July after the Minneapolis City Council discussed the need for more time to understand the facilities’ potential environmental impacts.
The Council approved the halt through November by an 8-5 vote in May. Members said the halt allows time to study the environmental impacts of data centers and plan their development more conscientiously.
However, Council members not in favor of the halt said it will result in reduced tax revenue and may drive away businesses willing to invest in downtown Minneapolis.
Data centers are not new to the Minneapolis area, but community concerns have grown in recent months, President of Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council Dan McConnell said.
“Data centers have been around for decades,” McConnell said. “They’re not new. There just seems to all of a sudden be this hysteria around data centers.”
Celeste Robinson, policy aide to Minneapolis Council member Robin Wonsley, said the city should not rush the process because of the potential environmental trade-offs compared with the promised economic benefits. She said the halt could be extended to allow a full 12 months of analysis.
Robinson said the Council’s halt on data centers allows for a more thorough evaluation of their impacts.
“I think that there’s a misconception that the City Council being deliberative and taking the time to do it right. I think that there’s been a portrayal that that’s somehow a bad thing,” Robinson said.
Robinson said, although data centers are often seen as an investment, there is no evidence the developments generate the economic benefits for communities that supporters claim they do. She said the Council wants to determine what resources they would potentially take from the city.
“It is corporations who see land, fresh clean water, and electric grids that they can use for their profit, and that those profits get moved out of state to shareholders,” Robinson said. “They are not reinvested in our community, and so a lot of the rhetoric around data centers has really been about unverified claims around them being a source of investment.”
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ website claims that data centers are a staple for the modern job market and help to create more jobs, but labor protections for workers and regulations to protect surrounding communities are needed.
Resolution 7, a plan created by the AFL and CIO, outlines labor protections for data center employees and regulations aimed to protect surrounding communities. The plan calls for legislation that would require data centers to conserve water and energy. It seeks transparency from data center operators, union labor agreements and policies requiring data center operators to pay their share of energy and water costs.
In recent years, a lack of development in Minneapolis has seen a decline in commercial property value, leaving a shortfall of about $50 million in expected commercial property tax to fall onto the shoulders of residents, according to the Minneapolis Times. To help offset that shortfall and alleviate the burden that was placed on residents, Minneapolis must find new sources of revenue, Council member Elizabeth Shaffer said.
Some believe data centers, often being large-scale commercial developments, can relieve these financial pressures. Shaffer said the data center located in the Sleep Number headquarters in downtown Minneapolis has had a positive financial impact on the city.
“The Sleep Number building increased its valuation to eight times what it was a year ago because of a data center,” Shaffer said. “That helps relieve the property tax burden that residents and apartment owners have been feeling.”
When property values increase, property tax revenue also increases, helping Minneapolis generate revenue and address its estimated $50 million deficit, Shaffer said.
Robinson said data centers are not the only way for Minneapolis to generate revenue within the city.
“Council member Wonsley has been looking at how do we tax the rich, how do we put fees on real estate transfers for extremely high-value real estate,” Robinson said. “There are so many things that the city council can be doing to bring in new revenue to shift the property tax burden off of working-class people, that is not related to letting big tech corporations build data centers.”
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