OPINION EXCHANGE | Policing in Minneapolis: Reform, it seems, is always around the corner

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There are bad cops; we know from public reports. Some 85,000 of the nation’s officers have been disciplined or investigated for misconduct over the past decade.

In Minnesota, more than $60 million was paid out between 2010 and 2020 to victims of problem policing, while across the U.S. settlements have cost local governments $3.2 billion. The staggering payouts haven’t been enough to rein in cowboy cops.

There are good cops, of course. But scant research and varying opinion on what makes a good cop leaves us with subjective supposition, not evidence, that a majority are.

Just because an officer hasn’t been disciplined doesn’t make that cop “good.” If, say, a “good” cop sees a partner using needless force and covering it up with a false report, is that first cop still considered “good” if nothing’s said?

Minneapolis’ Third Precinct has been called a “playground” for renegade cops. Surely, cops have long known the precinct’s dubious reputation (it housed those involved in George Floyd’s murder), but they remained quiet and their union even defended some officers’ egregious acts.

Many will recall when Minneapolis police, in the presence of invited reporters, rammed front-end loaders into North Side houses of suspected crack-cocaine dealers, mostly Black, only to stop after media cameras showed too many holes punched into wrong houses. There wasn’t an audible whimper from “good” cops, while suburban police largely ignored widely available powder cocaine.

There’s the familiar public safety exhort: “See something, say something.” But it seems too many cops crouch behind the “blue wall of silence” and ignore misconduct they witness. By any definition, this isn’t “good.”

As Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara recently told Harper’s Magazine, “People really, really want police protection. They just want good police officers.” Well, yes.

Problem policing in Minneapolis has history. In 1945 the city’s new mayor, Hubert Humphrey, vowed to reform a force riddled with mob-connected corruption and cops openly engaged in despicable discrimination against Black and Jewish people. Humphrey largely routed the mob, but his 1948 election to the U.S. Senate cut short his drive to rid Minneapolis of pervasive discrimination, called among America’s worst.

Ever since, reform has been in the banner of policy promises by a parade of political aspirants who, once in office, mostly fail due to stiff pushback by police and their union. The result is a culture that tolerates rogues amid systemic reticence to ensure accountability.

Then there’s “warrior” training where camo-clad, helmeted and heavily armed cops learn military-style tactics to use against citizens. While such training was banned in 2019, a state report later found that “aggression” training persists (the defiant police union offered “warrior” training for off-duty officers). All that and broad evidence of cops’ inability to de-escalate confrontation contrasts with the stenciled message on squad cars, “To Serve With Compassion.”

Then, too, there’s crime’s undeniable foundation: poverty. Into the 1960s the Twin Cities was a hotbed of discriminatory lending in housing and practices that artificially created impoverished neighborhoods where folks, mostly Black, remain trapped to this day with scant ability to build intergenerational prosperity.

Sociologists agree and data show that concentrated, persistent poverty breeds crime. Patrick Sharkey of Princeton University said in the same Harper’s article that while some see crime as lawless disorder requiring more police, it’s really “injustice and inequality” that requires determined commitment that for way too long has been mostly nonexistent.

Policing in impoverished areas is challenging, given broad distrust of cops whose ever-present fear often results in overly aggressive confrontations. There’s a reason why Black kids get the parental “talk” about tempering behavior when stopped by police, and why Minnesota’s Department of Human Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after yearslong reviews, that the MPD has created a racist culture while failing to hold misbehaving cops accountable.

An exhaustive review by the Minnesota Reformer revealed a range of troubling behaviors at MPD, with complaints sometimes taking years to resolve. In the meantime, accused officers remain on the job, even promoted — as complaints pile like migrating fish against a dam.

An attempt to pare the backlog is a 15-member commission that made scant progress reviewing cases during its first year (72 new complaints joined 189 in the queue).

At the same time, surveys show most cops want swift resolution of complaints, while experts say the presence of undisciplined cops is a contagion that infects others.

What makes a good cop? Police themselves say it’s recruiting candidates who show compassion and a willingness to learn and grow, who are then trained in making a positive presence, in de-escalating confrontation and in promoting good policing — where cops say something when they see it.

Seems easy enough, but reformer Tony Bouza, named chief in 1989, found after nine years that even simple reform required more support than he had or could muster.

The MPD’s O’Hara is the next best hope to instill good policing. At least he has the force of state and federal consent decrees to bring about elusive reforms, along with greater managerial oversight in a new police union contract approved Thursday.

O’Hara’s worthy start includes a data-based “early intervention system” to identify officers who need counseling, and to block problem cops from rising in the ranks. He’s also pushing extended training in good policing.

A new Office of Community Safety has organized Behavioral Crisis Response teams of unarmed counselors who respond to calls involving mental and health issues, and supports community-based programs to interrupt cycles of violence.

There’s predictable resistance in officer ranks and the always-testy police union. But with a lucrative and otherwise favorable new work contract with the city along with continuing public demand for improved policing, it’s clearly time for all those “good” cops — which O’Hara says are a “vast majority” — to step up and get behind long-overdue change.

Reforms, that really must include urgent attention to shamefully persistent poverty, are expensive. So are taxpayer millions paid to settle cases of bad policing.

Ron Way lives in Minneapolis. He’s at ron-way@comcast.net.