Probe slams Minneapolis police over racism, fake social media accounts

A newly launched probe discovered that the Minneapolis Police Division (MPD) engaged in race-based policing, failed to carry officers accountable for wrongdoing, and improperly used social media accounts to focus on Black individuals and Black organizations. 

In its report printed Wednesday, the Minnesota Division of Human Rights (MDHR) detailed how officers had stooped, searched, arrested, cited and used extreme power towards Black and Indigenous individuals at a better fee than their white counterparts. 

Of 14 people MPD officers have killed since 2010, 13 had been Black or Indigenous, the report famous. 

The division mentioned it reviewed 700 hours of body-worn digicam footage and almost 480,000 pages of paperwork, discovering MPD officers used racist, misogynistic and in any other case disrespectful language towards suspects, witnesses and bystanders. 

“When MPD officers scream obscenities at group members, it makes it difficult for prosecutors to do their job and subsequently undermines the legal justice system,” the division wrote in its report. 

The MDHR’s report additionally famous that the division’s accountability techniques are ineffective at holding officers accountable for misconduct, noting that cases of police misconduct will not be correctly investigated or addressed, which means officers will not be constantly held accountable. 

The report additionally discovered that the MPD used numerous social media accounts to focus on Black leaders, Black organizations and elected officers with no public security goal through the 10-year interval.

“Particularly, MPD officers despatched good friend requests, commented on posts, despatched non-public messages, and contributed to discussions,” the report mentioned. “When doing so, officers posed as like-minded people and claimed, for instance, that they met the focused individual at a previous demonstration or protest. In social media posts and messages, MPD officers used language to additional racial stereotypes related to Black individuals, particularly Black ladies.”

The human rights company launched its investigation amid the fallout from the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Could 2020, which sparked nationwide outrage and protests demanding an finish to police brutality and racial inequality. 

Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of homicide for kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for greater than 9 minutes, requested the courtroom this week to enchantment his conviction. Chauvin is at the moment serving a jail sentence of twenty-two ½ years.

“Following the homicide of George Floyd, calls for to finish discriminatory policing practices reverberated the world over,” MDHR Commissioner Rebecca Lucero mentioned in a press release. 

“These calls for stay simply as pressing at this time with the announcement of the investigative findings which paints an unsettling image of the Metropolis of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Division partaking in a sample of racial discrimination during the last decade,” Lucero added.