News & Commentary

MINNEAPOLIS — A jury has found former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter guilty of 1st-degree manslaughter and 2nd-degree manslaughter in the killing of Daunte Wright. 

The city of Minneapolis and its police department are willfully subverting our state’s Government Data Practices Act by withholding public data about disciplinary action taken against police for serious misconduct, according to a new lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Minnesota on behalf of MNCOGI.

Tomorrow marks exactly one year since Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd. The whole world bore witness.

Policing and public safety are undoubtedly at the forefront of this committee’s minds, and the minds of many Minnesotans and Americans. Over the summer, we were pleased that the legislature responded rapidly to the murder of George Floyd with state-level proposals; however, we want to be clear that the work this body began in special session is far from finished. While changes such as allowing residency incentives, imposing a duty to intercede and increasing community input at the POST Board address symptoms, it is the underlying systems of policing and public safety that require change.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, protestors throughout America march to demand an end to police abuse. Advocates for the compelling movement to divest from the police and reinvest in communities convincingly argue that significant portions of the tax dollars we spend on policing would be better spent supporting the needs of communities of color and on alternatives to policing itself. Continuing to rely on overfunded police departments, which seem all too happy to continue to enforce laws in a racist manner and unwilling to limit aggressive uses of force, does not advance public safety.Consider how the racial disparities in the enforcement of marijuana laws have contributed to the mass incarceration of persons of color, or how the enforcement of trivial criminal infractions – like selling loose cigarettes or driving with a broken tail light – have repeatedly led to the murder of Black people. These practices more than adequately illustrate the devastating scope and impact of America’s policing problem.But even where defund/divest efforts succeed, police departments may be able to undermine some of this movement’s most important objectives. Certain achievements, such as creating non-police infrastructures for mental health crisis responses, will be difficult to circumvent, but when it comes to the over-policing and over-surveillance of communities of color, a foreseeable problem awaits. In response to a loss of funding, police departments are likely to consider shifting from more expensive, racist, human policing to more cost-efficient, racist, technology-driven policing. Should this play out, we will be left an altered but equally dangerous beast to fight.And there is a very real risk of that happening. It is a risk the Movement for Black Lives has focused upon at length, and it is time we all do the same.Surveillance Technologies and RacismLike policing itself, investigations into surveillance technology deployments have revealed, time and again, that they are overwhelmingly unleashed against communities of color. These technologies include:

One out of every 1,000 Black men in the United States can expect to be killed by police during their lives. Black, Brown and Indigenous communities are being physically, psychologically, spiritually and economically devastated by over-policing. Police are killing members of those communities at terrifying rates. 

Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director Over

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota sued the City of Saint Paul Wednesday in state court to get public data that officials have improperly withheld for more than 18 months.

Forty percent of people in America live in a household with a gun. Minnesota law enforcement needs to update their policies, training, and tactics if they intend to police an increasingly armed society.