The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, on Friday announced that the 2020 murder of George Floyd was part of a “pattern or practice” of excessive force used by the department and years of unlawful discrimination against Black Americans.
Garland held a press conference to reveal the findings of the two-year investigation by the Department of Justice (DoJ) into the conduct and training of the Minneapolis police department (MPD) both before and after George Floyd’s death at the hands of officers in the city in 2020.
“We found that MPD in the city of Minneapolis engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, unlawfully discriminating against Black and Native American people in enforcement activities, violating the rights of people engaged in protected speech and discriminating against people with behavioral disabilities…when responding to them in crisis,” Garland said at the event in Minneapolis on Friday morning.
Floyd’s murder sparked months of local, national and international protests and a fresh reckoning in the US on policy brutality and more general systemic racism in American society.
The demonstrations were the largest nationwide protests since the civil rights movement and, despite being largely peaceful and critical of violent policing, were at times themselves aggressively policed, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, leading to record payouts to injured civilians by US cities.
On Friday, Garland said: “George Floyd should be alive today.” He said his killing had an “irrevocable impact on Minneapolis, the country and the world”.
A Minnesota investigation led to the convictions of several police officers involved in his botched arrest and brutal killing. The Department of Justice opened the investigation after the 2021 conviction of Derek Chauvin, the most senior officer on the scene that night, who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes as he begged to be allowed to breathe. Chauvin and his three fellow officers, who were all fired soon after the murder, were also convicted of federal hate crimes.
Garland held a press conference in Minneapolis with the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, who was in office at the time of Floyd’s murder on 25 May 2020, and the new police chief, Brian O’Hara.
Garland said that the style of policing in the city violated the US constitution and announced that the justice department and the city of Minneapolis “have agreed in principle to negotiate towards a consent decree”.
That is the sort of agreement federal prosecutors reach with cities to reform their police departments following investigations into how they interact with the community.
“We observed many MPD officers who did their difficult work with professionalism, courage and respect. But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible,” Garland said. “As one city leader told us, ‘these systemic issues didn’t just occur on May 25 2020 [when Floyd was murdered]. There were instances like that, that were being reported by the community long before that.’”
Garland said the department’s conduct was “deeply disturbing” and eroded community trust.
“We found that the Minneapolis police department routinely uses excessive force, often when no force is necessary, including unjust, deadly force and unreasonable use of Tasers,” the attorney general said. He related a 2017 incident in which a police officer fatally shot a woman, who an officer said “‘spooked him’ when she approached his squad car. The woman had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in a nearby alley.”
Garland noted that the investigation found that Minneapolis police “routinely disregard the safety of people in their custody”.
“Our review found numerous incidents in which MPD officers responded to a person’s statement that they could not breathe with a version of ‘you can breathe. You’re talking right now.’”
Minneapolis has made some reforms to its policing but the federal government is demanding more.
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, related more examples of unjustifiable force.
“We found that officers use deadly force without probable cause to believe that there was an immediate threat of serious physical harm to the officer or another person,” Clarke said. “In one example, an off-duty officer fired his gun at a car containing six people within three seconds of getting out of his squad car.”
Clarke continued by saying that the police use neck restraints, Tasers, pepper spray and bodily force without warning and in ways that is inconsistent with the law.
The justice department found that, during traffic stops, Minneapolis officers were six times more likely to use force against Black members of the public than against white people.
Frey said: “Today marks a new chapter in the history of public safety in Minneapolis … We are not going to stop until every single person in every single neighborhood and zip code will feel safe interacting with the police.”
O’Hara thanked the justice department for its “deep dive” investigation.
“We acknowledge the pain, anger, frustration, fear and sense of vulnerability that many people in our community have endured,” he said.
The US congresswoman Ilhan Omar welcomed oversight by the federal government.
“As a Black woman living in Minneapolis, I have experienced some of these violations first-hand,” she said, adding: “For years, we have been offered a false choice between public safety and accountability. We have been told that bending to the will of the police union and the MPD is the only way to reduce crime. But rampant abuse and racism, constitutional violations and killing of unarmed Black people does not make our community any safer.”
She called for a police department following the “highest standards of ethics and conduct” and called on Congress to pass numerous pieces of legislation aimed at making policing safer, including the stalled reform bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
The DoJ’s report described numerous examples over several years of Minneapolis police flagrantly Tasering, pepper spraying, drawing guns and using “bodily force” on citizens, especially Black people, including children, who variously posed no public threat, were complying with police orders or were suspected of very minor offenses.
