A report on the findings of a sweeping, two-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) into violence and racial discrimination of the police in Minneapolis — where George Floyd, an unarmed African-American was murdered in May 2020 in police custody — found that officers had used excessive force, including “unjustified deadly force”, and violated the rights of people engaged in constitutionally protected speech, particularly discriminating against African-American and Native American people and those with “behavioural health disabilities”. The findings appeared to confirm a raft of citizen complaints about police conduct in Minneapolis in the wake of the Floyd murder, for which crime the officers involved were sentenced to prison terms. The report’s salience is underscored by the outpouring of public anger and protests against racism and violent acts by police on minorities, which erupted across major cities, calling for police reforms. The inquiry not only found numerous examples of excessive force, unlawful discrimination, and First Amendment violations upon review of 19 police shooting incidents but it also noted that there was entrenched racism with regarding to police actions in the context of traffic stops and arrests and callous, violent treatment of some who suffered from mental health conditions. The scathing report concluded that the “systemic problems in MPD made what happened to George Floyd possible”.
The DoJ report is a wake-up call to police institutions, most of which continue with their business-as-usual approach toward dealing with the nuances and social complexities of policing multicultural America. The review of police body-worn camera videos, incident and police reports, and hundreds of complaints filed against officers makes it clear that there is an urgent, glaring need for police reforms that address the most challenging issues of the use of excessive force, racial profiling, bureaucratic-militarisation of police culture, and an institutional lack of accountability for police misconduct. Many U.S. States have attempted transformative change, for example by restricting the use of chokeholds and setting up mechanisms for more effective reporting of use of force details. However, public safety, especially in the context of overzealous, armed, police officers using force against persons of colour and other minorities, will genuinely improve only by “limiting when and why police are called upon in the first place”. American culture’s over-reliance on the police to maintain order in public life has meant that the door has been opened to law enforcement officers responding to minor offences in a racially prejudiced manner, especially when in such instances, public health professionals or other service providers might be better able to address the situation.
