The problem isn't just those officers, though. It is the whole institutional culture of policing.
Read the things the MPD union chief has said and tell me if you think real reforms, along the lines of 8 Can't Wait, are possible with him sitting at the negotiating table.
I don't pay much attention to union leaders because they say a lot of stuff that is not representative of the vast majority of the officers they represent.
But the bigger problem with Minneapolis is they have had these problems for years and years, and none of their politicians have done a thing about it. Now they want to eliminate the department.
Why didn't they do ANYTHING before George Floyd was needlessly killed? They could have prevented it if they had taken some action.
Look at the mass resignations in Buffalo; two cops were disciplined for using excessive force and their entire unit resigned from emergency response duty in protest not of the violence against an elderly protester but of the consequences the officers are facing. If they're resigning over not being allowed to conduct themselves without consequence or restraint, how likely are they to accept reforms aimed at creating a less-aggressive model of policing?
Buffalo is a special case, and I don't know anything about their police department.
I don't think the officer should have shoved the old man, but you have to look at the context.
A line of police officers, under orders from their deputy superintendent, was advancing to clear some demonstrators from an area. Right behind the front line were two important officers -- both supervisors.
The closest one was in charge of the line and should have ordered the confrontational gentleman arrested. He did nothing.
Just behind him, if you look at the video, is another supervisor broadcasting orders to clear the area with a white electronic megaphone.
Instead of obeying the lawful orders of the police, the elderly gentleman confronted the officers so closely that he was shoved back. That shove proved to be injurious,
but that tactic IS what officers are trained to do in that situation. Unfortunately, it turned out badly this time -- and as I said earlier the better approach would have been to just grab the man and handcuff him and take him to jail. Hopefully, the man will survive.
I don't agree with the officers "resigning" from their unit -- in fact, I'm not even sure how one does that.
But I do
understand it. They resigned because, in their view, the officer who did the shoving
did nothing more than he had been trained to do -- and for that he got fired and charged criminally.
Look at the suburban police chief in the Detroit area, who is currently suspended (with pay) and has his officers rallying around him to oppose firing after he made comments about "body bags for these vicious subhumans" and calling on leaders to "unleash real cops to take care of these barbarians" in response to news coverage about the mostly peaceful Detroit-area protests. With a leader like that, do you think community-oriented policing and non-violence training is going to happen?
Not familiar with that situation, but if he really made those comments he's a total moron and should be fired.
And then you have departments like that one in FL that is Tweeting an invitation for officers upset by disciplinary actions and reform efforts to come apply at their department, where none of those things will be happening. They're basically using the promise of no oversight as a recruiting tool.
No, they're recruiting. They are actually IN police work and they know that the overwhelming majority of officers in those departments are good cops. They also know that they can weed out potential problems by psych tests (required in Florida), thorough background investigations, and other screening tools. They see a target-rich environment with a pool of good cops and they're going to exploit it. Good on 'em.
I don't know that I agree with the defund/dismantle approach, but I do think the evidence points to us being in a situation where incremental reform simply isn't possible in light of the currently ingrained culture in many of our law enforcement departments.
Minneapolis doesn't know that. Minneapolis city government has made NO EFFORT to reform anything.
