Fifth Avenue Forum

Another US Department of Justice Report on a police department, this time Minneapolis. The two-year investigation follows the George Floyd killing. And like every other report on a police department that has been listed in this thread, the investigation finds rampant abuse and illegality.



The DOJ report finds:

- Minneapolis cops routinely use excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, up to and including shooting at or actually shooting people without determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others.

- Minneapolis cops routinely used neck restraints on people who posed no threat and were suspected only of low-level crimes.

- Minneapolis cops regularly use unreasonable force to obtain immediate compliance with orders, typically forgoing any meaningful de-escalation tactics.

- Minneapolis cops consistently used bodily force—including takedowns and strikes—when they faced no threat or resistance, and in some cases where suspects were in handcuffs.

- Minneapolis cops routinely disregard the safety of people in their custody or people against whom they have used force and fail to render medical aid to people who are injured.

- Minneapolis cops fail to intervene in other cops' unreasonable use of force.

- Minneapolis cops engage in racial discrimination against black and Native American people, who are disproportionately the subjects of stops and searches.

- Minneapolis cops routinely violate the First Amendment by retaliating against journalists, retaliating against protestors, retaliating and penalizing people who challenge or question their orders, and unlawfully interfering with individuals’ right to observe and record police activity.

- Minneapolis cops fail to appropriately respond to behavioral-health calls and in many cases escalate behavioral-health calls by using unnecessary force against people in mental crisis.

- The Minneapolis police department's accountability system is "fundamentally flawed," regularly mischaracterizes or ignores significant allegations, regularly overlooks or excuses obvious misconduct, and fails to adequately punish or retrain officers who commit serious misconduct.

- The Minneapolis police department provides deficient training that overemphasizes the use of force, minimizes de-escalation options, and fails to adequately instruct police on constitutional rights.

"For years, MPD used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offense and sometimes no offense at all ... MPD used force to punish people who made officers angry or criticized the police. MPD patrolled neighborhoods differently based on their racial composition and discriminated based on race when searching, handcuffing, or using force against people during stops. The City sent MPD officers to behavioral health-related 911 calls, even when a law enforcement response was not appropriate or necessary, sometimes with tragic results. These actions put MPD officers and the Minneapolis community at risk."

Cool

What are they going to do about it?

Here's a new one today, might be worth a chat in the Legal Hubub thread

Judge blocks county watchdog investigation into sheriff deputy gangs, tattoos

In a 42-page ruling that is sure to be contentious, a civil court judge effectively blocked the county watchdog from thoroughly investigating deputy gangs that operate within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The lengthy decision, dated Monday but released a day later, is the latest development in an ongoing lawsuit over whether suspected members of deputy gangs can be forced to answer questions and show their tattoos to county oversight investigators.

The Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs — which filed the suit in May — said requiring its members to reveal ink or submit to interviews would violate the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and the 5th Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination, as well as state labor law.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant partially agreed — for now. But it was the arguments relating to labor law that he found most compelling, so this week’s preliminary injunction will only halt the Office of Inspector General’s investigation until the labor issues are resolved.

Speaking as a tattooed individual, the 4th and 5th Amendment claims seem rather dubious. The state is not compelling you to get the ink, and I think it has been held in other jurisdictions that tats are sort of inline with hair & eye color or scars in this context; they are physical characteristics, not testimonial evidence (never mind compelled evidence), the more so if they are displayed in a readily viewable location, like your bicep or chest.

Federal corrections officers to female inmates: "Have sex with me if you ever want parole."

Notice that as deputy chickens**t is panicking and firing shots, the other officer is just standing there on the porch where the dogs are coming out, and not one of them bites him or attacks him in any way.

Somebody's training worked as designed.................. and somebody's training failed them.

Although I do think "Deputy Chickens**t" is probably accurate in so many of these cases, and training can't really overcome that.

Local prosecutors expressly warned the police in advance of the arrest that the Louisiana criminal defamation statute under which they wanted to charge Jerry Rogers had years prior been held unconstitutional as it pertains to the criticism of public officials. There was no doubt that it did not and could not criminalize criticism of the police. They arrested and charged him anyway.

Small-town Kansas police raid the local newspaper and seize everything.



While the police have said that the raid was supposedly based on an investigation of identity theft, there may be another reason:

This kambumfuq Kansas newspaper story is going to get real weird real quick