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Consider a less dramatic example: An African-American businessman, driving a late-model car, going to an important meeting, is stopped by police. They will not tell him the reason for the stop. Searching for his insurance papers, he realizes they are on his desk at home. The officers get impatient. The businessman grows anxious; he pleads to be ticketed and allowed to go. Suddenly, both officers slam him, face first, into the car, breaking his glasses and his nose, now bleeding. Handcuffing the man tightly, he is jerked by his wrists into the patrol car. He is charged with driving without insurance and resisting arrest. Later, he will realize he also has a common arrest injury: nerves crushed in his left wrist cause pain for the next five years.
What recourse does he have?
When police are the assailants, you can’t call 911. In 1990, Minneapolis voters established the Civilian Review Authority (CRA) as an alternative. Twelve years later, the CRA’s ineffectiveness made it an easy target for city budget cuts.
“The CRA was established through incredible actions by citizens and we need to respect that,” said 8th Ward City Councilmember Robert Lilligren, member of Mayor Rybak’s CRA Redesign Action Group made up of 24 people, half city officials and MPD, half diverse community representatives. They are the voices in this article.
“CRA really had no power.” Northside activist and Subzero Collective member James Everett echoes many communities’ consensus from public forums held by the action group. “It never held police accountable for use of force. Just smoke and mirrors.”
Shielded Badges
The following observations are drawn from interviews with MPD officers, Internal Affairs information and the CRA Redesign Action Group Legal Issues report, provided by City Councilmember Paul Zerby.
Police are public employees granted necessary authority: to detain, question and arrest anyone; they have weapons and discretion in the use of force—including deadly force. But, even when violent misconduct results in large monetary settlements to victims (at taxpayer expense) their boss—the chief—does not have final authority to discipline them.
Minneapolis police officer Mike Sauro is the most infamous example. After two settlements totaling over $1 million for excessive force, former Mayor Sayles-Belton insisted that Sauro be fired. Arbitration reinstated Sauro with back pay. To this day, he remains on the force.
Tracking complaints and discipline against individual officers is difficult due to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, which keeps confidential such information on ALL civil service employees. All government workers in a union have rights to appeal discipline. But the stakes for the community are higher regarding a police officer than a clerk or road worker.
From 1995 to 2001, MPD Internal Affairs Department had 148 complaints of excessive force. Six were sustained. The IAD report doesn’t link violations to the discipline summary, but the most common discipline given was suspension without pay. If an officer’s appeal reverses the discipline, lost wages are reimbursed. How often does this happen? Even IAD doesn’t know, because that information isn’t given to them. With Officer Sauro as a precedent, it’s hard to feel that even the rare discipline for brutality is allowed to stand. In actual effect, such reversals reward officers for excessive force with a paid vacation.
“What gives police more rights as employees than I have as a citizen?” asks Michelle Gross, a health care administrator and co-founder of Communities United Against Police Brutality.
This sentiment and many complainants’ fear about reporting police abuses to MPD galvanized voter creation of the CRA. Despite the mandate to deal with excessive force, the entity avoided the “serious cases,” allowed others to languish in limbo and never sustained a brutality complaint. Even if it had responded better, the CRA never had the power to discipline. All it could do was make recommendations to the chief, which were not usually followed, and those that were could be reversed by appeal.
“If you’re a doctor who practices bad medicine, that information is publicly available. Make enough serious mistakes and you don’t practice medicine anymore,” said Gross. “The deal is cops never find that cops did anything wrong. Grand juries never indict cops. There has to be a way to finally make police accountable for brutality they commit.”
An Exeption to the Standard
A 45-minute interview with IAD head Lt. Carol Serafin makes clear officers are held accountable in certain areas. Serafin comes across as tremendously capable with a kind of genial toughness: high expectations for performance yet keen to the myriad of reasons officers come to IAD attention.
“We do police our own,” she asserts, explaining the MPD’s Codes of Conduct and Ethics (available online: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/police/about/int-affairs/index.html, linked to reports). Reasons range from rookie inexperience with complex procedures to conduct/ethics violations and personal problems any worker could have.
“Officers are people, too. Sometimes it’s a rough patch, like going through a divorce. We refer for counseling,” she says. Alluding to her own experience as a young beat officer written up once for failure to file reports, Serafin said, “Sometimes it’s laziness or the officers thinking they decide whether it’s a serious complaint. We say, ‘it takes longer to talk someone out of a complaint than to write the report. Just do it!’” she laughs.
Asked point blank what gets an officer fired (subject to reversal through arbitration), Serafin soberly lists conduct violations like bribery or off-duty felonies like DWI. “If an officer is arrested, they are required to immediately call their supervisor or IAD,” Serafin emphasizes.
Taking a proactive stance to officers’ misconduct, IAD has initiated an Early Warning System (EWS): an officer receiving two IAD and/or CRA complaints of a similar nature or three complaints of any nature within a year enters the EWS. Based on complaints (not final findings) such officers’ names are given to their commanding officer for discussion. This reporter became convinced IAD has integrity in many areas.
But it’s undeniable, based on IAD statistics, that excessive force is the exception: it took 65 brutality complaints in 1996 for four to be sustained, 32 complaints in 1997 for one sustained, which were “peak years” for force complaints to IAD.
Police shootings resulting in the death of civilians are investigated by the Sheriff’s Department, referred to the County Attorney. The conclusion of the March 10th police shooting of mentally ill Somali refugee Abu Kassim Jeilani is the standard response. On June 20, the grand jury dismissed all charges against the six officers who shot Jeilani 12 times.
A Matter of Perception?
Even on the phone, Deputy Chief Rick Schultz comes across as the proverbial “officer friendly.” He enthuses about the ways MPD works to improve police-community relations “especially with youth,” he says: mentoring and PAL (Police Athletic League). He talks of continuing education with some officer choice of courses. Noting the rise in the Latino population, Schultz says, “There are Spanish language classes from basic to advanced. Every class maxed out. We just had a class on Somali culture—filled up. For the most part [diversity classes] are well received.”
Despite their purported concerns with community relations, how sincerely did MPD engage in the CRA redesign process? They failed to commit even one officer to consistently attend. Rather, musical chairs prevailed, with Chief Robert Olson appearing once.
“We understand the need for CRA, where people bring issues—rudeness, excessive force—which are rules violations, not crimes.” Schultz discoursed at length on “lines of authority, discipline.” “Other law enforcement—the Sheriff’s Department—handles criminal investigation of officers, to eliminate the perception that investigations lean toward the officers. We’ve never done anything improper but we’d prefer to avoid conflict or perception of special consideration…We understand the perception, historically and today, there’s a need for an oversight element like CRA.”
It’s impossible to avoid concluding that MPD sees CRA’s purpose as public relations, not investigations. How does “perception” relate to excessive force cases, like our black businessman’s broken nose? If a civilian caused the injury, it would be considered assault—a crime. For police officers, it’s unlikely to be sustained, even as a “rules violation.”
Our Union Makes us Strong
On May 20, Police Federation president Sgt. John Delmonico, wrote an official letter to Mayor Rybak and the City Council. Like Schultz, he’s “deeply concerned by the present image of Minneapolis police.” Image, perception, public views are repeated throughout.
The five-page letter opposes both citizens and elected officials questioning of MPD policies and practices and there are multiple calls for banning discussions of police brutality at City Hall. Delmonico claims public criticism of police is “personally dangerous to officers and promotes lawlessness dangerous to the public.” Almost two pages of the letter are demands for elected officials to “make it a policy of the City Council to not provide a forum for complaints [about police brutality].” He claims, “[not] one officer in 10 years committed serious misconduct [without] discipline.” Has Sgt. Delmonico forgotten that arbitrators reinstated “Million Dollar Mike” Sauro? Just last month, the City paid a $200,000 settlement for the MPD shooting death of deaf immigrant Efrain DePaz.
“I’ve had to defend the CRA redesign process very hard to my colleagues,” said Councilmember Lilligren. “We put citizens at the policy table, which is not status quo. Organizations like the Police Federation are threatened by citizen participation.”
Delmonico demonizes City Council members and citizens concerned about police brutality as “cop bashers,” a strange term that reverses reality.
“The Federation has no interest in police being accountable to the people who employ them,” CUAPB activist Gross responded to the letter. “They’re a political power. As a community, we’ve got to stand up to that power if we want change. The problem isn’t too many people complaining about police. The problem is that police give them too many reasons to complain.”
Police Accountiblity is Democracy
The CRA Redesign Action Group is presenting recommendations to the Mayor and City Council, giving the CRA the powers it needs to be effective: subpoena power, 90-day turn around for investigations, and authority to discipline officers, especially for the most serious misconduct. A major concern is more public s crutiny of the process itself. Currently, even complainants are barred from hearings on their own complaints. Equally important is tracking and reporting results. Taking on bigger policy issues, the committee also proposes residency requirements for officers, recruiting/retaining people of color and female officers, and better psychological screening of recruits. Some of their recommendations will require changes in civil service regulations, state laws, or contract renegotiations. Step one is City Hall.
Four mentally ill people have been killed by the MPD in less than two years. In April, Friends of Barbara Schneider (named for one of the victims) proposed response alternatives. Instead of police, 911 operators would route mental health crisis situations to experienced crisis intervention teams, with management techniques other than deadly force. To date, Mayor Rybak has taken no action on these recommendations.
“It comes down to political leadership,” says Rev. Bill Smith, Council of Black Churches. “What will happen if nothing happens?”
For now, that injured motorist could file a complaint with the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department, now taking CRA complaints since City Hall cut the CRA budget.
People are savvy to the use of defunding in order to evade the voters’ mandate for civilian oversight of police. Such authority vested in communities ought to be a core value in a democracy.
If not principles, then stolen lives can inspire action. I remember my friend and fellow activist, Fred Paez, shot execution-style by Houston police on June 28, 1981. I remember a young man I never knew, except for a shining face in the newspaper: Tycel Nelson, 17 years old, shot in the back by MPD officer Dan May, in the winter of 1991. As James Everett states, “It’s not a moral issue. It’s a legal issue. Officer Dan May wouldn’t be on the force if it was a moral issue.”
SubZero Collective can be reached at www.subco.org
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Communities United Against Police Brutality victim hotline can be reached at 612-874-STOP, Etx. 7867.
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