Minneapolis Police Federation vs. Ralph Remington—we all lose

BY DWIGHT HOBBES

More and more, there’s reason to believe the Minneapolis Police Federation won’t join the civilized world without federal intervention.

Start with the Police Community Relations Council, a glaring fiasco, brought into being because the U.S. Department of Justice, over recent decades, saw enough red flags to step in and keep an eye on things. Follow an evident scheme of things through to the Ralph Remington controversy. It’s staring everyone right in the face: the MPD is hostile toward communities and people of color and has every intention of remaining so.

That’s why this business with Remington, shocking as it is, didn’t come as much of a surprise. In late October, Remington was the lone City Council member who objected to the official installment of interim police chief Tim Dolan as top cop. He already had made noises criticizing the city’s failure to strengthen the Civilian Review Authority (CRA) and actually make cops accountable for their misconduct. So, he already knew he was not going to be on the MPD brass’ Christmas card list.

Around mid-November, in an effort to put bread on the water, Remington invited police union president Sgt. John Delmonico to sit down over lunch at Mimi’s, a South Minneapolis restaurant, and see if they couldn’t work out enough differences to have a less antagonistic relationship. Didn’t turn out that way.

Delmonico showed up with Police Federation Board members Lt. Bob Kroll, Officer Dan Ungurian and Officer Lyall Delaney in tow and, according to Remington, ambushed, browbeat and physically threatened him. “We were sitting at a table,” he recalls. “I was on one side and they were all around me. [At one point] Lyall Delaney leans across the table and says, ‘If you don’t do what we tell you to do, we will remove you.’ The threat was clear that he didn’t mean politically. I said, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Then, he looked at me, like, basically, ‘You know what that means.’ Then Delmonico nudged him. [Delaney] then said, ‘We won’t endorse you.’ But, that’s not what he meant. They were physically threatening me. Absolutely.”

Of course, to hear Delmonico tell it—as he has in the Star Tribune, while refusing to return Pulse’s phone calls—nothing of the kind took place.

Without getting into whether you believe Remington or Delmonico, the problem is the mere fact that the Police Federation should have enough demonstrated integrity to make Remington’s allegations laughable. Instead, they are wholly plausible.

Michelle Gross, who spearheads the watchdog organization, Communities United Against Police Brutality, comments, “There is no doubt that there’s a demonstrated history of racist intimidation and other forms of intimidation from the Federation and from the police department against City Council members and other city officials. In particular, the attacks that happened on Natalie Johnson Lee back a few years ago. It was racist and sexist. It’s outlandish that, fast forward a few years later, and here we have it going on again.” Gross adds, “We have seen this for a long time. The police federation inserts itself into just about anything involving police accountability. They were at the table during the CRA re-design. They keep inserting themselves in places where it’s not proper for them to be. They have an inordinate amount of power. The proper role for a federation is to advocate for their constituency. Not to try and intimidate our city officials into not holding police officers accountable.”

Mahmoud El-Kati, a scholar and longtime observer of the Minneapolis police behavior, reflects that this run-in between Remington and the Federation is hardly uncommon. “I don’t find it uncharacteristic at all,” he says. “Remington has a great deal of courage to go against the grain and for that I salute him. It’s obvious he has made himself a target and they’re not going to leave him alone.” El-Kati also believes police supporters on the Council will throw their weight in against Remington. “There are those among his colleagues who will probably find ways to make it messy for him.”

Asked why he’s so convinced, he answers, “That’s the pattern. That’s the way the script is. Anytime a person, particularly from the [African American] community stands up for what he thinks, there is a price to pay. There is nothing unusual or exceptional about the police behavior [in this instance]. You don’t have to [say] anything in some cases to raise their hostility. So, what do you think if someone actually does something to bring attention to themselves. And Ralph Remington has done that. By expressing himself in a supposedly free society.”

As for how things stand now, Sgt. Delmonico and the others who were there that day at Mimi’s, Remington notes, “We haven’t had any [further] contact. I spoke with Chief Dolan about it and Council president [Barb] Johnson the day before Thanksgiving. And we’re all going to sit down, me, Dolan, Barb Johnson and Delmonico. And then try to iron our differences out. The only thing I have sought out of this situation by bringing it public is to put some layer of protection between me and physical threat. I felt that if I could shine a bright enough light on it, it would be much less likely for anybody to aggress against me. That if some harm did come to me or my family, everybody would know where it came from.”