Council's incompetence or malfeasance on police accountability issues.]
Dear Public Health and Safety Committee members,
Too many times over the past 30 months I have asked you whether you are waiting
for the next person to be killed in questionable circumstances by an MPD
officer. I was trying to get anyone on the Public Safety Committee to ask
either or both of these two questions.
First, I was hoping one of you would ask: Whatever happened to the
implementation of the recommendations of the January 2015 Office of Justice
Programs' report on accountability procedures within the MPD? Finally, during a
July 17, 2020 Council meeting, Cam Gordon asked Chief Arradondo that question.
The Chief answered that it had sort of dissolved with the change in leadership
in Washington, D.C.
That is BS. Council Member Cano should know it's BS. Beginning late last year,
her aide was trying to get an answer to that question. And it was the inquiries
that finally came out of her office that led MPD Deputy Chief Henry Halvorson
to assign Sergeant.Anne Moryc the task of updating the results of the
implementation of those recommendations. No one ever told Council Member Cano's
aide that the implementation had "sort of dissolved."
Similarly, when ten months after I had first requested the Police Conduct
Oversight Commission to ask this same question, the PCOC vice-chair reported in
May 2019 that Deputy Chief Halvorson had said 1) the MPD had not abandoned the
implementation of those recommendations; 2) they were behind on that project
and on updating the PCOC; and 3) he promised he'd get back to her. The minutes
of that May 14, 2019, PCOC meeting say precisely that:
"Commissioner Westphal interjected that she had a meeting last week with Deputy
Chief Halvorson and she raised this exact issue [implementation of the OJP
report's recommendations]. She confirmed that she is the one who sent Chuck the
email. Commissioner Westphal reported that Deputy Chief Halvorson confirmed the
Police Department has not abandoned this project. He agrees and admits they are
behind on getting it properly organized and keeping the PCOC updated. He
promised Commissioner Westphal, and he took notes, that he will get back to
her."
A May 29, 2019, StarTribune article reported substantially the same thing.
Halvorson had assured Commissioner Westphal that "the department was working to
implement the remaining recommendations." The Deputy Chief did not tell the
Commissioner that due to a change in leadership in Washington, that
implementation had "sort of dissolved." And, not surprisingly given the MPD's
history on this implementation process, the Deputy Chief has not gotten back to
the PCOC since that time.
Moreover, when I met with John Elder and Sergeant Darcy Horn of the MPD Public
Information Office in mid-2019, Mr. Elder told me he had talked to the Chief
that very day about the implementation of those recommendations. And Mr. Elder
did not relay any message from the Chief that the implementation had "sort of
dissolved."
Someone is full of it. It's either the Chief, in what he told you on July 17,
2020, or it's Deputy Chief Halvorson and Mr. Elder. But none of you has the
courage to ask anything further about this. No, you seem to be more than
willing to wait until the next person is killed by the MPD. Maybe then you'll
ask again about what happened to those Office of Justice Programs
recommendations about accountability within the MPD. Maybe then you'll try to
figure out why different people within the MPD -- and maybe the Chief himself
at different times -- gave contradictory statements about that implementation
process.
Second, at that July 17, 2020, Council meeting, Cam Gordon also asked about
what lessons could be (or had been) learned from previous police killings:
I also think we had an opportunity, and I think there probably was some
internal work that was done on what could we learn from past police-involved
killings. And we certainly have had a string of them, and we've looked at them
carefully, and some of them have gone through trials, and so there's a lot of
information that we got. And I think, as we're kind of poised, if you will, to
re-invent public safety in our city, I think it would be important if we could
learn from that. So what did we learn from and what could we learn from past
police misconduct, and especially police-involved deaths?
Chief Arradondo's response was as follows:
"The second piece that you mentioned about, yes, we absolutely need, and as
Chief, I have to learn, and make sure our department learns, from any of these
officer-involved killings or shootings or what have you. The one more recently
that you're referring to, where there's a little bit of a time delay, that
matter is still being appealed in the District Courts, so we are not able to --
typically, we're able to get all court transcripts to help us in terms of the
review -- everything from the training perspective, lessons learned -- and I'm
referring to the Justine Damond Ruszczyk case. So while those appeals are still
in place, we are not given access to all those court transcripts, so that is a
very key piece -- the officers' testimonies and statements. So the review has
been started, but it's not complete because there's some vital testimony in
transcript from officers and former officers that we need to get. But it's
critically important to learn from those, and so I plan to do that. And also,
as much as we can, and I'll certainly work with our City Attorney's Office, and
make that lessons learned a more forward-facing document for the public as
well."
It seemed strange to me 1) that the MPD needed access to court transcripts in
the Noor trial before it could try to figure out what lessons could be learned
from that tragedy; and 2) that the MPD didn't have access to transcripts from a
trial that ended more than a year earlier. So I wrote the Minnesota State Court
of Appeals, specifically asking: "Does Chief Arradondo not have access to the
transcripts in the Noor case until all appeals have been finalized?"
Here's the response I received 26 minutes after my email was sent:
"From: Bickett, Spenser <<email obscured>>
Date: Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 11:58 AM
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Transcripts of State v. Mohamed Noor trial
To: Chuck Turchick <<email obscured>>
"Good afternoon.
"Transcripts in this case were completed and copies were filed in December
2019. You can view the transcripts or obtain copies by visiting a district
court records center. Information about requesting copies is available here:
http://www.mncourts.gov/Find-Courts/Hennepin/Records-Center-Hennepin.aspx#tab02CopiesofCourtRecords"
Once again, the Chief was giving you information that simply wasn't true. The
only previous killing by an MPD officer that he mentioned was one where his
excuse was the trial transcripts were not available, when they clearly had been
available for more than half a year at that time.
Also at that July 17, 2020, Council meeting, Council President Bender said this
immediately after Council Member Gordon's questions of the Chief: "Thank you,
Council member. I'm happy to follow up to schedule something perhaps at our
POGO meeting coming up in the future...."
Since that time, neither the Policy and Government Oversight Committee nor the
re-constituted Public Health and Safety Committee has taken up this issue
again. That latter committee met on September 10, September 24, October 8, and
October 22, without anyone following up on the two questions CM Gordon asked,
the erroneous answers the Chief gave, or the expressed intent by Council
President Bender to schedule something that might get into what lessons have
been learned from the killings that have led to several expensive settlements
the Council has ratified on behalf of the City, and into whatever happened with
the implementation of recommendations from the Office of Justice Programs'
study, a study requested by the City of Minneapolis and then not followed up
on.
Here are my suggestions. You ought to schedule separate Council or Committee
study sessions on each of the killings by MPD officers in the past decade that
have led to settlement agreements. You ought to ask the Chief to explain to you
what lessons he believes have been learned, and you ought to invite the lawyers
who sued the City to tell you what lessons they believe the City should have
learned from those killings. You ought to have a full study session for each of
those settlement agreements. And you should even begin discussions now about
what should be learned from the killing of George Floyd. You need not and
should not wait for months or years for the criminal trial(s) and possible
appeals to be completed. Those discussions would be a far more meaningful
memorial to Mr. Floyd that anything you will build on Chicago and 38th.
Next, you ought to follow up with Chief Arradondo about what he meant by the
OJP implementation process "sort of dissolving." What change in Washington,
D.C., leadership was he talking about? Why did John Elder not tell a citizen
who met with him on this very topic that the implementation had "sort of
dissolved"? Why didn't Deputy Chief Henry Halvorson tell that story to the
PCOC? And why didn't Halvorson tell that to Council Member Cano's aide, instead
seemingly wasting that aide's time, as well as to Jennifer White of the Mayor's
Office, who also was aware of that aide's work? And if the implementation
really has "sort of dissolved," why haven't the community people who
volunteered their considerable time in serving on those five implementation
committees received letters of apology for their work having gone to naught?
All the Council and the Public Health and Safety Committee have done so far
about police accountability is to approve a ban on chokeholds and a change in
the ordinance, reducing the time the Chief has to make disciplinary decisions
from 45 days to 30 days. That's a joke. The lessons to be learned run so much
deeper. Let's stop the BS. Let's get serious and let's get moving on what we
should have learned from previous tragedies that led to substantial settlement
agreements. This time let's not wait until another tragedy happens.
The people marching in the streets in late May were calling for police
accountability, not for a pie-in-the-sky, opportunistic plan for re-imagining
public safety in Minneapolis. No doubt there are some good ideas that could and
should come out of that re-imagining. But police accountability was the issue
following the killing of George Floyd, not creating a police-free utopia. And
police accountability should begin with that 2015 OJP report that all of you
have ignored for far too long -- Council Member Ellison, in a gross
misrepresentation, even publicly claimed it gave the MPD a "clean bill of
health" -- and with a public airing of what we should have learned from those
cases in which the Council seems to have thought that paying out millions of
dollars solved the problem. It didn't and it won't after the next tragedy and
subsequent payout either.
Keep safe and stay healthy.
Yours,
Chuck Turchick
Chuck Turchick
Phillips