Minneapolis Police Department Investigation: Key Findings From the DOJ Report

The Justice Department found “reasonable cause to believe” that police officers engaged in a “pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”

Investigators accused the Minneapolis police of engaging in unlawful discrimination against Black and Native American people and said the police force “patrols differently based on the racial composition of the neighborhood, without a legitimate, related safety rationale.”

Among 19 police shootings between January 2016 and August 2022, federal investigators found that “a significant portion of them were unconstitutional uses of deadly force,” with officers sometimes shooting “without first determining whether there was an immediate threat of harm to the officers or others.”

Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murder in Mr. Floyd’s death, had used excessive force previously. In those other cases, investigators found, “multiple other M.P.D. officers stood by” and did not stop him.

The Justice Department said the city violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against people with behavioral health disabilities. “Many behavioral health-related calls for service do not require a police response,” the report said, “but M.P.D. responds to the majority of those calls, and that response is often harmful and ineffective.”

Federal investigators said Minneapolis officers routinely failed to take arrestees’ health complaints seriously. “We found numerous incidents in which officers responded to a person’s statement that they could not breathe with a version of, ‘You can breathe; you’re talking right now,’” the report said.

Investigators described instances of racist conduct by Minneapolis officers and degrading comments about Black people. “Some officers we spoke with aired fears and grievances about being perceived as racist, even as they made comments to us that themselves suggested bias and contempt for the people they are supposed to serve,” the report said.

After Mr. Floyd’s murder, investigators said, Minneapolis “officers suddenly stopped reporting race and gender in a large number of stops” despite a department requirement to collect that information. About 71 percent of traffic stops before Mr. Floyd’s death had race data, compared with about 35 percent after.

The report said officers routinely violated the First Amendment rights of demonstrators and journalists at protests. When some people at demonstrations break the law, the report said, “M.P.D. officers frequently use indiscriminate force, failing to distinguish between peaceful protesters and those committing crimes.”

The report found that investigations of officer misconduct, “even serious misconduct,” have been “inexcusably slow.” More than 53 percent of cases remained unresolved for at least one year, and more than 26 percent remained unresolved for at least two years.

Officers under investigation for serious misconduct were sometimes assigned to train new recruits, the report found. Some field training officers, they found, “violated a person’s rights while training a new officer.”

The process for residents to file complaints against officers is deeply flawed, investigators found. “People in Minneapolis have reason to question whether making a complaint to M.P.D. was worth the trouble,” federal investigators said. “Our investigation found that all too often it wasn’t.”