It's tough for an ordinary citizen to know what needs to change
systematically when we are in the dark as to what systematic problems are
at the root of the police actions.
Regarding Civilian Review, I believe that they were originally set up to
address isolated instances of excessive force. The current problems go
beyond that. I don't think that Civilian Review can investigate police
actions against a small business, remedy large-scale denials of civil/legal
rights, or prevent abuse of the city's finances (such as happened during
the ISAG conference). I doubt if they have the resources to investigate a
single violent death, much less address the grim pattern of five deaths.
The courts are haphazard and slow. I know that the Hard Times is taking
the city to court. I would imagine that others are, too (relatives of
Barbara Schnieder and Alfred Sanders, Sisters' Camelot people, some of the
rest of the people arrested over ISAG). But payouts from wrongful action
suits are a long time away. And successful lawsuits won't necessarily
translate into a change in police behavior unless the mayor and the council
make that happen.
In the end, it comes down to this: the police chief reports to the mayor.
None of the other mechanisms for police department oversight are very
effective when the police chief's boss isn't doing her job.
By the way, there has been some discussion of the most recent shooting on
the St. Paul list at www.e-democracy.org/stpaul (Maybe we should have a
cross-jurisdictional list to address issues that refuse to stay on their
own side of the river).
Rosalind Nelson
Bancroft
>From Carol Becker:
>I am a bit baffled by all of the people who have written in to this list and
>alleged that that the Minneapolis Police Department is somehow out of
>control. The Police Department has one of the largest oversight mechanisms
>of any local governmental entity. They have their own internal
>investigations. They have the Council and Mayor, as noted in previous
>posts. They have a separate department, the Civilian Police Review, a which
>was created just to provide citizens a way of lodging complaints against the
>Police Department. And if that isn't successful, there is the whole court
>system, often both state and federal.
>
>Now I haven't heard of a rising number of complaints at the Civilian Police
>Review. In fact, I had heard that complaints were down even though citizen
>contacts were up (this was a year or two though). I haven't seen a huge
>increase in payouts from settling wrongful action suits. So where's the
>evidence supporting these allegations? The only fact that I saw posted on
>this board was that there were five shootings by the police this year and
>the alternate explanation is that there were several incidents of violence
>towards police which required deadly force for the officers to protect their
>lives.
>
>Also, for the folks who wrote in on this topic, what part of the police
>oversight system do you think is not functioning? What changes do you think
>need to be made to the oversight system? So far, no one has made any
>comments about what needs to change systemically.
>
>Carol
>
