The Lesson of George Floyd: It’s Time to Put the Minneapolis Police Department Under State Control

Minneapolis has a police problem.  It has a race problem.  We have known both of those facts for
years.  The question is the cause and what are the possible solutions?  There is no simple answer but one is that Minneapolis police department needs to have a major cultural change that can only be effected by either state takeover of it or by merging it with or having it taken over by the Hennepin County Sheriff or placed under receivership and operation with another jurisdiction.
Minneapolis has long had a problem with its police department.  Muckraker Lincoln Steffens in his 1904 classic the Shame of the Cities and in his 1903 McClure Magazine cover story highlighted the corruption and problems in the Minneapolis Police Department that included graft, corruption, and a host of other issues.  There is a problem in controlling the police that go back over a century.
There is also a well-known racial problem.  It is one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation with terrible education, health care, incarceration, income, and employment disparities.  Combine them together and they yield a racial problem with policing, especially including excessive use of force.
Twenty years ago I taught a class on police civil and criminal liability law.  Minneapolis was a living laboratory in what not to do.  The City made constant pay outs to victims and families and across two country prosecutors that included now Senator Amy Klobuchar and Mike Freeman little had been done to hold officers criminally liable.  There are lots of reasons for this.  Some are political and not wanting to take on the police or wanting to appear tough on crime.  Others are the fact that the law on police criminal (and civil) liability favor them over victims.  As a result, Minneapolis is perhaps the most notorious example of police racial violence against people of color.
What do we do now?  Addressing the underlying racial and economic disparities in income, education, and health care are needed but they will not change police behavior.  There is a persistent cultural problem with Minneapolis police practice that needs to be addressed.
Some had hoped that Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978) would provide an answer.  The Monell decision allowed individuals to sue under 42 U.S. Code § 1983 for civil damages.  These §1983 suits, if won, would require cities to pay civil damages for abuses of constitutional rights.  If cities had to keep paying out then maybe they would have an incentive to force changes in police practices or training.  Great theory except it did not work, including in Minneapolis where despite millions of dollars paid out training and use of force practices have not changed.
Others blame the police unions. It is not so much the unions as it is the psychology of the “thin blue line” where in a view of us versus them, police are hesitant to take action against or buck other police officers.  This is just the most extreme version of no one like a snitch or fink.
Maybe the fault is with the public.   Generally suspects and defendants  do not garner much sympathy from the public.  Racism may be a factor when often it is white police interacting with people of color.  Of course the exception in Minneapolis was when a Black police officer shot a white woman and there was a rush to convict him.  Many felt good about themselves here indicating they could now support a victim over the police.
There is also a culture of complacency. By that, Minneapolis has a reputation of being one of the most liberal cities in America.  Mayors, city council members, and voters can say all the right things about race but at the end of the day the solutions fall from short of anything beyond rhetoric.
Finally, mayors in Minneapolis are weak.  They cannot do much.  The city is effectively a one-party town where the establishment is not going to challenge anyone in power for fear it will hurt their career.
Now firing four police officers and calling for them to be charged with murder will placate some but it still will not change the culture and administration of policing.  What should be done?
It is clear, if Steffens was correct, that the police have been a problem for Minneapolis for more than100 years.  The City has shown it is incapable of reforming or correcting the problem.  It is doubtful people of color have much confidence in the City of Minneapolis to fix the problem.  Someone needs to step in.
Solution one is a takeover of the Minneapolis police department by the State of Minnesota.  This probably would require legislation altering or preempting home rule authority of the City.  Across the country states such as New Jersey have employed similar solutions when it comes to education.  Maybe the State of Minnesota putting the police department under its control would be an option.
Solution two is disbanding the police department entirely and letting the Hennepin County Sheriff perform public safety functions in Minneapolis.  A variation of that is merging the Minneapolis police department into the sheriff’s office or putting the former under some type of receivership with another jurisdiction.  Perhaps this what should have been the remedial basis of a previous civil rights law suit.
Overall, continuing to believe that the City of Minneapolis can administer and reform its police in a racially neutral manner increasingly looks unlikely and a new entity needs to run or provide for the public safety needs there.

Is Minneapolis Ungovernable?

Is Minneapolis ungovernable?  Increasingly critics, usually conservative,  point to a host of factors
suggesting that the city has become ungovernable.  The culprit in this indictment is party or partisanship.  While the ungovernability charge may be overblown, it does speak to an issue than no one is talking about in this year’s mayoral election–how the city is changing and why a rethinking of the structure of city government may be desirable and necessary to accommodate these changes.
The symptoms of ungovernability are many.  Look to the endless and overdue completion  of the construction on Nicollet Mall, or the increased traffic jams downtown caused by ill-planned or coordinated road construction.  There are racial disparities in educational outcomes, the persistent segregation, high taxes, the economic imbalance among races and across neighborhoods, and what some would allege are a police department out of control, or at least a police department where the mayor and the police chief seem out of sync.  And then some would point to a mayoral election four years ago producing 38 candidates, or on a policy level, adoption of a $15 per hour minimum wage.  For some, these and other examples point to a city out of control, one needing limits placed on its ability to legislate as was the aim by Republican state legislative bills this past session.
Many of these examples do point to problems within Minneapolis, but they may be symptoms of deeper issues.  For Republicans and conservative critics the problem is single-party DFL rule.  There is some truth to the concern that single-party dominance fails to provide sufficient checks on political excess and perhaps it might be good if the city elected one or two Republicans to the city council or even the state legislature.  If the latter, then perhaps Republicans might have more interest in the city because a member of their own party would be advocating for Minneapolis.  Yet Minneapolis is not completely single-party rule; the DFL is generationally divided between the old  Baby Boomer farmer labor party and the Millennial identity politics parties.  Yes, Minneapolis is a leaning left city, but simply to argue that it is ungovernable because of that is not accurate.
Many of the other problems that Minneapolis has are not unique to it.  Road repair and construction coordination is a regional issue in Minnesota and it demands better planning across jurisdictions.  The concerns about policing in Minneapolis are not new.  Lincoln Steffens’ 1904 The Shame of the Cities lists even back then Minneapolis and its police department to be corrupt or poorly managed.  Problems of segregation and the racial disparities across many benchmarks are metropolitan- if not state-wide; the suburbs and failed state policies are as much if not more to blame  than anything Minneapolis has done.  The symptoms of ungovernability some point to are not the fault of Minneapolis and may light in the need to rethink and expand regional governance or coordination as once was the dream of the Met Council.
Finally, one can also assert that the city is not ungovernable.  But most national accounts,  the city works and produces a quality of life that is outstanding for most residents.  It has a strong economy, great parks, a vibrant arts sector, and many decent neighborhoods.  Yes, many–especially the poor and people of color are being left behind–but that is not unique to Minneapolis.  This is the sad story of how race, class, and gender divide America and how neither the Democrats nor Republicans nationally over the last 30-40 years have done much to address these issues in a satisfactory way.  The failures of Minneapolis are the failures of the United States.
But if Minneapolis is ungovernable perhaps it is time to reconsider the structure of the city government.  More or less, the basic structure of the city government has not changed in a half of century of not more.  By charter, it is a city with a weak mayor and a strong city council.  The basic duties of the two have not changed over time, but the challenges facing the city have grown ever more complex in the last half century.  The complexities arising from changing demographics, economic conditions,and generations.  The population alone now is the largest it has been since the early 1970s, and there are more cars in the city and around it ever.  Minneapolis is now the economic hub of 16th largest metropolitan statistical area in the US, and the population surrounding the city is greater than it has ever been.  In many ways, Minneapolis faces pressures and challenges it has never  previously confronted, yet it is still trying to do that with a political structure that may be dated.
The solution is not clear but a serious charter revision may be in order.  Perhaps the city should consider creating a stronger mayor form of government, or even consider a city manager option.  There may be other options too.  But the simple answer is that Minneapolis may wish to rethink how it governs itself, assessing whether the structure it presently has is the one it needs to face the present and future needs of the city and its people.