Democracy Dies in Darkness

Minneapolis police discriminated, used excessive force for years, DOJ says

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Updated June 16, 2023 at 2:16 p.m. EDT|Published June 16, 2023 at 11:04 a.m. EDT

Marcia Howard, a leader at George Floyd Square, holds up her cross-streets sign at a rally following the release of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department outside the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. (Photo by Nicole Neri for the Washington Post)

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The Minneapolis Police Department routinely used excessive force and discriminated against Black and Native American people in the years before one of its officers killed George Floyd, federal authorities said Friday.

In an 89-page report that followed a more than two-year federal civil rights investigation, the Justice Department excoriated the Minneapolis police force as an agency that put officers and local residents at unnecessary risk, failed to act upon repeated warnings about biased behavior and countenanced the “systemic problems” that gave way to Floyd’s death in 2020.