“George Floyd should be alive today,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland. A little over three years after the death of that black citizen who stirred up the racial confrontation in the United States, a federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) concludes that the agents of the city of Minnesota had “the systematic practice ” of making excessive use of force against African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos, in clear racial discrimination and violating constitutional rights, as Garland stressed in his appearance.
In an 89-page report, the Department of Justice disqualifies the work of the police force for putting its own troops and local residents in situations of unnecessary risk and failing to address the numerous complaints due to the racial prejudice observed on a constant basis. in their performances.
Specifically, the document specifies that the uniformed officers used dangerous weapons and tactics, including neck compression, as the white agent Derek Chauvin did with his knee for nine and a half minutes on Floyd’s neck on May 25, 2020, without loosening despite because the detainee was almost inert and begged with a “I can’t breathe.” The investigation has discovered that this maneuver was applied at least 197 times between 2016 and 2020. On a quarter of the occasions the matter ended without any arrest.
Another of these tactics that is described is the application of the Taser (electric pistol) or the spraying with gas for small offenses or in cases in which a crime had not even occurred in order to punish citizens who criticized the police. There was also a patrol or invasion of uniformed men in non-white neighborhoods and they were merciless with those who had strange behavior due to health disabilities
The report also indicates, at the risk of these patterns of abusive behavior, a low morale in the members of the MPD. Due to this reason, it had gone from a force made up of 892 members in 2018 to 585 in May 2020.
According to Garland, the Department of Justice found “persistent deficiencies in the systems of accountability or in the training and supervision programs in the police force”, which contributed to the repetition of constitutional violations.
In the review of 19 cases of shootings carried out by uniformed officers between 2016 and 2022, already after the Floyd case, they found that “in a good part of these cases the police officers resorted to lethal force unnecessarily” and used force by becoming ” in a threat by themselves”.
Thus, it is explained that a woman received a bullet wound because, supposedly, an agent got “scared” as she approached the patrol car.
