Minnesota is pursuing civil rights charges against the Minneapolis Police Department following the death of George Floyd.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced during a Tuesday press conference that state authorities will investigate the conduct of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if systemic racism is an issue among law enforcement.
“So, today, as a step toward that deconstruction of systemic racism, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights is filing a commissioner’s charge of discrimination to launch a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department,” Walz said.
Walz also said the investigation will examine whether or not the department’s practices and policies over the last 10 years have disproportionately targeted black communities, highlighting that it is the first time a civil rights investigation has been launched against Minneapolis law enforcement.
Walz said the charge is “one of many steps to come” in the state’s efforts to examine if racial prejudice exists within police agencies and law enforcement broadly. He also took aim at President Trump’s calls for the military to end violent protests.
“I say this as a white man who walks life with pretty much relative ease. I can’t ever know the pain of the black community members. But I hear you. I’m listening,” he said. “And one of the things I need to do is use that ability to change and use that ability to build coalitions to make this situation, that has become intolerable across the nation, that will not go away with tough talk and more people on the streets in uniform. It will go away with a sense of community you see being displayed up on the state Capitol lawn today with law enforcement and the people that they serve seeing themselves as neighbors in the same society.”
During a speech in the Rose Garden on Monday, Trump said “domestic terrorists” were responsible for the acts of vandalism, looting, and arson that have occurred since Floyd’s death.
“A police precinct has been overrun. Here in the nation’s capital, the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial have been vandalized,” Trump said in his remarks, though claiming he was an ally of peaceful protesters. “One of our most historic churches was set ablaze. A federal officer in California and an African American enforcement hero was shot and killed. These are not acts of peaceful protests. These are acts of domestic terror.”
Attorney General William Barr said Saturday that “anarchic” and “far-left extremist groups” could potentially be those responsible for growing violence and riots amid the protests over police violence. On Sunday, Barr declared that the violence being “instigated and carried out” by “antifa and other similar groups” in connection to nationwide protesting is “domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
Barr gave a statement last Friday that the Justice Department, in conjunction with the FBI, is conducting a civil rights investigation into Floyd’s case, calling the incident “harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing.”
