The Minneapolis City Council approved a tentative agreement that would ban police from using chokeholds or any form of neck restraints.
The agreement came Friday following negotiations between the City Council and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, although the document still requires a judge’s approval, the Star Tribune reported. Mayor Jacob Frey signed the document once it was approved by the City Council.
“This is a moment in time where we can totally change the way our police department operates,” Frey said during the meeting. “We can quite literally lead the way in our nation enacting more police reform than any other city in the entire country, and we cannot fail.”
The move comes after the Minnesota Department of Human Rights filed a civil rights charge against the Minneapolis Police Department. The city seized the national spotlight after video emerged that showed then-police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, for nearly nine minutes while he begged for air. Floyd died shortly after the incident occurred. Chauvin has been charged with Floyd’s murder, and the other officers involved are also facing criminal charges.
The tentative agreement requires the Minneapolis Police Department to update its manual “to prohibit the use of all neck restraints or choke holds for any reason.” It also says officers who see a fellow officer using a chokehold or neck restraint have “an affirmative duty to immediately report the incident while still on scene by phone or radio to their Commander or their Commander’s superiors.”
