When I say “police reform,” you say …?
Your answer will likely vary based on whether you’re a Republican or Democrat — especially if you’re a Minnesota lawmaker right now.
The answers vary so widely, it’s like they’re not even speaking the same language: Democrats focus on reining in what they say is a police culture that fosters disproportionately violent and deadly treatment of Blacks and other minorities, while Republicans express alarm over what they see as a political culture seeking to defund, disparage and even endanger officers who risk their lives to protect others. Both sides can point to real-world evidence, and both suffer from bouts of inflated rhetoric.
The disconnect is striking because it comes in the wake of universal — and bipartisan — condemnation of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year, as well as widespread shock at the shooting death of Daunte Wright, who was Black and unarmed, by a white police officer last month in Brooklyn Center.
This moment is important because the Legislature, which is divided among the two parties, is entering its final stretch before its May 17 adjournment, and police reform — or not — threatens to taint the need to find bipartisan agreement over a two-year state budget.
Furthermore, if lawmakers don’t agree to new changes regarding policing — and there’s a good chance they won’t — nothing at the state level is likely to happen this year.
However, despite the discord, there are patches of common ground, and changes made last summer soon after Floyd’s killing by a white police officer showed that agreement is possible over issues that range from the types of reasons that police can pull over a car to whether cops should be statutorily banned from supporting white supremacist groups.
WHAT DEMOCRATS MEAN
What does “police reform” (or the related phrase “police accountability”) mean to Rep. Cedrick Frazier, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from New Hope?
“I think of a change to the system that we currently have,” said Frazier, vice chair of the Public Safety Criminal Justice Reform Committee in the DFL-controlled House. “It’s not just the splicing, but the entire public safety system. It’s the jails, it’s everything.”
Frazier, an attorney serving in his first term, is part of the DFL’s People of Color & Indigenous Caucus. It’s a relatively young assemblage of lawmakers from both chambers that has seen its ranks steadily growing — it now numbers 22 — with each election cycle as people who belong to traditional minority groups are elected.
With its swelling numbers, so, too, has its influence swelled, especially in the House, where behind closed doors, House Democrats have hotly debated how hard to push for their current slate of proposals. The tensions have effectively created two wings within the larger DFL House caucus. One wing, driven by the engine of the POCI Caucus, has demanded prioritizing criminal justice changes — perhaps above agreeing on a budget to keep state government running. The other wing prioritizes the criminal justice changes — and agrees what those changes should be — but has made it “a top priority, but maybe not the top priority,” in the words of one DFL lawmaker.
If you want to hazard a guess as to which wing a lawmaker falls into, look at their skin color or whether they represent a heavily policed, high-minority area.
That might sound crude, but Frazier, who is Black, acknowledged they’re pretty good indicators. “I think it’s unfortunate, but the people who are ready for these changes now are largely coming from within those communities,” he said.
Here’s another key question: What’s the problem that needs to be solved?
Here’s how Frazier responds: “We’d like to see incarceration rates go down, but the more pressing issue is finding ways to build back the trust within the community, and also decrease the amount of time where police interact with members of the community that can have violent outcomes and death — like the ones we’ve seen too often.”
WHAT REPUBLICANS MEAN
The idea that a lack of trust in police is a real problem in the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis and their inner-ring suburbs — and especially in non-white neighborhoods — is a small patch of common ground; Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, frequently notes it.
But beyond that, the Republican language around the topic of “police reform” features an entirely different vocabulary.
“As we look at police accountability, are we taking a look at the crime victim — the person that experienced lawlessness?” Gazelka said at a recent news conference discussing key issues pending at the end of the legislative session. “That’s somebody that we’re looking at as we’re doing these bills. And are we also looking to the law enforcement officers, and their perspective in this? … Too many people, I feel, have thrown the police under the bus. Many are very demoralized because of the lack of appreciation for the work that they do.”
In recent weeks, Gazelka has frequently noted an incident in Minneapolis last month that targeted a neighborhood security detail and left two National Guard soldiers injured. The incident fits with a narrative that Republicans have used that has, as time has passed, focused on the several days of rioting and looting following Floyd’s killing.
This contrasts with the narrative of Democrats, which focuses on officers’ use of violence against people they encounter, especially unarmed Black men, such as Floyd and Wright. The actual shooting and killing of unarmed Black men by police is the exception, rather than the norm. Since 2015, police have killed about 1,000 people per year, according to a database kept by the Washington Post. About 9 percent of those killed were unarmed. While about half of the people killed by police were white, Black men are disproportionately more likely — by about twice as much — to be shot and killed than white men.
When asked whether he believes there’s a problem with the culture of policing and the way policing is done, Gazelka responded: “That’s the very reason we did a number of reforms,” referring to changes Republicans and Democrats agreed to last summer.
WHAT’S BEEN DONE
Those reforms included a nearly universal ban on chokeholds, an end to what’s been called “warrior training” for cops, a requirement that fellow officers have a duty to intervene when they see excessive force used, and changes to the state board that oversees police standards to strengthen civilian oversight.
Democrats wanted more done, but Gazelka has said the changes haven’t had time to take effect. He noted that last month, the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Board took the first step toward a rule change that would ban officers from joining white supremacist groups.
He said last month’s guilty-on-all-counts verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s death ought to take pressure off some Republicans.
“Nobody can say that the verdict in the Chauvin case was unjust, and what I would say is once that happened, the pressure here went down dramatically because people thought they got a fair judgment there,” Gazelka said. “So the combination of that with the fact that we passed major police accountability reforms last year tells me we’re in a good spot to say, ‘Do we need to to anything else?’ But it doesn’t feel as urgent as making sure we get the budget done so our state stays open.”
WHAT’S ON THE TABLE
The urgency, those pushing for more changes say, is evident by the killing of Wright, an unarmed Black motorist who was pulled over for expired tags and possibly an air freshener hanging from his mirror. Veteran police officer Kim Potter, who has since resigned and has been charged with manslaughter, killed Wright with a single shot from her service weapon.
Much like Floyd’s killing led to specific rules about police use of force when restraining someone, Wright’s death has led to a series of proposals specifically addressing the circumstances around his death.
Among those proposals are limits on when police can stop motorists to a series of more serious offenses and forces police to provide more justifications for so-called “no-knock warrants” in which they don’t have to announce themselves before forcing their way into a place.
Although Wright appears to have been pulled over for a minor infraction, police sought to arrest him when they discovered Hennepin County had an arrest warrant for him for failing to appear in court on charges of illegally possessing a firearm and fleeing police. When pressed about what officers are supposed to do in that situation, if not arrest the suspect, Rep. Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul, who chairs the House public safety committee, struggled to answer, acknowledging that police are often in difficult situations. Some Democrats have suggested that warrants need to be served more vigilantly to avoid such confrontations.
Moments before she shot him, Potter threatened to use her Taser on Wright, who had just wriggled free from officers, according to police video. She yelled “Taser!” three times before firing, leading many, including her former chief, to conclude she intended to grab her non-lethal Taser but instead drew her firearm.
Democrats note that had Wright never been pulled over, he’d likely be alive.
But for Gazelka, the takeaway from Wright’s death is different.
“I’m not sure that any legislation we passed last year or that we can look at this year would have stopped situations like Daunte Wright’s death where a police officer thought that they were using their Taser and they were using their gun,” he said when pressed on the issue. “I think that’s the tragedy of this whole thing.”
Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has the power to essentially hold up the budget process over further police reforms. While he has said he’s willing to spend considerable “political capital” to push for the DFL’s agenda, he hasn’t suggested he would actually risk a state government shutdown on the issue.
