The City of Minneapolis Takes Measures to Improve Policing

Transcript

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HOST: You're listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a daily newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota.

ANCHOR: The City of Minneapolis takes measures to improve policing. Then, a historical moment in Minnesota's sports broadcasting. And, why you may need to do some gardening yet this winter.

I'm Chantel SinGs.

The Minnesota Wild made history with the first-ever Ojibwe-language broadcast of a National Hockey League game. The special stream aired on Native American Heritage Day, when the Wild hosted the Colorado Avalanche. Grand Casino, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, and the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network partnered to produce the broadcast. Organizers say the project strengthens cultural identity and normalizes the Ojibwe language in public spaces.

Next, the city of Minneapolis and its police department have worked together to address race-based policing and improve public safety. Producer Katharine DeCelle has more about what has changed since the murder of George Floyd.

Katharine DeCelle: After the murder of George Floyd from a Minneapolis Police Officer, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights discovered that the Minneapolis Police Department had a decade-long pattern of racial discrimination and unconstitutional policing. This led to a court-enforced agreement called a consent decree, whose goal is to reform the Minneapolis Police Department.

Arlinda Westbrook: They are working hard every day, and they are in a system that still has to be built.

Katharine DeCelle: That's Arlinda Westbrook with Effective Law Enforcement for All, an independent monitoring team that's overseeing the Minneapolis consent decree. She's speaking at the Reimagining Justice Conference in Minneapolis about the Minneapolis Police Department and the systems that still need to be put in place to end race-based policing.

Arlinda Westbrook: Systems are going to take a while. I don't want the system to hinder our ability up here to continue to build transparency and make sure that the community feels valued and engaged.

Katharine DeCelle: Also speaking at the conference is Ganesha Martin. She is the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department's Constitutional Policing Bureau, and she says that in order for the department to have transparency, they need to have the tools and technology to record and measure that transparency, which requires more funding to hire more officers and to purchase the new technology.

Ganesha Martin: How do you actually come up with a metric to identify if a stop is race-based or not? There's not technology where you can automatically put it in as analytics. Right now, I'm in the process of trying to hire the right people that can do that type of stuff in the police department.

Katharine DeCelle: Ganesha says that after 2020, over 400 Minneapolis Police Officers either retired or left the force. With less officers on the force, Ganesha says it's hard to make the internal changes that need to happen to see a real change in policing.

Ganesha Martin: Sometimes it is hard to acknowledge that police are human, and these are the humans that we are expecting to go into our communities. Whether you hate the police, love the police, they're a part of this process.

Katharine DeCelle: The Minneapolis consent decree requires public input on any policy changes, but currently, Ganesha says there's just one person in the police department that handles all policy writing and public comments.

Ganesha Martin: We actually do need a system, because there is one guy who is writing policy, who is reviewing it, is doing a best practices, and he was taking in all those lovely comments, trying to translate them.

Katharine DeCelle: The conference left attendees asking if the Minneapolis consent decree is working, something that the panelists say only time will tell. For North Star Stories, I'm Katharine DeCelle.

ANCHOR: You are listening to North Star Stories.

Your gardening to-do list may not be done for the year. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, now is the ideal time to prune or cut oaks without the risk of oak wilt infection. Oak wilt is an invasive fungal disease deadly to all of Minnesota's oak species. It spreads by sap-feeding beetles, active in warm weather. The disease is common in east-central and southeast Minnesota and is expanding north and west. More details about oak wilt can be found on the DNR's website.

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HOST: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. Online at ampers dot org.