Two years after the death of George Floyd, an investigation concludes that the murder of the African-American by the white policeman Derek Chauvin is part of a context of ” widespread racial discrimination within the Minneapolis police. The investigation carried out by the Minnesota State Department of Human Rights also exposes a culture of police impunity.
With our correspondent in Miami, David Thomson
First of all, there are the words used during the interpellations: racist, misogynistic and disrespectful language “. But there are also and above all the acts: the police officers of Minneapolis “ use more force, stop, search and ticket black people more often “. These claims were not written by an activist organization but by a Minnesota state agency. This survey was launched after the murder of African American George Floyd under the knee of white police officer Derek Chauvin who set Minneapolis and the whole of the United States on fire in the spring of 2020.
His report is final, he concludes: widespread racial discrimination within the Minneapolis police. Practices linked according to the document to the culture of the institution which encourages a paramilitary approach to security and does not penalize the often deadly slippages of its agents. The statistics speak for themselves: blacks represent 19% of Minneapolis residents but 54% of traffic stops. However, it is often these road checks that turn tragic for no reason, as in 2016 when Phillando Castille, 32, was shot and killed in front of his family by a police officer who mistook his wallet for a firearm.