A new agreement between Minneapolis and the U.S. Department of Justice will require the city’s police department to make numerous reforms — enforcing a more stringent review of use of force, providing more mental health resources and creating more supervision and oversight of its officers.
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved the federal consent decree Monday after spending nearly seven hours in a closed session reviewing a 170-page document. The development comes four and a half years after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, prompting a DOJ investigation that found patterns of discrimination.
If the federal agreement is approved by a judge at a later date, Minneapolis would be the only city in the country with a federal and state consent decree in place at the same time. The city entered into a consent decree with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2023 following a similar investigation into police practices.
Twelve council members voted about 3:15 p.m. Monday to approve the federal agreement. Council Member Michael Rainville was absent. The agreement was filed in federal court, but will need to be signed by a judge before it is official. The document was made public Monday evening.
“We’re just beginning, and we know we have a long way to go,” Council President Elliott Payne said after the vote. “Our success will only be realized when we all work together on what is arguably one of the most important issues in the life of our city.”
A consent decree is a legally binding agreement enforced by a court between the investigative agency and the city. An independent monitor oversees how reforms outlined in an agreement are carried out by the police department and city. Last February, the city picked the group, Effective Law Enforcement For All, to serve as the monitor of the state and federal consent decrees.
Parameters in the federal consent decree include Minneapolis police creating a Force Investigations Team and a Force Review Board, providing more mental health resources to people in crisis, and adopting policies that protect community members and journalists’ First Amendment rights during protests and demonstrations.
Other changes include routinely assessing if the police department’s programs are creating racial disparities and limiting the use of military tactics such as CN gas, a dangerous type of tear gas.
The department must make changes to its supervision requirements, which will identify when officers are using force excessively. Officers will not be allowed to handcuff anyone under 14, and will be prohibited from pursuing someone on foot if they flee after seeing an officer.
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The agreement also specifically addressed a key issue in Floyd’s murder — the lack of intervention from three other officers at the scene when then-officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes in May 2020. Several bystanders, including an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter, yelled at the officers to relent and begged them to check Floyd’s pulse, but were ignored.
All four officers at the scene, including Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, were convicted in state and federal court for their roles in Floyd’s murder. Some of the officers’ legal defense included arguments that they were rookies who were deferring to Chauvin, a veteran on the force.
“MPD shall Require that, regardless of tenure or rank, any officer who observes another MPD officer using force in a manner that they reasonably believe amounts to any Prohibited, inappropriate, and/or unreasonable force, as detailed in this Decree and in MPD Policy, must attempt to safely intervene by verbal and physical means,” the agreement says. “MPD Policy shall Require that if officers do not do so, they may be subject to discipline to the same severity as if they had engaged in the Prohibited use of force. MPD shall develop and implement a peer intervention program through which it empowers and supports officers in their duty to intervene.”
At a news conference Monday with city and DOJ leaders, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that the consent decree outlines necessary changes.
“The most important thing that I wanted to note is that this consent decree provides a clear path forward,” Frey said. “Our administration will wake up every morning and will go to bed every night with the clear goals in mind.”
Minneapolis has been in the process of negotiating a federal consent decree with the DOJ since last summer. The negotiations followed an investigation the DOJ released in 2023, which found the city and the police department in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Other findings from the investigation include:
- Minneapolis police use excessive force, including force that is deadly and unjustified.
- Minneapolis police discriminate during traffic stops against Black and Native people.
- Minneapolis police violate the rights of people participating in protected speech, such as protestors.
- When responding to calls for help, Minneapolis police and the city discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities.
The DOJ also found that Minneapolis police routinely violated the First and Fourth Amendments, which protect freedom of speech, the right to assemble and the right against unnecessary seizure. The Minneapolis Police Department was also found to have violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the American Disabilities Act and the 1968 Safe Streets Act.
Community concerns
Prior to the council’s vote, a group of community advocates held a news conference and called Monday a “historic” day. They also emphasized concerns about the agreement’s timing.
“If it’s not signed by January 20th, we can be assured that we will not have a consent decree,” said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality
After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November, some community advocates in Minneapolis worried that the DOJ would walk away from negotiations if an agreement wasn’t finalized before inauguration day on January 20.
There was a stark decline in investigations into police practices during Trump’s first term, and the DOJ stopped working toward negotiating a consent decree in Chicago. Under the Trump administration, the DOJ launched one investigation into a police department, compared to the Biden Administration, which launched 12, including the one in Minneapolis.
Louisville, like Minneapolis, has also been in the process of negotiating a consent decree with the DOJ. The DOJ announced on December 12 that it had reached an agreement with Louisville.
When asked at Monday’s news conference how Trump’s incoming administration affected the federal consent decree’s timeline, Kristen Clarke, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, said that the DOJ carries out its work “without regard to the electoral calendar” and “free from political interference.”
Gross said that during the federal consent decree process, there typically is an opportunity to hold fairness hearings, which allow community members to give input on the proposed consent decree. There won’t be time to have those hearings with inauguration day two weeks away, she said.
“We are very concerned, and it means basically that the community gets no opportunity to have the kind of input that we should have had,” Gross said.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Twin Cities civil rights attorney and founder of the Racial Justice Network, said at the advocates’ news conference that community members will be looking closely at the agreement.
“On this day, while we celebrate, we still celebrate with one eye open, knowing that we have to look carefully at what is happening in this city,” she said.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at Monday’s news conference with the mayor that his department already has a “head start” to implementing the federal consent decree because of the state agreement.
Minneapolis’s consent decree with the state Department of Human Rights is expected to last at least four years, and was also initiated because of Floyd’s murder. In a December 17 interview with Sahan Journal, O’Hara said reforms under the state agreement, including new use of force policies, are expected to begin rolling out this year.
“This consent decree supports that work and enhances all of that work that’s already underway, like the state settlement agreement,” O’Hara said of the federal consent decree. “This agreement is more than just a checklist of tasks and projects to accomplish.”
While community advocates have said they’re grateful for the state agreement, they’ve also stressed the importance of having a federal consent decree. Federal consent decrees typically last longer than their state counterparts, and the state consent decree is limited to enforcing the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, encouraged community members to stay engaged with the process after an agreement is signed.
“This is not going to be a document on a shelf. This is not going to be buzzwords. This is an opportunity to change a system that continuously brutalizes people of color in the city of Minneapolis,” he said.
