EXPANDED EDITION (2020) ENOUGH IS ENOUGH A 150-YEAR PERFORMANCE REVIEW OF THE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT EXPANDED EDITION SUMMER 2020 CONTENTS The Enough Is Enough Report (originally published in 2017) • Introduction: p.7 • Where We’ve Been: p.8 • Where We’re At: p.18 • Where We’re Going: p.29 • MPD150’s Five Essential Findings: p.37 Expanded Edition Resources • Handouts, zines, and outreach materials: p.38 • Educator toolkit: sample activities and discussion questions: p.54 • Poems, editorials, and other writing: p.58 • Timeline pieces: p.74 “Community Policing and Other Fairy Tales” Comic Book: p.86 An Oral History of the MPD150 Project: p.128 Acknowledgments: p.141 FOREWORD TO THE 2020 EXPANDED EDITION This new, expanded version of the “Enough Is Enough” report was scheduled to be released in spring of 2020. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by three Minneapolis police officers as one stood guard. The writing in this report was done primarily between 2016 and 2019, and was first released in 2017. This expanded edition is being released in summer 2020, while the shockwaves from the May uprising are still spreading. We don’t know when you’ll be reading this, but we know that our city will never be the same. As a city, our grief, our rage, our fire, and our frustration are expressions of deep truths. We acknowledge that none of them are new; Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples have carried the oppressive weight of this racist system, and the violence of its police enforcers, since the beginning. We also acknowledge that our connection, our love, our determination, and our solidarity are also our truths, are also necessary, and light our path ahead. While the police have cracked down on protesters, and the media has focused on riots, looting, and property destruction, Minneapolis community members have engaged in a stunning range of mutual aid efforts: donation drives, community protection/patrols, volunteer cleanups, and neighbors just helping out and looking out for one another. We’re not just imagining our police-free future; we’re actively building it. This is bigger than policy. George Floyd deserves to have his humanity honored, and his family supported. At Floyd’s memorial, his brother, Philonise Floyd, said, “All these people came to see my brother. And that’s amazing to me that he touched so many people’s hearts. Because he’s been touching our hearts.” We fight for abolition because George Floyd, and every victim of the violence and racism inherent in prisons and policing, are human beings, and they matter. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of prisons and police. It’s about what we build in the space they leave behind. MPD150’s work has been primarily focused on narrative: our intention was to tell a story. That story, which will come to life as you read this report, centers on the idea that a world without police isn’t just possible, but necessary. We went into this work knowing that stories generally take time to take root. You plant an idea, give it water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil, and it grows. What we didn’t count on was how eager our community would be to provide those elements; how quickly that story would grow. To be sure, it’s a powerful story. It is a story supported by decades of scholarship and vision (especially from Black women like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, and beyond), a story deeply rooted in the lived experience of the communities that policing was designed to punish and control, but which is often distorted and obscured by the false promises of police reform and “community policing.” Over the past few weeks, city council members in our city have been using explicitly abolitionist rhetoric, saying things like “The department is irredeemably beyond reform,” and “Our attempts at incremental reform of policing have failed. We need deep, structural change.” We’ve been organizers long enough to know that rhetoric isn’t the same as action. But we also know that what is said does matter. Language tells a story about what is possible, about what we consider “sensible” or “radical” as we consider policy. Language plants seeds. Our hope is that this report, and all of the stories held here, will be an instrument of struggle. Here in Minneapolis, we’re already seeing organizations like Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block carry this narrative into the areas of community organizing and policy, building the momentum and lining up allies to turn narrative into victories. This work is happening here at home, as it happens in communities across—and beyond—the US. As the last headline on the previous page states, “anything feels possible in this moment.” We dedicate this to the elders who got us here, the young Black organizers leading this movement, and everyone doing the hard work of building our present and our future, together. Previous page: a selection of headlines from both local and national media, May-June, 2020 TO THOSE WHO’VE LED THE WAY The initiative that we have named MPD150 stands on the shoulders of the activists and organizers, community organizations and street protesters, whistleblowers, families of loved ones lost to police violence, and numerous others who have led the fight for truly safe communities in the past and still today. Their contributions over the years have made this undertaking possible. For this we honor them. WHO WE ARE MPD150 is an independent association of organizers, activists, researchers, and artists that came together in the spring of 2016 in anticipation of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD)’s 150th anniversary. We are not the project of any organization, although we recognize the contributions many of them have made over the years. Some of them have shared leads and material for this report. “Enough Is Enough” is one component of a multi-faceted effort that includes public art, educational activities, political action, cultural activism, and more. We hope to inspire and support new community initiatives that contribute to a shared vision of a police-free future. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1: Intro.......................................... 7 2: Where We’ve Been..................... 8 3: Where We’re At....................... 18 4: Where We’re Going................. 29 5: Findings.................................. 36 6: Appendix + New Materials..... 38 7: Credits.................................. 141 Photo by Annabelle Marcovici (c) MPD150 2017; second edition 2020 | ISBN: 978-0-9796104-9-3 MPD 150 Enough Is Enough! Enough Is Enough! That is both the The US police system, we contend, is not outlines of the police-free communities conclusion and the title of this report, reformable. Efforts to reform it—aimed of the future. We have no shortage of a 150-year performance review of at addressing recruitment, training, cultural traditions, innovative social the Minneapolis Police Department discipline, oversight, and transparency— programs, and community resilience (MPD). are quickly and effectively neutralized strategies from which to draw. by the organized opposition of police The report is the product of an departments and their unions and The transition to a resilience-based investigation into the conduct of the professional associations. In fact, these Minneapolis will not come overnight. department over the fifteen decades cycles of reform—looking remarkably It will require a succession of steps that since its founding in 1867; a survey of the same from one decade to the next— starts with limiting the harm caused its current role and impact especially serve to temporarily pacify resistance daily by police power, and beginning on marginalized communities; and an from victimized communities without the orderly transfer of resources from exploration of viable alternatives to altering police business as usual. They the police to projects, programs, the policing model. The purpose of this also reassure white communities, who and grassroots initiatives that meet report is to take the idea of police-free are spared the mistreatment directed people’s emergency and long-term communities out of the realm of fantasy at their darker-skinned neighbors, and needs. Neighborhoods with good jobs, and place it firmly in the public agenda as often turn to the police for security. In affordable homes, healthy food, and a practical necessity. the short term, reining in police abuse green places to play produce less conflict by demanding reforms can provide only and fewer mental health crises than ones Our analysis locates the roots of police limited relief. that feature empty lots, under-funded brutality, corruption, and racism in its schools, and starvation wages. Like any history and founding mission. This is Part two speaks of the present. It features process of change, the transitional period where our attention should be directed, interviews by MPD150’s interview team will raise new questions and pose new not at frivolous arguments such as and by partner organizations. We share problems. It will, naturally, meet with whether “all cops are bad.” The presence the reflections of professionals (in areas concerted resistance. The solutions that of officers with good intentions, recruits such as mental health, domestic and result, however, will be designed to help who join the force to make things better, sexual violence, emergency response, all our communities thrive, not contain or even reform-minded chiefs does not and homelessness) whose work is and divide them. actually alter the oppressive behavior of impacted by the police. They report police agencies. that the militarized, combative presence The material presented here turns the of police is not the medicine needed in common wisdom on its head. The idea The report is organized according to the our traumatized communities. Even the of a police-free future is neither naive three areas of focus that have guided its social service functions absorbed into nor unrealistic.