On Thursday, October 23, 2003, at 09:27 AM, Michelle Gross wrote:
Actually, the Minneapolis Police Department is considered by other police departments to be one of the most brutal and one of the most poorly run police departments in the country. I base this on numerous discussions with police expert witnesses and police brutality experts in other cities.
Oh, yeah? Who are the sources for your assertion? A cursory check will crush your allegation against the MPD. You think Minneapolis has problems? Compare our Department with what happened in New Orleans:
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The New Orleans Police Department has been rocked by successive scandals during the past several years: an officer was convicted in April 1996 of hiring a hit man to kill a woman who had lodged a brutality complaint against him and another officer was convicted in September 1995 for robbing a Vietnamese restaurant and shooting, execution style, a brother and sister who worked there, as well as an off-duty officer from her precinct working as security at the restaurant. In addition, at least fifty of the 1,400-member force have been arrested for felonies including homicide, rape, and robberies since 1993.[...] As astutely noted by police abuse expert Prof. James Fyfe, some cities' police departments have reputations for being brutal, like Los Angeles, or corrupt, like New York, and still others are considered incompetent. New Orleans has accomplished the rare feat of leading nationally in all categories.[...]
The U.S. Justice Department, hardly an overeager interloper, has been so alarmed by the corruption that it has assigned two FBI agents to work at the department to help reform its internal affairs division, while the Justice Department's civil rights division is conducting an investigation under its new civil powers, allowing the Justice Department to bring civil actions against cities and their police departments if they engage in a "pattern or practice" of rights violations.[...] New Orleans also had the highest ranking of citizen complaints of police brutality in the country, according to a 1991 Justice Department report.[...] Yet, despite its abysmal record, the police department has avoided the widespread community protests or other sustained external pressure that are often necessary for reforms to take hold permanently.
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http://www.hrw.org/reports98/police/uspo92.htm
On Thursday, October 23, 2003, at 05:08 PM, Dennis Plante wrote:
Since writing my last correspondence I had a conversation related to this issue with a neighbor that is very much abreast of statistics related to institutional racism.
It seems the "tipping point" for whites is 30-40%. In other words, when african americans inhabit a neighborhood to the tune of 30-40%, wholesale "white-flight" begins to occur. In many instances, real-estate values go into a free-fall, and speculators move-in, purchasing properties for rent.
In my neighborhood, blacks rioted at my junior high school. Increasing crime rates. It gets to a point when people are fed up and say: To hell with this. We're moving.
Which costs us more as a society, continuing this cycle, or subsidizing affordable housing to a larger degree in more affluent neighborhoods? More to the point, which helps the disadvantaged more?
Strict enforcement, serving warrants and clearing out violent criminals from North Minneapolis.
That's how.
Neal Krasnoff Loring Park
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