US Wraps Up Minneapolis Police Probe After George Floyd Murder

The Justice Department is concluding its investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department launched after George Floyd’s murder, according to sources familiar with the plans.

Senior officials, including the head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke, are expected to head to Minneapolis Friday to detail the findings of the more than two-year investigation into whether police engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The investigation, which could lead to a court-enforced consent decree that mandates changes, began after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s killing of Floyd, an unarmed Black man, sparked mass protest in 2020 over racial injustice and police brutality.

DOJ’s action follows a parallel investigation of the Minneapolis police by the Minnesota Human Rights Department. The state agency settled its race discrimination findings with a consent decree in March requiring widespread changes—from new training and data collection to bans on officer searches due to smelling marijuana.

The federal Civil Rights Division can reach its own conclusions on race-based discrimination, which may overlap with the state determinations. But crucially, DOJ has previously said it will be addressing several issues that fall outside the state’s enforcement jurisdiction, such as officers’ compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the First Amendment.

Under Garland and Clarke, the Civil Rights Division has restored an approach—largely abandoned during Donald Trump’s presidency —of responding to accusations of systemic police misconduct by conducting sweeping “pattern or practice” probes.

The results are typically disclosed in a report, which documents the extent that officers committed federal violations and a list of remedies, and often sets the jurisdiction on a path to negotiating a consent decree with DOJ and the appointment of an independent monitor.

However, academics, law enforcement officials, and the civil rights community have debated the merits of consent decrees as an effective mechanism for improving police-community relations.

Minneapolis “is a community where people have been organizing around the issue of policing for many years. They know what is in their own best interests,” said Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the civil rights organization Advancement Project. “I would hope that the Department of Justice would take them seriously and listen to the community in reaching any remedial efforts.”

A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment.

Twin Probes

The Minneapolis situation is unique due to its protracted timeline, said former department officials.

Whereas the Minnesota civil rights agency initiated its pattern-or-practice review the month after Floyd’s death in May 2020, the Justice Department—then run by Attorney General William Barr—opted not to intervene.

DOJ opened a Minneapolis probe in April 2021, the month after Garland was sworn into office.

The department then took more than two years to wrap its Minneapolis investigation, much longer than the typical Obama-era duration of pattern-or-practice matters involving law enforcement agencies in the Chicago, Baltimore, and Seattle metropolitan areas.

If DOJ deems a consent decree necessary for Minneapolis, as it did for the Louisville Metro Police Department in March, that starts a process that has previously lasted months to broker an agreement.

The Minnesota state agency’s consent decree has been filed in state court, and the parties are in the process of reviewing monitor candidates, the agency said Tuesday.

The decree includes multiple provisions aimed at avoiding conflicts with a potential similar settlement with DOJ. That includes an assurance that there won’t be two separate monitors appointed to independently ensure the city is meeting its new obligations. DOJ will also be consulted during the monitor selection process, the decree states.