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In this past week, the battle between the public and the police brought itself closer to the Northland. Down I-35, the city of Minneapolis was put on notice by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU released “Picking Up the Pieces,” a damning report that highlights the many ways that the Minneapolis Police Department discriminate against minority populations.

Although much of the discussion about police brutality has focused on the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown, the bigger issue—the one that is starting to come out more—is something that is touched on in the ACLU report: the arrest of minorities for low-level offenses. When I speak of low-level offenses, I am speaking of disorderly conduct, trespassing, and lurking among others. These are crimes that have penalties of no more than one year in jail and/or a fine of $3000.

According to their study of 33 months of arrest data from 2012–2014, Blacks and Native Americans made up 65% of all low-level arrests in Minneapolis, yet these two populations make up only 21% of the city’s population. Whites, who make up 64% of the Minneapolis populace, only accounted for 23% of the arrests in the city. To provide some more perspective on these numbers, Blacks are 8.7 times more likely to be arrested for a low-level offense compared to whites. The number drops to 8.6 for Native Americans.

These disparities only become more apparent when examining some of the maps that are included in the report. These maps highlight the racial segregation that exists in the city. The map shows the racial makeup of the various Minneapolis neighborhoods, highlighting the percentage of Black people that live in each area. When the locations of the arrests are superimposed on the map, many of the arrests are located in the majority Black neighborhoods. Given the statistics that I noted above, none of this should be particularly surprising.


While the events in Minneapolis have been getting considerable press attention in recent days, this does not mean that the Northland is immune to these same racial disparities in policing. According to the ACLU of Minnesota, Black people in Duluth are almost 13 times more likely to be arrested for disorderly conduct than whites. Native Americans in Duluth are nine times more likely to be arrested for the same crime. When these crime rates are added to the various recent incidents that have happened recently including the 2012 assault involving former Duluth police officer Richard Jouppi and the 2014 beating of Natasha Lancour in Superior, we see that there is a problem. Even though both officers involved in these situations were not convicted in a court of law, the effect on the community remains the same.

Rather than inspiring confidence, police officers create fear within minority communities and contribute to their continual poverty. When you live in an area where you are stopped for bearing, at most, a passing resemble to the suspect or the vehicle being looked for, your instinct is to not trust the people whose job it is to protect you and your community. Who knows? Maybe this is the day where you are taken in and booked falsely. For many, this does not happen, but it does for some. Would you trust the people that are enlisted to protect you when they cannot tell the difference between a blue Toyota Camry and a blue Honda Civic? Would you trust them if they tell you that they arrest you not because they have a reason, but because they can? I already know the answer to this question. I’m sure that you do as well.

With regards to the poverty question, many low-level offenses are related to bench warrants, warrants that are put out after a person has not paid a fine. Many of these warrants result from not paying tickets for things like jaywalking and speeding. Usually, the party is not trying to avoid the ticket. More likely, the person who got the ticket cannot afford to pay it. The person goes to work, but then the bench warrant usually results in the person losing his or her license, making them unable to pay the ticket because they don’t have a job anymore. This creates a continual cycle of police oppression that is hard to break.

You may be asking yourself are there solutions to this problem? The answer is: Yes, there are. The primary answer is that the police needs to become better connected with the community. Building these connections can help to create trust and allay some of the fears that can exist within a community that has been over-policed. By knowing the community, people are known to their officers and are less likely to be arrested for minor infractions because the police know they are upstanding citizens.  Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay says that the Duluth Police Department has implemented community policing practices, but given the numbers that I quoted above (the statistics were accumulated between 2007 and 2012, which are during Ramsay’s tenure as police chief)
I wonder how effective it has actually been. I know that, on a personal level, I’ve yet to be greeted by a police officer in my neighborhood, so if someone were to ask me who my community officer is, I could not tell them.

I have some questions for the readership of the Reader to get a discussion started about this topic in our fair city. How many of you know your community officer or how many police officers do you know in your community? How are they doing? How is policing in your neighborhood? Is it fair? Are you a minority? How have your interactions with the police been? Feel free to email me at achawley@gmail.com with your stories about dealing with the police. In future columns, I hope to be able to add your comments on this topic with some of my own research into the issue in the hope that we can create an environment where people do not feel discriminated against solely because they are non-white.