ACLU report finds Minneapolis police continued excessive force before DOJ dropped oversight
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A report from the national ACLU has found that police officers in cities formerly under federal consent decrees, including Minneapolis, have continued to use excessive force against residents since the federal government withdrew from the agreements.
The report looked at departments in seven cities across the country at the end of 2024 and the start of 2025. That’s the period of time just before the U.S. Department of Justice withdrew from the consent decrees and revoked the findings.
The ACLU requested public data from the cities to try to understand whether the problems found in the initial investigations of the cities were still present, said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing in the Criminal Law Reform Project.
“We were concerned that when the Department of Justice under President Trump revoked these findings hastily, very soon into its second term, without any reasoning provided publicly, that would be taken as a message to police departments that they could continue with this misconduct,” Rolnick Borchetta said of the ACLU investigation.
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The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the cities during President Joe Biden’s term following high-profile policing incidents. In Minneapolis, the investigation was spurred by the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Investigators found that Minneapolis police routinely used excessive force when it wasn’t necessary and disproportionately targeted Black and American Indian residents.
The federal government dropped the federal consent decree with Minneapolis in May 2025, although Minneapolis is still bound by a similar court-enforced agreement with the state Department of Human Rights, and officials have said they still plan to comply with the terms of the federal consent decree.
The report documents an incident in Minneapolis where an officer used his knee to pin a woman who appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis to the ground for about five minutes. They also document an incident where a police officer stunned a man multiple times who was carrying a pair of grilling tongs.
“We did find indications that were concerning within the use of force reports that MPD provided us that officers were escalating encounters with people who they knew to be experiencing a mental health crisis, and that they also failed to use de-escalation techniques,” Rolnick Borchetta said. “To see that that was continuing in early 2025 was concerning.”
The report also found that the department missed opportunities for internal review. A semi-annual report by the independent monitor overseeing the state’s agreement with the department released earlier this month documented troubles with the city’s internal affairs unit, which the report said had made little progress in eliminating a substantial backlog or promptly addressing concerning conduct by officers.
The ACLU report found that Minneapolis largely cooperated with its data request, but that many of the reports only contained a brief public narrative, which made it difficult to tell whether the force used by the officers was excessive.
The city of Minneapolis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
