Surely Minneapolis, Of All Places, Must Have Cured Racism By Now

Progressives and Democrats are the people who never tire of accusing their political adversaries of racism, or maybe even of “white supremacism.” Elect us, the message is, and we will do away with these evils for good.

If that proposition were valid, then clearly Minneapolis would be in the forefront of those places that have long since done away with racism. Among bastions of woke progressivism in this country, it is almost impossible to top Minneapolis. The place is currently run from top to bottom and at all levels of government by representatives of the far left wing of the Democratic Party; and that has been true for as far back as human memory stretches. Consider:

• The current Mayor of Minneapolis is Jacob Frey. He won the office in 2017 in a free for all among 17 candidates, of whom 10 were from the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party and not one was a Republican. The candidates competed as to who was the farthest left. Frey out-lefted them all. His big issues were “climate change,” affordable housing, and, yes, reforming the police.

• The last Republican Mayor of Minneapolis was Richard Erdall, who served for one day in 1973. Prior to Erdall, the previous Republican Mayor was Kenneth Peterson, who left office in 1961.

• The City Council consists of 13 members, of whom 12 are members of the DFL (Democratic) Party, and one is a member of the Green Party. There are no Republicans.

• The federal Congressperson is Ilhan Omar: far-left Democrat, Muslim, immigrant from Somalia, and member of “the squad.” Omar won her seat in 2018 by a margin of 78-22 over her Republican opponent.

• The Governor (Tim Walz) and both U.S. Senators (Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith) are all Democrats.

• Minnesota’s chief law enforcement officer is Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat of the radical left variety, an African American and a Muslim, who previously held Omar’s Minneapolis Congressional seat for 12 years, and who has recently been Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

• The police commissioner in Minneapolis is a mayoral appointee. The current commissioner, Medaria Arradondo, an African American, has been in office since 2017..

Of course, it was on the watch of all of these people that George Floyd died as police officer Derek Chauvin was kneeling on his neck in a horrific incident that we have all seen on video. Demonstrators around the country have appropriately protested the treatment to which Floyd was subjected. But although the demonstrators protest what occurred, it is not clear what kind of change they are seeking going forward. Is what they are seeking more and yet more of the progressive governance model? Minneapolis had already elected the farthest left of progressive leftists to every available office, all with promises to bring about social justice, equality, and the end of racism. And yet it is exactly on the watch of these very people that this incident occurred.

President Trump? Good luck with that. In our federal system, the states have their own sovereignty. Officer Chauvin worked for Commissioner Arradondo, who works for Mayor Frey. Arradondo and Frey are the people who are responsible for the conduct of the police in Minneapolis, overseen to some degree by Walz and Ellison. President Trump has no more authority to direct or control the conduct of Arradondo or Frey or Chauvin than you or I do.

Oh, but wait. Is there some impediment that keeps Frey or Arradondo from bringing more accountability to the officers in the Minneapolis Police Department? Actually, there is. That is the police union, here known as the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. Its status is enshrined in the Minnesota’s Public Employee Labor Relations Act. From the Wall Street Journal, May 31:

Among the most deeply embedded problems that departments including Minneapolis face is a difficulty punishing officers who are too often insulated from repercussions, law enforcement experts and community leaders said. Unions like the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis fight to shield their members from punishment, both through contract negotiations and disciplinary hearings, . . .

From the Journal’s piece, it seems that Officer Chauvin had some 18 complaints on his record. The details of all of those are shielded from public scrutiny by privacy protections negotiated by the union. All we know is that Chauvin received two “letters of reprimand”; but even as to those, we cannot find out the details of the incidents in question. In any event, Officer Chauvin was certainly not fired, let alone suspended from duty, despite all the complaints.

The idea that public employees should have a right to unionize, and should be able to negotiate, through collective bargaining, protections to shield themselves from accountability — that, of course, is another basic pillar of the progressive government model. The public employee unions are a big part — perhaps the very most important part — of the coalition that supports progressive candidates for state and local offices throughout the country, including Minnesota.

Has any one of the Minnesota Democratic politicians who hold responsibility in this situation — Walz, Ellison, Frey, Klobuchar, Smith, Omar, or the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council — ever advocated for a change to the Minnesota public employee unionization regime to enable the supervisors to bring accountability to the rank and file? Of course not. The public employee unions are the principal funders of their campaigns. These politicians claim to be seeking “social justice” and the end to racism, but in practice they do the bidding of their union paymasters, which means holding public employees free from accountability in all but the very most egregious incidents.

Writing in National Review on May 31, John Fund argues that “It’s Past Time to Examine How Police Unions Protect Bad Cops.” Excerpt:

Writing in the Stanford Law Review, scholar Katherine Bies notes that ever since “the rise of police unions to political power in the 1970s,” they have succeeded in shielding their members from public accountability. “Police unions have established highly developed political machinery that exerts significant political and financial pressure on all three branches of government,” Bies writes. “The power of police unions over policymakers in the criminal justice context distorts the political process and generates political outcomes that undermine the democratic values of transparency and accountability.”

So are any of the protesters seeking the end to the protections that shield police officers from nearly all accountability? If they are, I haven’t been able to find it. The protesters know that they are outraged, but somehow they are unable to put two and two together to figure out that the progressive politicians that they support are the very same people who are perpetuating the regime of public employee unaccountability that leads to tragic incidents like that of George Floyd.