Written by Jamie Keith
The Committee For Professional Policing is
working to pass an amendment to the Minneapolis City Charter, which would be
voted on as a ballot issue in the November 2014 election. This amendment would
require police officers to carry personal liability insurance, much like the
malpractice insurance doctors are required to carry.
CFPP officially formed as a
political committee in the spring of 2013. The original idea for the liability
insurance model came from Communities United Against Police Brutality, an
all-volunteer organization founded in 2000 which focuses on advocacy, education
and political activity to end police brutality in Minneapolis and the
surrounding metro areas.
According to statistics
gathered by CFPP, the City and its taxpayers have spent $20 million on police
misconduct payouts since 2006.
“Right now, the city covers
pretty much all acts of misconduct by police officers, but it's not actually
required to do so,” explained Dave Bicking, the Chair of CFPP.
This means that officers are
covered only arbitrarily by the city's current provisions.
“This is not an anti-cop deal
by any means,” said Michelle Gross, President of CUAPB. “It is a way to get rid
of the bad officers and keep and protect the good ones.”
According to Bicking, the
impetus for the charter amendment comes from a long history of issues with
holding police officers accountable for misconduct.
“We've been frustrated with the
fact that the city politicians, the police chief and the union really have no
interest in disciplining officers or holding them to account for their
conduct,” Bicking said. “All that's been effective is lawsuits. While those are
important to get some kind of compensation to the victims, they do very little
to solve the underlying problem of preventing future problems, because the
payments are made by the taxpayers.”
Under the charter amendment,
the city would pay the base insurance rate covering officers, while any
insurance premiums brought on by “risky” conduct would be covered by the
officers themselves.
Bicking likened the proposal to
car insurance.
“If you're a really, really bad
driver, it becomes too expensive to drive or even own a car anymore,” said
Bicking. “Similarly, some officers would become uninsurable, and that would
finally get those officers off the force.”
Such police misconduct is
difficult to track using data, since no centralized agency is responsible for
keeping it.
“Statistics about police
brutality not collected by the police,” said Gross “No cities keep this data in
any real way. The FBI is mandated to keep this data, but no one really does it.
So it's this big problem that everyone knows about, but nobody wants to
quantify.”
However, CUAPB tracks data that
comes through their 24 hour hotline. From 2001-2006, CUAPB recorded 464 cases
for analysis. Of these cases, 92 percent cited an infringement of First
Amendment rights, 56.6 percent cited justice system misuse, and 56 percent
cited unjustified force. Of these hotline callers, 67 percent were African
American and 16 percent were other or unspecified.
Given the general dearth of
statistics available, it is difficult to pin down exactly how these policies
are affecting the Native American community in Minneapolis. However, according
to a national study conducted by the United States Commission on Civil Rights,
the Native American incarceration rate is 38 percent higher than the national
average. The study cited racial profiling, lack of access to legal counsel and
disproportionate police contact as the underlying causes of this disparity.
Both CUAPB and CFPP would like
to do more to engage volunteers and activists from the Native community. In
order to make the charter amendment a ballot issue in the 2014 election, CFPP
will need to gather 15,000 petition signatures by May of 2014. To get involved
as a volunteer to collect signatures, help with fundraising or do media and
publicity work, please contact CFPP organizers at 612-715-8784 or on their Web
site at cfppmpls.wordpress.com.
