Oversight panel wants Mpls. cops to note race of people detained

A civilian oversight group is recommending that Minneapolis police officers document the race and ethnicity of some people they detain but don't arrest.

The Police Conduct Oversight Commission, a unit of the Minneapolis civil rights department, based its decision on a recent report that shows officers rarely provide details of so-called "suspicious person" stops.

The report initiated by the commission is the latest in a series of studies examining Minneapolis police statistics. But unlike reports released by the American Civil Liberties Union and by the police department, this one doesn't include any useful data on the race of people officers considered suspicious enough to stop, but not to arrest. The report found that in nearly 400 stops, officers noted the race of the person they stopped around 10 percent of the time.

Chief Janee Harteau said she's taken a brief look at the commission report, and said it raises more questions than she can answer right now. Harteau said she's not sure which department reporting system the data came from.

"We have two systems that don't necessarily talk to each other. That's a challenge," she said. "So, I just have a lot of questions."

At the meeting, Harteau discussed several items including crime and arrest numbers recorded between 2009 and 2014. The numbers show African-Americans are arrested at higher rates than whites for most offenses. Civil rights advocates say the disparities show Minneapolis police officers unfairly single out blacks for arrest based on their skin color. But Harteau said it's important to understand what's behind some of those numbers.

"I want people to know that our officers are in our most violent crime hot spots. And unfortunately, in those violent crime hot spots are also where people of color live — where our most impoverished areas are," she said. "And I expect officers to be there."

The commission's report on police stops includes maps that show officers made frequent suspicious person stops in those same high-crime areas.

Harteau said the concentration of police stops and arrests in communities of color are designed to make them safer but acknowledged that can result in what she calls unintended consequences: the erosion of trust between people of color and police. Tensions between the city's black communities and the department have spiked over the years after violent confrontations between police officers and African-Americans.

Harteau also told commissioners that officers are working to heal those rifts by increasing the level of non-crime related contacts they have with people living in those hot spots. The department is now including the number of "positive contacts" by officers in its weekly crime data. Harteau said the number of positive contacts has increased 46 percent over this time last year.

Commissioner Jennifer Singleton said the new policy requiring officers to include racial data in suspicious person stops makes sense, considering the department's current efforts to recognize and eliminate biased policing.

"Issues of racial bias are on the forefront of everybody's minds when it comes to police procedures," she said. "And I think it is in the best interest of the Minneapolis Police Department to get ahead of this issue."

The report also recommended that officers include more details about the reasons for stops. And the report suggests the research be repeated in two years in order to measure any impact.