minnesota

Native Lives and the Minneapolis Police

Amid national push for police reform, Native people feel left out of conversation

October 19, 2023

Geoff Bennett:Amid ongoing police reform efforts in the U.S., Native American activists say they have often been left out of the conversation.But more than three years after the police murder of George Floyd, there’s a renewed push in places like Minneapolis for awareness and change around law enforcement interactions with Native communities.Special correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro has this report.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:A recent rally in the heart of South Minneapolis’ Native American community brought out high emotions and strong numbers. They were protesting the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist serving life sentences for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.Peltier’s supporters have long said he was wrongly convicted and they consider him a political prisoner.
Woman:As long as Leonard Peltier isn’t free, there is a piece that this system holds of every single one of us as indigenous people.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Activists say the problems with that system are upheld by law enforcement authorities, who regularly mistreat Native people.The vast majority of Native Americans live away from the reservation or tribal communities in which they’re officially enrolled. They live in cities like New York, Albuquerque, or Minneapolis, meaning that most of their law enforcement encounters happen with local police.In Minneapolis, a city that became the center of a global racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, police interactions with communities of color remain under intense scrutiny.In June, the Department of Justice released its investigation into the Minneapolis police, launched after Floyd’s killing. Among its findings, MPD unlawfully discriminates against Black and Native American people. Officers stop Native residents at almost eight times the rate they stop white people. During those stops, Native people are at least 20 percent more likely to face searches or use of force.And the disparities were worse in Minneapolis’ Third Precinct, where George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin and where many Native Americans live. That area, the DOJ said, is where officers referred to as cowboys wanted to work.
Jolene Jones, Little Earth Protectors:It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:We spoke to Vinny Dionne, Rachel Dionne-Thunder and Jolene Jones, three Native community leaders with deep understanding of police interactions here.
Vinny Dionne, Community Organizer, Indigenous Protector Movement:As a young man grown up in this neighborhood, I have always dealt with the police. It was always us against them.
Rachel Dionne-Thunder, Co-Founder, Indigenous Protector Movement:The DOJ report specifically said that Native people are the most adversely affected, discriminated against, and abused by the Minneapolis Police Department. Yet there hasn’t been one listening session here in this community.
Jolene Jones:So, basically, it’s just another report that says, hey, we’re doing this to your people, but you’re still invisible, because we’re not going to work with you.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:They said residents in this area, known as Little Earth, rarely call the police. Wait times can be lengthy, and they want to avoid escalation with the department that, by their count, has only four Native American officers out of nearly 600.
Jolene Jones:When the police are called here, they’re called because they’re desperately needed.
Vinny Dionne:I have been beaten by the police twice. I have never once reported it out of fear, out of fear of retaliation, because you are going to see these same officers again out here. They work your beat. You see them every day.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Minneapolis was the birthplace of the American Indian Movement founded in 1968 to improve conditions for Natives living in urban areas. It grew into an international movement for treaty rights and the reclamation of tribal lands.It created the AIM Patrol, a citizen watch group whose goal was to help victims of police brutality.Mike Forcia, Chair, American Indian Movement of Twin Cities: And then here’s where I got beat by the cops.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Mike Forcia chairs the American Indian Movement Twin Cities. In 2002, he settled a police brutality case with the MPD for $125,000.Today Forcia sees a community plagued by homelessness and substance abuse and a police department focusing on the wrong issues.
Mike Forcia:This is what neglect looks like, Native Americans homeless in their own land.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Last year, Forcia and other leaders toured Little Earth With Brian O’Hara, the new police chief in Minneapolis. He also spoke at O’Hara’s swearing-in ceremony.
Mike Forcia:We were planting seeds. Seeds of trust, seeds of accountability, seeds of transparency, seeds of community. But planting it is the easy part. So much damage was done to our community, not just by the police, but by the city too. And we have to make an accounting of what happened. And we have to have some restitution.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:These issues are hardly unique to Minneapolis. Native American people make up less than 3 percent of the population in the U.S., but, between 2010 and 2020, they were killed in law enforcement encounters at a higher rate than any other racial group.Thirty-five-year-old Johnny Crow grew up in Minneapolis. He remembers bouncing between homeless shelters in a community grappling with cycles of poverty and violence. He also recalls his father getting roughed up by the MPD.
Johnny Crow, Minneapolis Resident:It’s just the way they treat us. You got to be strong. That’s kind of mentality I was taught. You got to be strong.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Last fall, Crow himself was detained at a Minneapolis gas station after police said his car was connected to a wanted person. Crow was handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car before officers checked his I.D. They accepted that the person of interest was actually Crow’s cousin and let him go.Crow is suing the city and the officers involved, saying he was injured and traumatized during the unlawful stop and unreasonable seizure.
Johnny Crow:I remember, as a kid, being here in South Minneapolis, the police would hand me stickers, and I used to think, like, oh, wow, they’re so amazing. They keep us safe.Once I became a young man and I started to look like an adult, like a Native man, I was no longer welcomed. I was more of a threat.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:MPD said it cannot comment on pending litigation, but in a statement to the “NewsHour,” it said the department is planning a listening session on police reform with the Native community.And Chief O’Hara said — quote — “It is misguided to think that we will erase these disparities completely without correcting the underlying historic systemic injustices which have created the conditions that police are often called to deal with.”
Johnny Crow:I’m hopeful that things will be different for my son, because, right now, I mean, my incident with the police wasn’t as bad as my father’s. And if one day my son has a traffic stop or has an incident with the police, it won’t be like mine.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:What gives you that optimism?
Johnny Crow:It’s — sorry. My belief — being Lakota, we say (Speaking in foreign language) ultimate belief. And I’m trying to instill that in my son.
Fred De Sam Lazaro:Activists say the invisibility of Native Americans in the city is an enduring challenge. But, as the future of public safety is charted here, they are demanding to be seen.For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Fred De Sam Lazaro in Minneapolis.
Geoff Bennett:Fred’s reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

A Chance for Change

“planting seeds of trust”

Amid ongoing police reform efforts in the U.S., Native American activists say they’ve often been left out of the conversation. But more than three years after the police murder of George Floyd, there’s a renewed push in places like Minneapolis for awareness and change around law enforcement interactions with Native communities.

of the U.S. population are Native American