The President of the United States, Joe Biden, expressed his concern about the conclusions of the investigation into the repeated cases of police violence in Minneapolis that the Department of Justice made after the global impact of the murder of the black citizen George Floyd, and urged the Congress to approve reforms to combat racial discrimination.
“My team has briefed me on the Department of Justice’s independent findings about the unconstitutional practices of the Minneapolis Police Department. They are disturbing and underscore the urgent need for Congress to pass common-sense reforms that will increase public trust, combat racial discrimination and thus strengthen public safety,” Biden said in an official White House statement.
The president called for implementing and maintaining “independent and aggressive measures” with which to “guarantee accountability for cases of systemic misconduct” in police departments at the local level, Europa Press reported. “I have a simple message for Congress: Send the George Floyd Police Justice Act to my desk and I’ll sign it,” he added.
In this sense, the head of the US Executive has affirmed that he will do everything in his power to fight for police responsibility in Congress, recalling that he is “willing to work with Republicans and Democrats alike on genuine solutions.”
The US Department of Justice accused the Minneapolis Police, state of Minnesota, of having “routinely” exercised a pattern of “abusive and racist behavior” in the years prior to Floyd’s murder, which occurred on May 20, 2020. during a police arrest.
This is drawn from the conclusions of the report published this Friday, which culminates more than two years of federal investigation into the city Police Department, whose members are accused of using excessive, unjustified and lethal force, as well as illegal discrimination against the population. black and American Indian, and even against the disabled population.
The investigation, which spans from 2016 to 2022 through more than 2,000 interviews with agents, relatives of those killed by the Police and members of civil society, concludes that the institution acted with unnecessary force in three quarters of the cases studied. .
Among all these cases, the US Department of Justice has identified 19 shootings carried out by the Police, many of them “initiated without first determining whether there was a threat that warranted it and without notifying their fellow agents or other people.” according to the document.
Floyd was arrested in May 2020 at the exit of an establishment for having used a counterfeit bill to pay for a pack of cigarettes. During the operation, he was handcuffed and placed on the ground on his chest. Then-police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the victims’ necks for nine minutes, despite warnings that he couldn’t breathe. His death, recorded in a video that went around the world, generated a wave of global outrage.
The report has concluded in this sense that the agents used the same maneuver on at least 198 occasions from 2016 to 2022. In 2016, this immobilization occurred on 52 occasions. In 2021, a year after Floyd’s murder led to the restriction of this maneuver, only one case is known, but the prohibition, according to the document, was met with “much resistance” from the agents.
Source: Ambito
