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http://MPD150.com is a coalition of local organizers, artists, researchers working for the abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department. In 2017 they released this 150-year performance review of the MPD. http://mpd150.com/report/overview/. Here are some highlights. #GeorgeFloyd 1/n
The MPD was established in 1867. This was <30 yrs after Dred & Harriet Scott were held as slaves in MN; 5 yrs after the hanging of 38 Dakota men; 2 yrs after the Civil War. Their purpose, like all PDs: to protect the city from growing levels of property crime. 2/n
From 1867-1889, the force grew from 4 officers to 169, patrolling a city of 200k. The 13th amndmnt established involuntary servitude and the city forced inmates into farming, tailoring, quarry mining labor. This became a huge source of profit for the city ($277k over 4 yrs). 3/n
In 1889 they helped industrialist Lowry break a streetcar strike. By 1903 the MPD used its power on behalf of the Citizen's alliance, a far right group of businessman, to harass and attack labor groups. By its 50th anniversary the MPD had shut down several massive strikes. 4/n
The links between the MPD and white supremacy grew in the 1920s. The KKK established > 50 chpters across MN in 1917, and police brutality became a constant threat to a growing Black community. In 1922 MPD officers savagely beat 4 men for inviting white women to a dance. 5/n
In 1934 during the Great Depression, thousands of Teamsters truck drivers went on strike for months. The MPD deputized 100s of civilians and encouraged them to use violence agnst the strikers. MPD ambushed 70 strikers tt yr and shot them in the back, killing two. 6/n
Fast fwrd past WWII, when the MPD stoked anti-immigrant sentiments and policed "enemy aliens;" past the 60s when the MPD infiltrated schools, created a narcotics unit and SWAT team. Tensions between black folks and the police led to two riots against police racism in 1967. 7/n
@MPD150 writes: "The pattern established by the 1967 riot – police brutality leads to community outrage, leads to protests, leads to promises of reform, leads to a lack of meaningful change – wld become a constant feature of policing in Minneapolis for the next fifty years." 8/n
In 1968 community patrols emerged in Black and Native communities to keep people safe and prevent police violence. These were successful and their legacies continue today. Thrgh the 70s and 80s, MPD's reputation was as one of the most homophobic PDs in the country. 9/n
The war on drugs in the 1980s led to an increasingly militarized PD turned loose on communities of color. Some instances: Black youth arrested at a hotel; the death of two black elders during a botched SWAT raid; beating an elderly black man who couldn't pay his bus fare. 10/n
Brutality agnst Native people was frequent. 2 Native men taken on "rough ride" in a squad car trunk; cops shot a teen playing with toy gun at Little Earth; protestors agnst highway cnstrctn that would destroy a Dakota sacred site had camp raided by 800 officers. 11/n
From 2000-2017, a selection: 11yrold Julis Powell hit by a wayward police bullet. Beating of a Native-Latino man. Killing of 19 yr old Fong Lee. "No knock" raids of Hmong families. 28yrold David Smith killed after mental health episode. Jason Yang found dead after a chase. 12/n
In 2011, MPD officers helped convict Cece Mcdonald of manslaughter after she defended herself from a transphobic white supremacist. 2013; the killing of Terrance Franklin and Ivan Romero. 2015: Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man, murdered. 13/n
In demanding justice for Jamar Clark, 100s occupied the Fourth Precinct for 18 days (it was one of the most beautiful, enraging things I've been part of). Massive protests continued with an occupation o/s the Governor's Mansion in 2016 when #PhilandoCastile was murdered. 14/n
The only cop to have been prosecuted and sentenced for a killing in the history of the MPD is Mohamed Noor for the killing of Justine Diamond. 15/n
The current police union head, Bob Kroll, is an avowed white supremacist and a Trump supporter. He has unrepentantly defended every MPD officer involved in a shooting since his tenure. He is scum. 16/n
So let’s be clear: The MPD is founded in anti-black white supremacy, homophobia, and settler colonialism; it defends whiteness, and whiteness as property. 17/n
I have watched them bring out tanks, tear gas, smoke grenades, and "less-than-lethal" riot weapons. I bear scars from them. I have watched them harass Hmong workers, Somali refugees, Black boys sitting on a corner, Black women in cars, Black men standing on the street. 18/n
I’ve also witnessed the beauty and fury of a Twin cities community brought together in mourning. Black local knowledge taught me how to use milk for pepper spray. Black brilliance taught me how to organize, to share food at protests, to turn the march into a space of care. 19/n
If there’s a way out of this world where white folks care more about a looted Target than centuries of white pillaging, looting, expropriation, killing, of black and brown lands and lives, it’s with and through and led by black brilliance, black determination, black struggle.20/n
I'll end w @MPD150's words: " The MPD was built on violence, corruption, & white supremacy. Every attempt ever made to reform it or hold it accountable has been soundly defeated. The culture of silence & complicity in the dptmt, along with the formidable political power...21/n
..wielded by t police union, will continue 2 preserve the status quo as long as we place faith in the reforms that have failed us for 150 yrs. It’s time to face reality – if we want to build a city where every community can thrive, it will have to be a city without the MPD." 22/n
You can support the work of @MPD150 at https://mpd150.com/donate/ . You can donate to a Mpls bail fund at https://minnesotafreedomfund.org . Take care of your communities. Get your own people. Fight like hell. n/n
