Email sent June 27, 2022…
Dear Council Members,
With the release of Mohamed Noor from prison today, here’s where we stand. He has been charged, sued (along with the City and others), tried, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, resentenced, and released from prison for the killing of Justine Damond Ruszczyk, and no Minneapolis City officials have ever held a public discussion about what went wrong that led to Ms. Ruszczyk losing her life. The judge in Mr. Noor’s criminal trial tried to begin that public lessons-learned discussion by twice telling us questions the jurors still had after that trial, but City officials, including the Council, remained silent. Oh, you unanimously approved and paid out a huge civil settlement, but the discussion that led to that vote was held behind closed doors. Lessons learned? We don’t even know if that was part of the Council’s discussion.
That is astounding. Is it any wonder that the State of Minnesota and very likely also the U.S. Department of Justice both believe that Minneapolis public officials are unfit to oversee the Minneapolis Police Department?
Your silence on what went wrong that led to this killing says that you think the criminal conviction and the $20 million civil settlement have answered all the questions that need to be answered. Locking people up and paying out money solves all problems and answers all questions — or at least all questions that need to be answered.
I doubt that many of you have even read the complaint that led to the $20 million settlement. One of you, who was on the Council at the time of the settlement, even told me that such complaints only describe the specifics around the particular incident, not more general policing practices and policies from which lessons could be learned.
To disabuse you of that notion, I am attaching the civil complaint in that case. Read it. For many of you, it will be the first time. Read it with an eye to what lessons can still be learned and to what still needs public discussion. At first, I thought I would help you by pointing out specific paragraphs, but I realized that then you wouldn’t read the entire complaint. And it’s about time that you did.
It’s about time.
Yours,
Chuck Turchick
Ward 6
Ruszczyk-Civil-rights-complaint
