Dear Mayor Frey, City Council Members, Chief O’Hara, Commissioner Barnette, and CCPO Commissioners,
In ten days, on June 7, it will be the fifth anniversary of Hennepin County Judge Kathryn Quaintance issuing the questions about policing in Minneapolis, which she recited at the beginning of her sentencing statement of Mohamed Noor for the killing of Justine Damond. As you no doubt recall, those were the questions that Judge Quaintance said the jurors in tha trial had told her they felt had not been answered during the trial. As you probably know from my many emails, Judge Quaintance recited essentially those same questions two and one-half years later, on October 21, 2021, once again saying, “The jurors and the people of Minneapolis need and deserve answers.”
So far, no relevant official in Minneapolis, whether elected or non-elected, whether a paid employee or a volunteer, has answered those questions. In fact, no such official has even mentioned the Quaintance jurors’ questions publicly. It’s as if those questions were never asked, let alone asked in such an unusual setting and by such a high official.
Yes, we all know that Judge Quaintance is a County, not a City, official. And we all know that she’s in the judicial branch, not the legislative or executive branches. But do you think that she didn’t know that? Of course she did. But she still felt that the jurors’ questions were important enough to relay to Minneapolis public officials in a setting that she knew would be highly publicized. And she did it twice.
If for no other reason than to show her and the jurors in that case some respect, some public official in Minneapolis ought to respond in some way. If for no other reason than to demonstrate your commitment to improving policing in our city, some public official in Minneapolis ought to respond in some way.
Minneapolis was one of the six cities selected for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Its third pillar was police-community reconciliation by acknowledging and addressing past and present harm. What better first step could a Minneapolis public official take in that regard than to publicly respond to Judge Quaintance and the jurors in the Mohamed Noor case?
The settlement agreement with the MDHR mandates an MPD Review Panel to review use-of-force incidents that meet certain criteria. Why not begin by trying to learn what we can from certain high-profile use-of-force incidents in the past that ultimately led to the MPD being monitored by both a state court and soon-to-be a federal court? As I have suggested too many times, we could begin with the Justine Damond killing and the Quaintance jurors’ questions, and then move on to police-involved killings in recent years for which the City Council and Mayor have approved substantial settlements and which are no longer in the courts. What, if anything specific, have we learned from those cases? If anything, why can’t we say so publicly?
The Quantance jurors’ questions of June 7, 2019, would have been a good place to start. Five years is much too long to have waited, but maybe it is never too late to take that first step toward police-community reconciliation.
Yours,
Chuck Turchick
