Dear Public Health and Safety Committee Members,
Your next meeting, on June 7, 2023, will be the exact four-year anniversary of Hennepin County District Court Judge Kathryn Quaintance beginning her statement at the sentencing of Mohamed Noor by relaying questions the jurors in that trial felt still needed to be answered. Not all of you, but some of you, were on the Public Safety Committee at that time, so you saw the attached transcript when I copied you on my June 7, 2019, email to the PCOC commissioners. The rest of you have seen it on attachments to multiple emails since you have become Council members and members of this committee.
As you know, I began this suggestion of having lessons-learned discussions with these Quaintance questions because if you wouldn’t do that for a White woman who called 9-1-1, you certainly wouldn’t do it for young Black men who were suspected of possible criminal conduct. But I soon added to my lessons-learned request some cases of MPD officer-involved killings that were no longer in the court system and for which the Council had unanimously approved large civil settlements, namely, the cases of David Smith, Terrance Franklin, and Jamar Clark.
But so far, no one in Minneapolis City government — not the Mayor, not the Council, not your committee, not the Chief of Police, not the Commissioner of Community Safety, not the PCOC — has seen fit even to respond negatively to Judge Quaintance. During this week’s 1st and 3rd Precincts’ open house, I did discuss this briefly with Mayor Frey, and, surprisingly, he seemed much more open with respect to the Quaintance questions than his aides whom I’ve been talking to over the past four years have been. They have given me so much spin that I’ve always felt dizzy after talking to them or reading their infrequent email responses. Apparently, they have never really communicated this suggestion to Mayor Frey, and he must have staff read and filter emails that are sent to him.
But since the Mayor didn’t commit to anything, you still have the opportunity to do the common-sense and respectful thing by answering Judge Quaintance, even if you tell her to mind her own business. As you know, she repeated those questions at her re-sentencing of Noor on October 21, 2021, so at least at that time, she felt these questions still had not yet been answered.
Will one of you please suggest that this item be put on your agenda for this coincidental four-year anniversary June 7th meeting? Or, in the alternative, as I’ve asked all of you before, how many signatures from voters in your ward would it take for you to make that suggestion? Just name the number, and I will get you those signatures.
Still frustratingly yours (and getting more frustrated by the day),
Chuck Turchick
Ward 6
For your reference:
Hennepin County District Court Judge Kathryn Quaintance’s opening remarks in her sentencing of Mohamed Noor, June 7, 2019
“The primary concern of the jurors who heard the testimony in this case when I spoke with them after the verdict was: Will there be changes? Change is needed. Will some of these supervising officers be fired or disciplined? Is what we saw normal for the Minneapolis Police Department and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension? How will this be prevented from happening again?
Why are officers more concerned about their personal safety than the safety of the public, especially in such a low-crime neighborhood? Why was there so much discussion of ambushes?
Why should a civilian have to be afraid of approaching a squad car? What about the motto on the car door – ‘To serve with compassion’? Why were Noor and Harrity so reactive? What was their training? The jurors were particularly concerned with Officer Harrity’s statement that his priority was making sure he did whatever he had to do to get home safe each night. Jurors remarked that they thought the priority of the police was supposed to be to protect and serve the public.
“No one who heard the testimony in this case or who works in the criminal justice system can question the difficulty of a patrol officer’s job or the dedication of the majority of the police and first responders, but here something went very much awry. The victim’s family and some of the witnesses, including some officers, have expressed concerns. A large amount of taxpayer dollars. will go to Australia, but Minneapolis residents await the promised ‘transformation,’ and the questions of the jurors remain unanswered: What has changed? What will change so this does not happen again? How does the Department address officer safety without jeopardizing public safety? The jurors and the people of Minneapolis need and deserve answers.
“As Ms. Sweasy [one of the prosecuting attorneys] noted, the actions of officers are subject to a very high level of scrutiny. They have a lot of power. They are sworn to uphold the law. A high level of scrutiny is appropriate for those with the power to stop, arrest, detain, and the authority to use force, including TASERs and guns.”
