Chuck Turchick is a certain kind of American Hero. Mr. T. hates police misconduct, unresponsive, opaque government, wrongful death suits, dead Minnesotans, and the smell of burning cities.
Three years ago last month, Justine Rusczcyk was killed by MN after she made a series of 911 calls reporting a sexual assault and rushed out into a dark alley, despite being specifically warned by her fiance (a local), to stay in the house.
Once she was shot, she immediately knew she was going to die. She was 40 years old. I attended every session of her trial.
Mr. T. has attended nearly every meeting of the Policy and Government Oversight Committee since Terrance Franklin, which was before Jamar Clark, which was before Philando Castile. Since Justine Rusczcyk, he’s been politely asking the Minneapolis City Council to publicly address jury questions forwarded on by Judge Quaintance.
He attends every Minneapolis City Council meeting, and emails them about answering those questions every week since the trial and subsequent $20 million settlement. Both of which were a farce, as was any promise for systemic change.
Every member of the Minneapolis City Council, city attorneys, and Judge Quaintance have been cc’d on these weekly emails, as has the Mayor and the Police Chief. No one has ever responded, nor have they taken the time to answer the jury’s questions.
The first business day after George Floyd OD’d on fentanyl in front of a billion people, Mr. T. sent the following email to the Policy and Government Oversight Committee. He also cc’d the rest of the city council (including the Gang of Five who tried to take over the City last month). Again, none of them have answered ANY of the jury’s questions, and certainly didn’t read their City’s Lethal Neck Restraint policies in between Justine’s death and Mr. Floyd’s.
They must have some idea of just how dangerous Minneapolis can be these days, as they coordinated private security for themselves all while screaming to defund the police for everyone else.
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Lessons learned from the shooting of Justine Ruszczyk – communication #50
Dear Policy and Government Oversight Committee members,
I realize your major focus over these last two and one-half months has been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacts the Council’s work on so many levels it’s hard to list them all. But we do, of course, still have a police department, and pre-pandemic, certain issues were left unresolved, and they could come back to bite us. So I will continue with these emails, and whenever you manage to take a breath from all you’re doing that is COVID-related, you might consider taking a look back at what many believe needs to be done in order to build greater trust, and maybe even to minimize the risk of future police-related tragedies. Yesterday’s death of a man in MPD custody is the latest reminder that these incidents will not disappear on their own.
You probably have heard — and maybe have said at some time — that we learn best from our mistakes. Successful leaders across many enterprises often make that observation.
But to learn from our errors, we must recognize and admit when we make them. As difficult as this is for us to do as individuals, it may be even more difficult for collective bodies to do.
So it’s easy, for example, for the City of Minneapolis to lay all of the blame for the killing of Justine Ruszczyk on Mohamed Noor, currently serving a 12 1/2-year prison term for his actions. Convicted and sentenced. Problem solved. His error, not ours. No further action need be taken.
It seems like that is what we’ve done. Except for body-worn cameras policy changes, which were already in the works before the killing of Justine, calls for the City to look beyond the actions of a single individual in this tragedy have been ineffective. The jurors’ questions, Judge Quaintance’s comments, the neighborhood group’s requests have all gone unanswered.
Sometimes, of course, the error is simply an individual’s. But when the individual acted in the name of a collective body, the City of Minneapolis, maybe the collective body should examine what happened and report back to its constituents that there simply was nothing other than changing the body camera activation policy that the City could have done differently.
That is, in the unlikely event there are no other lessons to be learned, that conclusion should be stated openly. If City officials remain silent, people are going to believe the City is hiding something, and that is hardly conducive to building trust, especially after high-profile incidents involving the police.
Once again, I pray that at least one of you is willing to break the silence and call for a report on lessons learned from the shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond on July 15, 2017.
Stay safe; stay healthy.
Yours,
Chuck Turchick
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Every person in that courtroom had a duty to the citizens of Minnesota, to the Rusczcyk Family, and to Justine. The prosecution did theirs, the witnesses played their parts, the jury convicted, and the judge sentenced and passed their questions over for the Mayor, the City Council, and the Police Chief to answer.
Mr. T. keeps emailing, and like the rest of us, keeps waiting for them to answer the questions they were elected to answer.
