The Minneapolis City Council is frustrated over the slow review of the city’s response to the unrest in 2020. Minneapolis was plagued by riots as well as peaceful protests after the death of Goerge Floyd on May 25, 2020. Due to the massive amounts of damage and the repercussions of the violence, the city contracted a third party consulting group to assess the city’s response to the situation. As reported on FOX 9, “a final report and its recommendations aren’t due until January of next year but some city council members say that’s too long to wait.”
In a city council committee meeting on Thursday, the provider of the internal audit gave an update on the progress of the audit. Bob Boehmer, the project lead with Jensen Hughes, gave some progress reports. Boehmer explained some of the goals of the audit including reviewing “the responses from various City of Minneapolis and any relevant assisting agencies directly following George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020.”
Boehmer also said that another goal was to “understand community perspectives on the City of Minneapolis’s response to the protests and the various departments’ communications and interactions with the community before and during the protests.”
They are conducting an after-action assessment, which Boehmer explained is an “opportunity to understand what happened and why it happened, and to identify strengths and weaknesses” – especially regarding police response, communication, and First Amendment rights.
While there aren’t any solid findings or recommendations from the report yet, Boehmer reported that they have conducted a large amount of research with over 90 interviews of police, firefighters, and other city employees. They have also been reviewing internal documents and body cam footage.
The report is due to be finished in January of 2022, but there are concerns that it’s not soon enough.
City Council President Lisa Bender posed a question to Boehmer saying, “What if history repeats itself in the interim? The police kill people in our city with some frequency and so it’s possible that between now and the end of the report, a person will be killed by our police department. But I’m not convinced that we have the tools in place to do a better job of responding as a city.”
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun | Star News Network and The College Fix. She graduated with a degree in Communications from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul. Send news tips to [email protected].
Photo “Minneapolis Police Officer” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
