A few days ago, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the Minneapolis Police Department of a pattern of bias and excessive force, the product of a wide-ranging federal investigation into the department following the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
Garland said the federal investigation revealed that long-standing problems existed in the department before that moment. Garland also declared that the patterns and practices they observed made what happened to George Floyd possible.
This action by the Department of Justice affords us the opportunity to consider racism in a proper context. There is a too-widely held assumption that racism is a series of independent acts by individuals. However, racism that affects the operation of society is systemic. It is the result of the policies and practices of institutions.
As we get concerned about the racism of police officers, we should realize that their racist behavior is often a function of the policies and practices of the police departments. These practices are sometimes referred to as “patterns and practices.”
A federal remedy for unconstitutional conduct by law enforcement officers is 42 U.S.C. §14141, the “pattern or practice” statute, which was enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
This statute prohibits government authorities or agents acting on their behalf from engaging in a “pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers … that deprives persons of rights …secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” It authorizes the Attorney General to sue when he or she has “reasonable cause to believe” that such a pattern of constitutional violation has occurred. The scope of investigations has ranged from police use of force and unlawful stops and searches to racial and ethnic biases. Many of these investigations are resolved by consent decree—a judicially enforceable settlement between DOJ and the local police department—that outlines the various measures the local agency must take to remedy its unconstitutional police practices.
The DOJ investigation determined that the Minneapolis Police Department had a pattern of four distinct types of violations of civil rights:
Officers use excessive force, both lethal and less lethal
Racial bias in law enforcement, with disproportionate stops and actions taken against Blacks and Native Americans
Suppression and punishment of protestors and journalists
Discrimination against people with behavioral disabilities, including the use of force during non-violent mental health crises.
Regarding racial bias, Garland says the Department found MPD officers “stopped Black and Native American people nearly six times more often than white people in situations that did not result in arrest or citation, given their shares of the population.”
It is difficult, however, to discuss occurrences of racism when the predominant way of thinking about racism is that it is the intentional product of occasional bigoted individuals, and not of institutional practices. The former does occur; however, the latter—institutional policies and practices—are where we should focus attention. If racist consequences result from an institution’s laws, customs, or practices, that institution is racist whether the individual maintaining those practices has racist intentions.
By focusing on patterns and practices of police departments DOJ addresses systemic racism.
