A trouble-free organization

Human beings do bad things to one another all the time, which is the primary reason we have a system of justice and police forces. You'd like to think that the human beings who function within this system would behave well, but chances are good they won't, at least some of the time. Which makes this Star Tribune dispatch both astonishing and troubling:

Of 439 cases involving Minneapolis police misconduct handled by a new office created last fall, not one so far has resulted in discipline of a police officer.

Police department officials say those numbers obscure gains made in responding to citizen complaints about police behavior, but skeptics say the few cases of actual discipline confirm that the new system is not working any better than the one it replaced.

Damn, that MPD is good. But can that be for real?

Indeed, the lack of discipline resulting from the 439 cases has raised eyebrows.

“It certainly would raise red flags about the objectivity of the office,” said Brian Buchner, vice president of the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. “People should be asking questions and the council should be asking questions about whether it’s effective … Any time you have as significant a revamping as has been done in Minneapolis, the decisionmakers have an obligation to evaluate the impact.”

I'd imagine that if 439 cases were filed, probably 300 or so were groundless. Criminals know that if they claim police brutality, it will at a minimum muddy the waters. Yet it's worth remembering that the MPD has had to pay out some big bucks in the past for misconduct:

The question of how Minneapolis police disciplines its own is facing fresh scrutiny after several recent incidents involving Minneapolis police officers. Two of the incidents involved off-duty officers accused of fighting with black men and using racial slurs in Green Bay, Wis., and Apple Valley, and led Police Chief Janeé Harteau to convene a citizens advisory group this summer.

In addition, the city of Minneapolis made $14 million in payouts for alleged police misconduct between 2006 and 2012, but the Minneapolis Police Department rarely concluded that the officers involved in those cases did anything wrong, according to a Star Tribune analysis.

$14 million is lot to pay in settlements. You have to write a lot of traffic tickets to get to $14 million, so it's safe to wager that taxpayer money has gone out to pay for those settlements. Where taxpayer funds are involved, there should be accountability. I suspect we're going to need more accountability in these matters, and soon.