Years of mistrust have undermined relations between Minneapolis police and black community: ex-chief

When veteran police officer Janee Harteauwas appointed Minneapolis police chief in December2012, therewas hope that thenoted reformercould help mend the force's historically poorrelationswith thecity's black community.

But when asked Tuesday whether or not she failed in that taskgiventhe eruption of outrage, protest and violence in the city over the death of George Floyd she chose her words carefully.

"I would say that clearly what we did wasn't enough,"Harteau, the first woman to hold theposition, said in a phone interview with CBC News.

The comments from Harteau, who resigned as chief in 2017, come as protests and scattered violence has rocked Minneapolis and other cities across the U.S. following the death of Floyd, who had been arrested on May 25 by police on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

Floyd was on the ground face down and handcuffed while one officer held his knee on his neck for more than eight minutes, according to a criminal complaint.At one point, Floyd stopped breathing.

Derek Chauvin, 44, who has been fired from the force, was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

'How could that happen?'

"For me to see it be done at the hands of the Minneapolis police department," Harteau said,"how could that happen? Knowing everything we did?"

She believes she made progress with some initiatives, includingimplicit bias training, along with increasing the number ofofficers on foot so that they could connectbetter with the community.

However, she said,"when you look back, it makes you question everything you knew.But what I know for certain then is I was doing all of the things that everybody was saying needed to be done."

She said that the current tensions are an "accumulation of years of issues, years of mistrust."

"Then things seem to get better. We start making progress. And then each time it seems an incident becomes more egregious," said Harteau, who iscurrently the president & CEO of Vitals Aware Services, which offersan app of critical information for first responders.

"I had my share of controversial incidents, said Harteau, who was forced out as chief after a 40-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia was shot to death by a member of her police force.

"And the common denominator isthey are all tragic."

Harteau puts much of the blame for tensions between the police department and the black communitywiththe current police union president Bob Kroll, whose resignation she called for after he described Floyd as someone whohad a "violent criminal history" and said that the demonstrations were part of a "terrorist movement."

Systemic racism blamed

However, others believe the problems run deeper and that this is more than a series of incidents involving only some members of the police force.

"[People need] to think about and talk about this not as individual recent incidents, but as systemic racism in the way that the system itself is set up and the way the culture of the department is set up," said Tony Williams, a community activist in the city.

When the 3rd Precinct was torched last week, the same precinct where the four officers involved in the detainment of Floyd were stationed,the organized protests there were"based on generations of harm," said Mike Griffin,a community organizer in Minneapolis.

WATCH | A community organizer in Minneapolis speaks about the anger directed toward the city's police force:

Protesters and Police Clash in Minnesota

4 years ago

Duration 6:14

CBC News Network's Michael Serapio speaks with Mike Griffin, a community organizer in Minneapolis.

"The police precinctspecificallyis a symbol of white supremacy. And that is where a lot of the protests and angerwas directed toward."

Indeed, relations have so soured that some have given up on reform.

Jason Sole, a criminal justice educator and past president of the Minneapolis NAACP, told CBC News that policymakers need to focus onshrinking the current police departmentand eventuallyabolishit.

'We have peoplein thecommunity who are amazing folks. They are therapists, social workers, and they're also licensed to carry," he said. "We trust them a little bit more than we trust law enforcement."

Sole said he's "been choked by police, pepper-sprayed. I've been through the worst things of law enforcementin my life."

Williams, whocontributedtoMPD150, a report into the 150-year history of the Minneapolis Police Department, has also called for the dismantling of the force. He said despite thenumber of reformist politicians and police chiefs throughout the years, including the current police chief who is a member of the black community,there have been no significant changes in how the black community is treated.

Police 'impervious to reform'

"It's very clear that the police are set up in such a way that makes them impervious to reform," he said.

"If we have the best reformistchiefs possible in these positions and we have these politicians who are deeply dedicated to this, which is what they've been telling us for nearly 100 years or longer, thenit's clear that it doesn't work."

Keith A.Mayes, a professor of African American and African Studiesat theUniversity of Minnesota, said with the city home to some of theworst disparities within the black community in the U.S., including income levels,income gaps, educational gaps, rates of incarcerationandrates of home ownership, the situation "was just a powder keg waiting to explode.

"So, the police abuse on top of the massive inequality in the state gave rise to what you see today taking place in the streets."

David Schultz, a professor of political science atHamline University in Saint Paul, Minn.,said while the relationship between the black community and police in Minneapolis has been poor for decades, he believes it became worse in the 1990sand 2000s as the black community grew from about 10 per cent of the city's population to 20 per cent.

Schultz said when heused to teach a class in the early 2000s about police criminal and civilliability, he would tell his students that. "Minneapolis was like a living laboratory in everything you can do wrong."

WATCH | Protesters set the Minneapolis Police Department's 3rd Precinct on fire:

Minneapolis police driven from 3rd Precinct as protesters set station on fire

4 years ago

Duration 0:49

The city endured a third night of protests and violence after George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died in police custody.

"I would bring in these press clippings of major police abuses. The city would settle for six and seven figures, et cetera, et cetera. And so you just got this long train ofthe police abusing its authority. And nothing's changing."

Not taking action against police abuse

As well, Schultz believes some of the anger stemsfrom the fact that when police abuses do occur, the county attorney's office has ahistory of not taking action as people would like to see it take.

Harteau's own tenure was marked by two high-profile police shootings.In 2015, Jamar Clark, a black man, wasshot and killed during a scuffle with two white Minneapolis police officers. Two years later, U.S. and Australian dual citizen Justine Damond, a white woman, wasshot and killed by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, a black man.

"The police officer who kills Jamal Clarkis not prosecuted for it. The county attorney moves rapidly to prosecute the black officer who kills Justine Damond," said Schultz.

"So, think about those images. Those are not good images."