Huge Disparities

Minneapolis Police Use Force on Black People 7 Times More Frequently

The city was “a living laboratory on everything you shouldn’t do when it comes to police use of force,” one expert said.

The Minneapolis Police Department has used force against black people about seven times more frequently than they have against white people during the last five years. Of the 11,500 documented occasions that officers used force since 2015, at least 6,650 of those were against a black subject. By comparison, about 2,750 were against a white subject. Though the population of the city is only about 20 percent black, black people are the subject of police force about 60 percent of the time.

Hamline University professor David Schultz, who studies police tactics, told The New York Times that Minneapolis is “a living laboratory on everything you shouldn’t do when it comes to police use of force.”