Friday, August 07, 2020

From NBC News:  He reported being assaulted by cops to Minneapolis PD. Why did nobody investigate? An NBC News review of Minneapolis police misconduct reports suggests the filing process is difficult and unclear and a large number are going uninvestigated.

And from Youtube:
Some Civilian Complaints Against Police In Minneapolis Left Uninvestigated | NBC Nightly News



So, I know I said no more political posts.  But I'm going to make one last exception here because:
1) This is a follow-up to something I had already posted, and...
2) There's a chance that this is in the news because of me.

I've already recounted in some detail my efforts to get this story picked up by the media in this blog post HERE, but just to re-cap briefly:
The story had been shared on Facebook, but was not in the mainstream media.  After getting the permission of Lilian Brown, I attempted to get the story picked up by the media by tweeting it at various reporters.  I tweeted the link at 3 NBC reporters back in June (HEREHERE, and HERE). No one ever responded to me personally, but Lilian Brown tells me that the very next day reporters from NBC got in contact with her and her husband.  It could be a coincidence, or it could be a result of my tweets.  I guess we'll never know. (The reporters I tweeted at are different than the ones whose names are attached to the story, but I'm guessing that reporters at NBC share information with each other.)
That was way back in June, and at the time I expected the story to air within days or weeks.  When I didn't hear anything, I thought they had killed the story. But it's obvious now that they didn't--apparently it just took them a couple months to fact check everything and put the story together.  (A friend of mine who works in media had warned me that sometimes it takes a long time to put a story like this together.  Lesson learned.)

In the original Facebook post, it was alleged that the police officers in question were "the exact same officers that killed George Floyd ... officer Derek Chauvin and his partner Tou Thao".  This was not in the NBC story. Presumably because it didn't stand up to fact checking or couldn't be confirmed?  I don't know.
But on the other hand, the really incredible part of this story, the fact that the man was just minding his own business-- sitting in his own apartment watching TV-- before getting beat up by the police...that all appears to be true.

Update: Kare 11 (an Minnesota NBC affiliate) also has covered this:
KARE 11 Investigates: Hundreds of complaints about Minneapolis police not counted

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