Michelle Gross and the Minnesota group she leads seek to hold police accountable

The news conference at Minneapolis City Hall had quickly morphed into a protest rally, with speakers blasting police for killing an innocent Black man while conducting a no-knock search warrant.

"What do we have to do to stop police from shooting down men who look like us?" City Council Member Jamal Osman asked the crowd. The question was turned back on him by a member of the ad hoc coalition that had organized the event.

"Sir, you have been on the council for two years," said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB). "What are you going to do about it?"

Gross went on to outline a plan to put legislative guardrails on no-knock warrants. "I'm not here to make news. I'm here to make change," she told the crowd.

At a time when deaths at the hands of local law enforcement officers are drawing rising scrutiny, few voices have been as relentlessly critical of police practices over the past two decades as that of Gross, a 64-year-old retired health care manager from north Minneapolis.

Twenty-one years ago Gross helped launch CUAPB, an organization that has grown in significance in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020 and the demand for police reforms.

"People used to say I hate cops," Gross said. "No. We don't hate cops. I believe in professional, constitutional policing that serves the needs of the community."

CUAPB was once commonly viewed as a fringe group, but it is now often seen in a different light. Gross said video footage from cellphones and body cameras showing police using excessive force has opened more eyes to misconduct.

Video of Floyd's death was critical in the arrest of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his subsequent murder conviction — and will likely be a factor in the fate of the three Minneapolis officers awaiting a verdict in the federal trial where they are charged with depriving Floyd of his civil rights.

Days after Amir Locke was shot dead by Minneapolis police, Gross was talking with legislators about a bill to restrict no-knock warrants. Last year she wrote Travis's Law, signed by Gov. Tim Walz, that requires 911 dispatchers to route certain calls to available mental health crisis response teams.

Kimberly Handy-Jones, whose son Cordale Quinn Handy was killed in 2017 by St. Paul police, calls Gross "a gladiator for justice." Toshira Garraway, founder of Twin Cities-based Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, said Gross and CUAPB have provided invaluable assistance.

Gross gets more mixed reviews from some law enforcement officials.

"She is very passionate about things that move her, but sometimes she's a little misguided and could take a step back to look at the entire picture before she gets everyone fired up," said former Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor. "Sometimes she does not have all the facts before she speaks."

Gross contends the roots of police misconduct stem from a white supremacist mindset that permeates American society.

"It is not about bad cops, good cops," she said. "It is about a system that validates this conduct and allows it to continue. There is a belief that if you don't beat people up, the cops are not going to be able to control crime. I think that is completely ridiculous.

"Some people go into policing for noble reasons. Allowing that kind of culture to continue creates a horrible environment for officers who don't want to be part of that culture."

Gross was born in a Cleveland suburb, the oldest of five children in an Air Force family that moved around the country. She graduated from high school in Florida, received a degree in health care administration from the University of Phoenix and went to work in health care management in New Orleans. It was there she first drew the ire of police, she said, with her support of gay and women's rights and police accountability.

When she was five months pregnant with her daughter in 1987, she said, her car was pulled over by police who then brutally assaulted her.

"I was devastated," she recalled. "Friends told me not to file a complaint about this. They said you'd get killed. And there were people who got killed for complaining about [New Orleans] police. I dropped out of everything. Once I came out of that fog, policing became a primary focus."

Her involvement in abortion rights campaigns led her to Minneapolis, where she said she fell in love with the activist community. She moved here as part of a job transfer and soon got involved in a number of causes.

Gross said she's been arrested eight times, all in protests, and that each time the charges were dismissed. She said she won a $10,000 settlement in a lawsuit she filed after she was detained and strip searched in 2008 when Ramsey County sheriff's deputies raided an activist center during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

In 2000, Gross was one of four activists who founded CUAPB. One of them has since died and two others have moved on, but Gross stayed with the group and became president about six years ago.

No one in CUAPB gets paid, including Gross, who now works part time for a local attorney. The organization has about 50 core members and a board that meets every Saturday to map out initiatives and strategize with families affected by police misconduct.

In some respects, CUAPB foresaw the tragedy that unfolded when Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck and killed him in the presence of three other officers. CUAPB pressed Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo in 2017 to start a training program developed in New Orleans that teaches officers how to intervene when another officer is using excessive force. Arradondo adopted the program last summer, a year after Floyd was killed.

In the aftermath of Floyd's death, CUAPB became a go-to group for national and international news organizations that sent reporters to the Twin Cities. Its files contain a massive amount of data on Minneapolis and St. Paul police, including disciplinary records on thousands of Minnesota officers.

Last year, CUAPB hired 30 canvassers to conduct 1,500 interviews of community members, many of whom alleged police misconduct or failure to investigate cases, and turned the interviews over to the Justice Department to assist with its investigation of the Minneapolis police.

Gross is "consistent and correct more than I'd like to admit, and that has been very helpful for me in identifying quality law enforcement," said Mendota Heights Police Chief Kelly McCarthy, who chairs the Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Board overseeing the licensing and training of police officers. Gross sits on an advisory committee that reviews POST Board rules, including standards of conduct and licensing requirements.

"She took issue with warrior training before a lot of us did," said McCarthy. "She took issue with duty to intervene before a lot of us. She took issue with training standards and she was right. ... There's a lot of things she says about police officers that I don't agree with, but at the end of the day, she wants us to be better."

Of late Gross has been working with lawmakers, including Rep. Athena Hollins, DFL-St. Paul, on no-knock warrant legislation. Gross "has a good grasp of what we will be able to get through a divided Legislature, and where we might have to make compromises," Hollins said.

Gross has told a House committee that CUAPB supports Hollins' bill, which places major restrictions on such warrants. "No-knock warrants should be a tactic of last resort," she said.

Gross uses a walker now because of a bad knee, but it hasn't slowed her. On a bitterly cold night last month, she led a group of protesters — most of them less than half her age — in a demonstration outside Mounds View City Hall, demanding the release of body camera footage in a police shooting. It was released a short time later.

"She works harder than anyone in the movement," said Dave Bicking, who sits on the CUAPB board. "When someone is killed by police, the families more than likely know who we are and they come to us."

"I'm a survivor of police brutality," Gross said, "and I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through."