Minneapolis has faced ‘unique trauma,’ says newly named police monitor

The newly appointed independent monitor who will oversee the state and impending federal consent decrees over Minneapolis police said Friday the city has undergone “a unique trauma” in the past several years.

“Many communities across the country have had to deal with excessive force by police, killings by police, but none have been affected like Minneapolis,” said David Douglass, president of Effective Law Enforcement for All. He was interviewed Friday by phone from his home in Silver Spring, Md.

Douglass noted that in addition to the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the Twin Cities have experienced other high-profile police killings, including that of Jamar Clark in 2015 by Minneapolis police, and Philando Castile, who was killed by a St. Anthony police officer in 2016.

“Minneapolis has experienced this pain for a long time,” he said. “But Minneapolis communities have been engaged in the movement for better policing for a long time, and what we really were impressed with was the commitment to change and the willingness to work with us to achieve the change Minneapolis is seeking.”

Douglass said his team is “very excited” to start their work in Minneapolis as soon as early March. “All of us have got experience with this kind of change, and we can see how it can work in Minneapolis,” he said.

Former New Orleans police Superintendent Michael Harrison, a team member, will be meeting with Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. There will also be meetings with the department’s training staff.

John Salomone, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who specializes in logistics, will manage the project. Salomone created the office that regulates off-duty police work in New Orleans. Arlinda Westbrook, former deputy chief of the public integrity bureau for the New Orleans police, will be in charge of the community engagement effort. Douglass said he was impressed with how she handled those efforts in New Orleans and said he’s committed “to engaging with all interested constituencies directly and meaningfully.”

“I have an opportunity to make an impact on a matter that affects the whole country, and it’s important to me as an African American,” said Douglass, 64. “Academics have said that police brutality is the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, so if I can be part of finishing that work, that would be the privilege of my life.”