“The mentality that we’re in a war, and the culture of ‘us versus them,’ starts in the academy”
BY LAURA BASSETT June 10, 2020
Getty Images
Since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin brutally pressed his knee onto George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, and three other officers stood by and did nothing as he suffocated to death, the entire world has responded with shock and outrage and demanded an overhaul of American policing.
One of Chauvin’s colleagues, meanwhile, was surprised that it took people this long to notice how bad things were in her own department and with the police in general. “I am a Minneapolis police officer, something I probably should not be broadcasting right now, but I’m tired and want change,” Megan Jones, 27, wrote to me last week. “I want better for my department and I wish it didn’t take the murder of George Floyd for this national conversation on police reform to be had.” Jones agreed to a phone interview on the condition that GQ withhold her real name, because her department prohibits officers from talking to the media.
Jones is something of an outcast in the Minneapolis police force. The other officers—overwhelmingly straight, white, conservative men—wear Trump bracelets, rail about the “lamestream media” and “fake news,” and regularly ostracize and harass the few Black and female officers in the department. Jones, meanwhile, describes herself as liberal feminist. She became a police officer because she studied domestic violence in college and didn’t like the way law enforcement responded to it; she hoped to be a “good cop,” as the expression goes, and change the system from the inside. In 2016, Jones carried a sign at the first annual Women’s March that said “Donald Trump is a racist.” “I posted a picture of it on my private Facebook page and within eight hours, everyone knew, and no one would work with me,” she said. “There were cops who never gave me a chance for that reason. I’m kind of notorious in the department because I don't fit in.”
Being at once an insider and an outsider in the MPD gives Jones a unique perspective on the system that enabled the murder of Floyd. It starts with the paramilitary-style police training academy. “The mentality that we’re in a war, and the culture of ‘us versus them,’ starts in the academy,” she said. “Everything is ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ respect the chain of command, don’t question your superiors.”
She saw this dynamic play out in the widely circulated video of the Floyd murder, in which Thomas Lane, 37, briefly questioned the methods of Derek Chauvin, his training officer and the man with his knee on Floyd’s neck. “You hear the younger officer, four days out of training, say, ‘Do you think we should roll him over?’ Because you’re supposed to immediately roll them into a recovery position,” she said. “But being a cop, you don't tell a 19-year veteran how it’s done. You don't forcibly remove a knee from a neck when they have that much seniority. The culture is, we can't call out our own.”
Then there’s the problem of the police union, which in Minneapolis, is run by Lt. Bob Kroll, who once wore a “white power” patch on his motorcycle jacket, called Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization,” and told union members Floyd was a “violent criminal,” though Floyd had not been suspected of a violent crime. Under Kroll’s leadership, the union has negotiated contracts that crippled the department’s ability to do any meaningful discipline, and police officers who were already racist have understood that they could abuse Black people with impunity. “We've had a number of cases that led to internal investigations, and the worst punishment any officer has received was a 48-hour suspension,” Jones said. “In a department with the track record of Minneapolis, that shows everything.” (On Wednesday, the head of the Minneapolis PD said they were withdrawing from contract negotiations with the union.)
That explains in part why Chauvin, who now faces second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges, had 17 misconduct complaints filed against him before he killed Floyd that hadn’t derailed his career. Jones said when she and her colleagues first learned of the incident, “our immediate reaction was: ‘What was he still doing on patrol?’”
Since Floyd’s murder, Jones says the police have been “run ragged.” Days off were canceled; she’s worked at least 80 hours of overtime in the past week responding to protests, and tensions are running high. Jones’ colleagues are “sick of having to work every day because of [Chauvin’s] fuck-up, to be blunt,” she said. “There’s the frustration and confusion of why he would put his knee on a man’s neck for eight-plus minutes, but also frustration with the riots and political leadership. It’s Democratic leadership here, so it’s, ‘The liberals are out to get us; the liberals hate cops.’ And there's no room for context.”
After centuries of American law enforcement officers abusing their power and disproportionately targeting and brutalizing Black people, the Floyd incident has sparked growing calls to defund or even entirely do away with the police. Most Democratic politicians, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, oppose defunding and disbanding and would prefer to implement reforms, while activists note that the police have proven themselves for decades to be impervious to reform: a New York police officer choked Eric Garner to death, for instance, years after the N.Y.P.D. had banned chokeholds.
Jones, of course, is a police officer by trade, and therefore disagrees with leftist activists that disbanding the police force, as Minneapolis city council members have said they intend to do, is a good or even workable solution. She pointed to a number of logistical barriers to its dissolution becoming a reality: The Minneapolis City Charter requires there to be a police force proportional to the city’s population. The council wants the fire and emergency medical services departments to start responding to overdoses, but under state law, only peace officers and mental health professionals have the authority to write a transport hold to force someone to go to the hospital. The council wants to replace traffic cops with cameras, but in 2007, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that traffic cameras are unconstitutional. Mayor Jacob Frey has said he supports reforming, but not disbanding the police—so the council would likely have to let voters decide whether to amend the rules at the ballot box in 2021.
“I get the frustration,” Jones said. “And they can certainly cut our funding. But we live in a country with as many guns as people. I don't understand how it's even feasible to be a major city without a police department.” (No U.S. city as populous as Minneapolis has ever attempted to disband its police department, but CNN reported that Camden, New Jersey, has managed to dissolve and reimagine its system of policing rather successfully.)
Jones does support a thorough “pattern or practice” investigation into her department, stronger disciplinary practices, deep reforms to the hiring and recruitment process for police, and a much longer training period by which officers can learn better, safer techniques with which to defend themselves, like Brazilian jiu jitsu. She says the past few weeks of watching her colleagues use excessive force to crush protests have only further highlighted the problems in her department. “The vast majority of these protests are peaceful,” she said, “and the way law enforcement in this city is responding is just proving why people are protesting.”
Laura Bassett is a GQ columnist, and a freelance journalist writing about politics, gender, and culture.
Since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin brutally pressed his knee onto George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, and three other officers stood by and did nothing as he suffocated to death, the entire world has responded with shock and outrage and demanded an overhaul of American policing.
One of Chauvin’s colleagues, meanwhile, was surprised that it took people this long to notice how bad things were in her own department and with the police in general. “I am a Minneapolis police officer, something I probably should not be broadcasting right now, but I’m tired and want change,” Megan Jones, 27, wrote to me last week. “I want better for my department and I wish it didn’t take the murder of George Floyd for this national conversation on police reform to be had.” Jones agreed to a phone interview on the condition that GQ withhold her real name, because her department prohibits officers from talking to the media.
Jones is something of an outcast in the Minneapolis police force. The other officers—overwhelmingly straight, white, conservative men—wear Trump bracelets, rail about the “lamestream media” and “fake news,” and regularly ostracize and harass the few Black and female officers in the department. Jones, meanwhile, describes herself as liberal feminist. She became a police officer because she studied domestic violence in college and didn’t like the way law enforcement responded to it; she hoped to be a “good cop,” as the expression goes, and change the system from the inside. In 2016, Jones carried a sign at the first annual Women’s March that said “Donald Trump is a racist.” “I posted a picture of it on my private Facebook page and within eight hours, everyone knew, and no one would work with me,” she said. “There were cops who never gave me a chance for that reason. I’m kind of notorious in the department because I don't fit in.”
Being at once an insider and an outsider in the MPD gives Jones a unique perspective on the system that enabled the murder of Floyd. It starts with the paramilitary-style police training academy. “The mentality that we’re in a war, and the culture of ‘us versus them,’ starts in the academy,” she said. “Everything is ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ respect the chain of command, don’t question your superiors.”
She saw this dynamic play out in the widely circulated video of the Floyd murder, in which Thomas Lane, 37, briefly questioned the methods of Derek Chauvin, his training officer and the man with his knee on Floyd’s neck. “You hear the younger officer, four days out of training, say, ‘Do you think we should roll him over?’ Because you’re supposed to immediately roll them into a recovery position,” she said. “But being a cop, you don't tell a 19-year veteran how it’s done. You don't forcibly remove a knee from a neck when they have that much seniority. The culture is, we can't call out our own.”
Then there’s the problem of the police union, which in Minneapolis, is run by Lt. Bob Kroll, who once wore a “white power” patch on his motorcycle jacket, called Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization,” and told union members Floyd was a “violent criminal,” though Floyd had not been suspected of a violent crime. Under Kroll’s leadership, the union has negotiated contracts that crippled the department’s ability to do any meaningful discipline, and police officers who were already racist have understood that they could abuse Black people with impunity. “We've had a number of cases that led to internal investigations, and the worst punishment any officer has received was a 48-hour suspension,” Jones said. “In a department with the track record of Minneapolis, that shows everything.” (On Wednesday, the head of the Minneapolis PD said they were withdrawing from contract negotiations with the union.)
That explains in part why Chauvin, who now faces second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges, had 17 misconduct complaints filed against him before he killed Floyd that hadn’t derailed his career. Jones said when she and her colleagues first learned of the incident, “our immediate reaction was: ‘What was he still doing on patrol?’”
Since Floyd’s murder, Jones says the police have been “run ragged.” Days off were canceled; she’s worked at least 80 hours of overtime in the past week responding to protests, and tensions are running high. Jones’ colleagues are “sick of having to work every day because of [Chauvin’s] fuck-up, to be blunt,” she said. “There’s the frustration and confusion of why he would put his knee on a man’s neck for eight-plus minutes, but also frustration with the riots and political leadership. It’s Democratic leadership here, so it’s, ‘The liberals are out to get us; the liberals hate cops.’ And there's no room for context.”
After centuries of American law enforcement officers abusing their power and disproportionately targeting and brutalizing Black people, the Floyd incident has sparked growing calls to defund or even entirely do away with the police. Most Democratic politicians, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, oppose defunding and disbanding and would prefer to implement reforms, while activists note that the police have proven themselves for decades to be impervious to reform: a New York police officer choked Eric Garner to death, for instance, years after the N.Y.P.D. had banned chokeholds.
Jones, of course, is a police officer by trade, and therefore disagrees with leftist activists that disbanding the police force, as Minneapolis city council members have said they intend to do, is a good or even workable solution. She pointed to a number of logistical barriers to its dissolution becoming a reality: The Minneapolis City Charter requires there to be a police force proportional to the city’s population. The council wants the fire and emergency medical services departments to start responding to overdoses, but under state law, only peace officers and mental health professionals have the authority to write a transport hold to force someone to go to the hospital. The council wants to replace traffic cops with cameras, but in 2007, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that traffic cameras are unconstitutional. Mayor Jacob Frey has said he supports reforming, but not disbanding the police—so the council would likely have to let voters decide whether to amend the rules at the ballot box in 2021.
“I get the frustration,” Jones said. “And they can certainly cut our funding. But we live in a country with as many guns as people. I don't understand how it's even feasible to be a major city without a police department.” (No U.S. city as populous as Minneapolis has ever attempted to disband its police department, but CNN reported that Camden, New Jersey, has managed to dissolve and reimagine its system of policing rather successfully.)
Jones does support a thorough “pattern or practice” investigation into her department, stronger disciplinary practices, deep reforms to the hiring and recruitment process for police, and a much longer training period by which officers can learn better, safer techniques with which to defend themselves, like Brazilian jiu jitsu. She says the past few weeks of watching her colleagues use excessive force to crush protests have only further highlighted the problems in her department. “The vast majority of these protests are peaceful,” she said, “and the way law enforcement in this city is responding is just proving why people are protesting.”
Laura Bassett is a GQ columnist, and a freelance journalist writing about politics, gender, and culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment