Minnesota Experience

I was there i 67 when the uprising occurred.

A revolt against oppression.

The mayor has complete power over the police department.

President Nixon refers to me as an extremist... The police are in charge of the police.

You are literally in a police state.

The American Indian Movement was born in Minneapolis directl in response to police brutality.

I don't think Minneapoli is unique because George Floyd was murdered here.

I think Minneapolis is uniqu because it erupted in protest.

- No one in America will talk to you the way I'm talking to you.

- Yeah.

I, we know.

- No one in America.

- It's a big deal.

Few police leaders in American history were more famous or infamous than Anthony Bouza who led the Minneapolis Police Department from 1980 to 1988 after rising to notoriety in the New York Police Department.

We were able to talk to Chief Bouza two years before he passed away.

- White America hires cops to control Blacks.

- [Yohuru Williams] And he was still as charismatic as ever.

- That's what it does.

And it has controlled them through slavery, Jim Crow, incarceration.

That's how it does it.

- What was your kind of view of policing here in the late sixties and seventies that set you up for when you came in?

- If you close your eyes, really, you couldn't tell the difference between the Bronx and Minneapolis.

You really couldn't.

The rhetoric was the same.

The problems were the same.

Racism, street crime, 911.

So I didn't have to alter my view at all.

- Excellent job.

[Interviewer] What have you heard?

- I've heard that he handles his policemen very well and that he has a very good public image.

- Public is delighted with his performance.

- Police Chief Bouza and his administration have exhibited a commitment to recruiting well-qualified personnel, particularly minorities and women.

- He has depoliticized the police department, and it was long overdue.

- Good job as far as I'm concerned.

- You seem to have a lot of support in the community, though it seemed like the community really loved you.

- All the people loved me.

That was my constituency.

- Tell us about that.

- When you get to be chief of police, you have to decide who is going to be your base.

The union and the cop members, be one of the boys, tolerate racist acts, the political establishment, the mayor, or the public.

The policeman fundamentally has a ringside seat on the greatest show on Earth.

- [Yohuru] Tony Bouza's public profile soared following his appearance in the 1970s documentary "The Police Tapes" where sharp insights and commanding presence made a lasting impact.

- The insularity grows, the parochialism grows, and they become an island.

And this is reflected in, in names like Fort Apache.

Here we are surrounded by a bunch of hostiles.

We are a sea, an island of heroes and a sea of hostility.

It is us and them.

There are a bunch of animals out there.

- [Yohuru] That film, as well as his dynamic leadership style in the Bronx made him one of the inspirations for the fictional Frank Furillo from the hit TV drama "Hill Street Blues."

(sirens wailing) (radio chattering) His unfiltered comments, well read rants, and pointed barbs all made him a press favorite during his time in Minneapolis.

- And I want to reiterate, this report does not allege widespread brutality.

They had a lot of hearings and very few people showed up.

It occurred to me that I might paraphrase Lincoln Steffens and say about Minneapolis.

"I have seen the past and it worked."

- The anti-war Eugene McCarthy, progressive sower in the DFL thought he was wonderful.

I mean, he was so clever.

He set his mind.

He was a fresh face.

They loved to entertain him at dinner parties in Kenwood.

But you know, the cops didn't go to dinner parties in Kenwood.

- One thing I'm wondering, we hear a lot that the Minneapolis Police Department is top heavy with management, is it?

- Oh God, yes.

Yes.

I have refused to make any more promotions.

It's absolutely swollen, top heavy with brass.

- Bouza is careful to think about administrative questions, bureaucratic questions.

He's interested in how many captains and lieutenants there are, for instance, because every time the cliques changed in the 1970s, people got promotions.

So it was a very top heavy department in 1980, he advocates for one person squad cars, instead of having two officers in a squad car, he changes the number of precincts from six to four.

And this causes incredible consternation amongst the rank and file officers in the Minneapolis Police Department.

- Now you're really talking about bureaucratic efficiency, not reform as what communities of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and the indigenous community calling for.

- Yeah in the 1970s, one of the markers of the department's dysfunction was in fact the absolute breakdown of anything resembling equitable policing for African American communities, for Indigenous communities, and for LGBTQ+ communities.

And that had come to a head actually in 1979 and 1980, for instance, when the vice squad is raiding gay bathhouses in the city of Minneapolis.

- [Interviewer] You don't, you don't like Bouza?

- No, I don't.

- [Interviewer] What don't you like about him?

- I don't like his attitudes towards the gay people in the city.

- [Interviewer] Like Black, Brown, and Native communities, LGBTQ plus Minnesotans have faced over a century of police harassment with officers policing the private and social lives of consenting adults with impunity.

By the late 1970s, police and political leadership ramped up this effort with raids on bathhouses, adult bookstores, and other LGBTQ+ gathering places.

- There were aspects of police and municipal behavior in the 1980s that were shocking.

I mean, that were just downright shocking.

The Minneapolis Police Department was storming into bathhouses, beating up the people inside of them, dragging them out into the street, you know, confiscating the contents of these bathhouses, putting them on display in City Hall for like publici--, you know, for these kind of photo op opportunities.

And Tim Campbell was one of these people who would go right up to police officers and say, why are you targeting gay men?

You know, he would ask these direct questions to people and he would publish it on the front page of his newspaper.

- Words are real cheap with Chief Bouza.

And he's been real visible with some pro-gay words, which has rankled cops.

And they've taken their anger out on us in ways like "Lord of the Flies," harassment, a small amount of brutality, a tremendous amount of arrests.

We're not overjoyed, at least I'm not overjoyed with what's gone on in regard to Tony Bouza.

- This is actually my first visit to the Gay 90's, for a long time, relations between the, what was basically homophobic police department and the large and thriving gay community were pretty tense.

You know, I organized a, an annual softball game between the police department and the gays.

So every year we had a softball game and I had to give the cops a day off to participate, or they wouldn't do it, had to bribe them.

The last raid on the bath houses was February 10th.

I was sworn in the 11th.

No more raids.

(gentle music) - This is basically coming out of the recent murder of Robert Churchill.

- [Yohuru] In addition to being overpoliced, the LGBTQ+ community felt underprotected by police and the city as deadly violence became a pressing issue in the 1980s.

- There's some major agenda items that still have not been addressed or they've been addressed, but they have not been resolved.

Ahh, entrapment of gay men where gay men meet, such as in parks and bookstores and so forth.

- We've had a million dollars more of expense in the gay community with entrapment arrests under Bouza's administration than in the previous two years.

- Let the chief- - What about entrapment?

- Well, I think that we are performing, that we are vigorously enforcing vice laws.

- Can we talk a little bit about your decoy operations?

- Who was the principal villain in the street prostitution, the John.

So arrest Johns, send police women out, and let them look like prostitutes, and arrested Johns who approached them.

- Gail Plewacki, Gail Plewacki was the most assaulted at one point person in Minneapolis.

- I had a woman named Gail Plewacki that I sent out there, and she was mugged like 200 times.

You know, she came into my office one day, I said, I'm taking you off that, the decoy.

I'm assigning another woman.

Why?

it's my responsibility to distribute the risk.

- She was put in jeopardy every time she engaged one of those operations.

It's kind of interesting story.

- Yeah one of the problems of the decoy squad is what happens when the officer themselves comes into harm's way.

- Right.

- It's seen as kind of especially dangerous work, but then if you're a woman in a largely male department dealing with all the gendered issues that are happening there, and then your actual duty on the street is often in this case, in her case, to pretend to be a sex worker.

- Right.

- I mean, the peril is everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere.

So this is the decoy squad, 1984, arresting a John, again entrapment.

- Yeah, classic.

- Classic entrapment.

And of course, that was one of the legal foundations of the critique of the decoy squads that the police are actively trying to entrap or ensnare citizens in illegal activity.

- Which becomes a big conversation point in the Sal Scott killing.

- [Announcer] The six Minneapolis police officers who make up the decoy unit began working the streets in January of 1983.

They're charged from police officials to analyze crime patterns and recreate them selectively using officers to pose as victims in an attempt to arrest the perpetrators.

Police chief Tony Bouza says, the operation has been successful, netting hundreds of criminals.

Minority leaders call the operation a bit too successful though, netting, they say a disproportionate number of minorities, especially strong public concern came in the aftermath of the shooting death of Sal Saran Scott last September.

- [Yohuru] There was the controversial killing of Sal Scott.

- Yeah, that was a strange case.

I'm not God, I'm not the repository of all information, so I wanna make it clear that, we're dealing with my own flawed human understanding.

I investigated the case and concluded that it had been an accidental shooting.

- [Announcer] Officer William James was carrying a double barrelled shotgun.

Police say the suspect who was unarmed at first appeared to give himself up, but then... - For some unknown reason, a man turned, jumped on one of the officers and the gun went off.

- And we did not shoot him in church.

He was not praying.

He had mugged someone.

He's a mugger.

- That young man was murdered.

That's the issue.

The bottom line is the decoy program that they set up, we want disbanded in our community.

That's the first thing we fighting for.

Mayor Frazier called me up, I need you to stop calling Sal Scott's case "murder."

I said, I'll never stop.

It was murder.

I have the pictures and I let him see.

So I had copies of 'em.

I let him see 'em.

The reason they were so, so threatening, just like Floyd, you got that phone on this case I had the pictures.

And boy, they, you're gonna stop saying, no, I'm not.

It's murder.

I'm gonna say it.

- I was not gonna waste my energy fighting Black leaders, whether they were good or bad, there were too many evil white leaders to fight.

But let me give you a delicious irony.

Do you know the fourth precinct?

Do you know where it is?

- Yes.

- The heart of the Black community.

Do you know what used to be on that site?

Spike Moss's The Way Do you think that was an accident?

- I'll tell you a little story.

This is where The Way was.

- This is it.

- Where this police precinct is.

It's very significant to know that the police precinct is exactly on Plymouth Avenue, where The Way was, that's more than symbolic.

That's erasure, erasing the history and the significance.

Now nobody knows what The Way was, except the people who were around.

This is, help me to understand what that thing is that people call "liberal."

That's the guy who leaves the room when the fight begins really.

- Well, there's real tension there because from the perspective of Black politicians on the north side, that new precinct needs to be in a space that speaks to the needs of the Black community.

- Exactly and that means that they argue it should not be on West Broadway, but instead should be located on Plymouth Avenue.

- Where you place the fourth will lead African American politicians.

In that moment, van White and Sharon Sayles Belton on the city council to actually question the motives of their colleagues.

They're helping to make the case that Plymouth Avenue is the appropriate space for this new precinct.

- Is it gonna be another example of African American communities not getting tax dollars, not getting the support that they need, not getting the things that their communities deserve, including safety.

- So their argument is that that proximity on Plymouth Avenue will ensure a degree of safety or protection that that community doesn't know intimately, and yet there's also concerns that putting it in that space, it will actually make Black people more vulnerable, more overpoliced.

- Exactly there's this ongoing tension between being overpoliced and underprotected.

- The reason people come to defend the police is because they understand them as a source of protection.

Now in southwest Minneapolis, they are right that police protect and serve them.

In North Minneapolis, it is not under a delusion that police protect and serve them.

It is under a hope that the next time will be different and an acknowledgement of the reality that there is nobody else they can call.

- [Yohuru] So the lot where The Way had been years before became the new MPD fourth precinct.

Years later, it would be the focal point of early Black Lives Matter protests.

But the city opened another new police station in the mid 1980s.

This one on the south side of Minneapolis, retired Judge Lajune Lange was one of the first Black female judges in Minnesota history.

The elder is a tireless advocate for democracy, civil rights, and civil society.

We met at the burned out third precinct as it awaited the city and the community to decide its fate.

What's the significance of this spot?

- Well, the third precinct has been a problem for the community for many years.

And before George Floyd, it was not a functioning precinct.

And so to have George Floyd murdered by officers from the third precinct was just a blow that the community has not recovered from.

- It's interesting 'cause when we think about the history of this space, it's opened in 1985, $1.1 million, and it was supposed to be a model precinct.

It was supposed to create opportunity and community engagement, what went wrong?

- There appeared to be lack of oversight, lack of supervision, and lack of really determining who would get assigned to the third precinct.

- What does transparency really look like beyond structures, beyond buildings?

- Well, I think with regard to a claim of lack of transparency for the third precinct over time, I think one would want to look at the unprocessed rape cases.

How many missing people have been reported in this precinct?

How many cold cases, unsolved homicides have come out of this precinct?

So I think you just take the data to see whether there are systemic failures in this precinct that set it apart.

- I wasn't a crazy liberal.

I was a law and order chief.

They think I'm a liberal because I think Blacks ought to have simple justice.

I mean that, that tells you where we are.

Good God.

You really have to be reasonably ruthless.

I knew what I wanted to do and I wasn't gonna let anyone stand in my way.

- What does reasonable ruthlessness look like?

- Make sure that they understand your rules.

Do the right thing.

Racism has no place in our function.

You want to arrest somebody, you need evidence, you want to beat somebody up, go ahead, but you better make sure you are overcoming resistance.

I greatly increased the number of arrests, rapidly answered true emergencies within six minutes and greatly expanded the traffic enforcement.

Those are the three things I wanted to do, and I did it.

And you know, what happened to crime in my nine years, inexorable climb.

Why?

Couldn't figure it out.

I had run a very aggressive police department in the Bronx, crime rose.

I ran a very aggressive police department in the subways, crime rose.

I ran a very, very aggressive police department in Minneapolis.

I taught 'em to do choke holds and chases and all kinds of aggressive things, all kinds, decoys, stakeouts, stings, very aggressive.

Arrests went way up and so did crime.

I thought, why, I can't control crime.

Cops are irrelevant to crime.

- [Yohuru] Increased policing, increasing crime.

Anthony Bouza seemed genuinely perplexed by the contradiction of police work, even decades after his retirement from the MPD in 1988.

The late chief's three, three year terms seemed to achieve Mayor Frazier's goal of stamping out overt police politicking.

But Bouza's tenure, like much of Minneapolis police history remains paradoxical.

- I am not going to apologize for an aggressive police operation that has police officers risking their necks.

- [Yohuru Williams] As Anthony Bouza was departing City Hall in the late '80s, a University of Minnesota law student arrived in Minneapolis and into the long line of public safety activists and reformers.

Keith Ellison would go on to be elected to the US Congress and to become one of the most recognized attorneys general in the nation, following his prosecution of Derek Chauvin.

But he got his start in civic engagement in Minnesota as part of a movement that successfully fought for a civilian review board to address police misconduct.

- I think civilian review can have a positive impact, but over time they tend to be subject to regulatory capture, meaning that the people who are there day in and day out will eventually get friends of theirs, sympathetic to their point of view, in a decision-making process and change the rules to essentially neuter the institution, which is what happened with Minneapolis Civilian Review.

- [Yohuru] When Rodney King was brutally beaten by the LAPD, and when the officers all walked away free after acquittal, Los Angeles burned in protest.

Ellison and others in Minneapolis organized a massive peaceful march calling for justice and change in response.

You lead a march from Penn and Plymouth.

- Sure.

- Down here, 6,000 people.

What was happening in that moment?

- Sort of a culmination, right?

There was a police incident involving five of my friends at the Embassy Suites Hotel, right down the street.

And then on the north side there was Lillian Weiss and Lloyd Smalley, who were killed in a botched drug raid.

- These were 1989, the winter of 1989?

- Right.

That's exactly right.

And then, you know, the whole tragic incident involving Rodney King occurs.

It just felt like a statement needed to be made.

We were very deliberately reaching out to the human family, right?

- [Yohuru] The moment in time even led to a truce among Twin Cities' gangs, offering hope for reducing Black on Black violence.

(crowd cheering) But later that year, the shocking murder of MPD Officer Jerry Haaf sent a terrible tremor through the city, inflamed aggressive policing, revived the law and order mantra from a generation before, and emboldened the Minneapolis Police Federation to reenter the political sphere and amplify their influence in the years that followed.

- [Reporter] Immediately, the Police Federation of Minneapolis blamed the murder on the policies of Chief John Laux and Minneapolis elected officials.

- The policies they have adopted have done nothing, I repeat nothing, nothing to reduce the crime problem the citizens fear and the police must face.

- Today, the Minneapolis Police Federation unveiled a radio ad, which some fear will politicize the situation further.

- [Narrator] Waited until he was alone, snuck up behind him, fired their illegal guns into his back.

- [Yohuru] The radio ad, police union rallies, press conferences, this moment stands out in the Federation's history of activism and political actions.

- Now today, the police officers' union again was in a high profile role at a public rally.

- [Yohuru] Reminiscent of the political campaigning in the early 1960s, in a dramatic moment to come in 2019, when the union president stepped onto the political stage with a presidential candidate.

With the dawn of a new century, old challenges persisted.

In a 2002 incident, Minneapolis police used a choke hold to restrain an African-American man.

He died in police custody by what the coroner would describe as "neck compression."

Christopher Burns was the first official homicide committed by the Minneapolis police using a neck restraint on a suspect already in custody.

He would not be the last.

Other troubling moments in the new millennium included the City of Minneapolis paying out more than $2 million in police misconduct settlements in 2004.

In 2008, Quincy Smith died in police custody after being tased and beaten.

In 2010, David Smith was killed during an arrest when officers knelt on his back, causing what the coroner called "mechanical asphyxiation."

In 2015, Jamar Clark was shot and killed by MPD during an arrest.

- [Officer] You're gonna face the door right now.

- Listen up, stop.

- I was leaving.

- [Yohuru] The ongoing incidents of police violence across the country fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

And for Gary Hines of the Sounds of Blackness, the group that gave us the 1990's hit, "Optimistic," George Floyd's murder bought forward a different call, the civil rights era lament, "Sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Sick and tired of being sick and tired You can't breathe Sick and tired of being sick and tired No justice no peace Sick and tired of being sick and tired I'm so tired Sick and tired of being sick and tired No justice no peace Sick and tired of being sick and tired - [Yohuru] And so we found our way back to the third precinct in 2025, the building that was erected as an attempted reform itself, the ideals of its construction never fully realized.

The station that dispatched the officers who would confront George Floyd two miles away, at this place.

(poignant music) Five years on, the space where George Floyd took his final breath was also awaiting its future form.

Whatever it becomes, George Floyd Square will always be seen as hallowed ground, the place the world came to a reckoning of how far American policing had strayed.

(poignant music continues) - [Public Speaker] George Floyd changing the world is a energy, a monument engraved on every intersection, representing every stolen name, executed, handcuffed, and suffocated, gunned down, violated, branded on every police station.

Changing the world shouldn't always begin with death.

- [Yohuru] But our journey of historical recovery suggests this should also be a space to recall the century and a half struggle over public safety in a city of paradoxes, of police and politics, mayors and chiefs, resistance and reform.

- [Speaker] That's all we're asking you to do is to get up and do something.

Put the people in office that will make change.

Give money to those who are about change.

Pray for those who enact change.

Do something.

(poignant music continues) - [Yohuru] This history is written.

And it did lead to the flames of an uprising, and they were followed by the flickering candle lights of guarded optimism.

As we write the next chapter in the pursuit for better public safety, I'm reminded of James Baldwin, and wondering, which flame will be the fire next time?

(poignant music continues) (upbeat music) (bright music)