A Minneapolis activist group warns law enforcement will dominate a just-announced working group looking at ways to reduce the number of police shootings of suspects in Minnesota. Michelle Gross with Communities United Against Police Brutality says the way the panel and its upcoming hearings are set up, won’t allow enough involvement of community members: “We’ve had way too many of these kinds of working groups, where the wrong people are at the table and little to nothing gets done, and it wastes the community’s time when what we really need is change,” Gross says.
Governor Tim Walz responds, “We just announced [the formation of the working group]. Give us a chance to fail, I guess, if that’s what they think we’re going to do, but we haven’t even started. We’re starting to put this together.”
The working group will have public hearings in August, September and October, then make recommendations to the legislature and to law enforcement agencies.