"The investigation I am announcing today will assess whether the Minneapolis Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force including during protests."

Said Attorney General Merrick Garland, quoted in "Attorney General Merrick Garland announces an investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department" (NYT).

So-called pattern-or-practice investigations are often the precursors to consent decrees, court-approved deals between the Justice Department and local governments that create and enforce a road map for training and operational changes.... The Obama administration had repeatedly used the tool to address police misconduct. The restoration of consent decrees was one of the Biden administration’s first significant moves to hold police forces accountable in cases where they are found to have violated federal laws. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Mattman26 writes:

Good for the Biden Administration for committing to ferreting out the racism in the Democratic Party!

The whole “City X last had a Republican mayor in [year]” thing has become kind of an all-purpose giggle line for righties (myself included).

But seriously here: Except for a weird one-day thing, Minneapolis has had nothing but Democratic mayors dating back to the early sixties. The City Council (per Wiki), which governs the PD, has 12 Democrats and one Green (and that’s it). The Chief (nominated by the mayor, approved by the City Council) is a Black man who has held the post since 2017, and whom you’d have to guess is not a Republican (not because he’s Black, but because he got the job). And I’d guess you’d have to go way back in time to find a Chief who wasn’t Democrat-leaning.

So who hires these cops? Who trains them? Who disciplines them? Who provides their rules of engagement? It’s Democrats all the way down.

AND: Jeffrey emails: 

I didn't watch all of the Derrick Chauvin trial, but I watched enough to know that central themes included that his actions were far outside the norm of policing, as trained or practiced in the Minneapolis Police Department. So what happens to this ex-cop, oh-so hung out to dry by his department, when it is found that the problem wasn't that he was a rogue cop, but that he was literally doing what he understood to be his job? Doesn't that go to the whole "reasonable police officer" standard at the heart of the case? Shouldn't they have been announcing this investigation just like they were announcing the 8-figure settlement the city reached with the Floyd family? I mean, if we're improperly influencing the jury, shouldn't we do so in a balanced way?

"After the officer fired, she is heard on the video saying, 'Holy shit. I just shot him.'"

From "Minnesota Officer Who Shot Daunte Wright Meant to Fire Taser, Chief Says/Officials from Brooklyn Center said that the fatal shooting was an 'accidental discharge,' and released body-camera video of the encounter" (NYT). 

“It is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their Taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” Chief Tim Gannon of the Brooklyn Center Police Department said of the shooting on Sunday of Daunte Wright, 20, during a traffic stop. “This appears to me, from what I viewed, and the officer’s reaction and distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.”... 

Chief Gannon said that Mr. Wright had been initially pulled over because of an expired registration on the vehicle he was driving. The video showed a brief struggle between Mr. Wright and police officers before one of the officers fired her gun.

The topic of race does not come up until the 5th paragraph of this article, where we are told: "Mr. Wright was Black. City officials did not identify the race of the police officer." The gender of the officer is revealed in the first paragraph, but only by way of the pronoun "her." The quoted statement from the police chief avoids pronouns.

It's hard to fathom the incompetence that would be necessary to mix up your taser and your gun. How is it possible that these 2 items are shaped and positioned in a manner that would allow them to be confused? 

FROM THE EMAIL: I received a lot of email on this post, most of it from readers who saw the mixup as something that just can happen, because the 2 devices are shaped similarly and the police officer is under pressure. Some said that the taser is usually positioned on the opposite side of the body from the gun, so that you'd know you have to reach across to the other side to get the gun. One reader said the news has now reported that the police officer in this incident did have the taser properly positioned on the other side of her body. But here's the one email I wanted to post in full, from Mattman26:

The tragic incompetence of the taser-gun mixup ain’t the half of it. Watch the guy trying to cuff Daunte. What’s with all the fumbling around? Cuffs are designed to be slapped on; they practically close themselves around the wrist. What on earth was that cop doing? Had he never done this before? And more crucial: Why on earth would you be trying to cuff a wanted man in the open doorway of a running car? The incompetence is staggering.