BY ED FELIEN
Early Sunday morning, Nov. 15, 911 Emergency was called to treat the victim of an assault at a party in North Minneapolis. Paramedics called for police support once there, because, they said, Jamar Clark was interfering with their treatment of the young woman. Police came and intervened. There was a scuffle between Clark and the police. A police officer shot Jamar Clark in the head above his eye.
The two officers involved in the fatal shooting were put on paid administrative leave. Just 10 days before this, one of the officers, Dustin Schwarze, was named in a police brutality case for allegedly using excessive force with a taser gun on a suspect. In 2009 Schwarze was sued for harassment of an informant; that matter was settled out of court.
The police claim Clark was resisting arrest and went for an officer’s gun.
Eyewitnesses claim Clark was handcuffed when he was shot. Jason Sole, the criminal justice chair for the Minneapolis NAACP, told Channel 9, “Every witness account I heard said he was handcuffed. Every witness account. Put a knee on him and shot in the head. That’s the account I’ve heard from young people, older people, etc.” BCA superintendent Drew Evans confirmed Jamar Clark was unarmed when he was shot and that handcuffs were recovered after the incident. “We’re still examining whether the handcuffs were on Mr. Clark or if they just fell out at the scene,” Evans told Channel 9.
There were dash cam tapes of the incident taken by emergency vehicles. There were private videos taken by civilians at the scene. All these videos have been classified as non-public information during the ongoing investigation.
Later on Sunday hundreds of people marched down Plymouth Avenue to the 4th Precinct Station demanding the police release the tapes of the shooting and demanding a federal investigation of the shooting.
The next day, Monday, Mayor Betsy Hodges announced that she had asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the shooting to determine if Jamar Clark’s civil rights had been violated. Governor Dayton agreed. He also said he had seen the video shot from the ambulance, and the results were inconclusive as to whether Jamar Clark had handcuffs on when he was shot. Later that night police arrested 42 demonstrators for shutting down I-94.
Early Thursday morning, Dec. 3, police cleared the protest site at the 4th Precinct after 18 days of a 24/7 peaceful vigil. One night some people not associated with the protest threw large rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police. No one was seriously hurt. On another night Allen Scarsella fired a pistol at the demonstrators. Five people were shot and taken to the hospital. None of the injuries were life-threatening. Scarsella has been charged with five counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon. Three other men have been charged with second-degree riot as accessories to Scarsella.
Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis NAACP, said there have been “so many false narratives spun by the Minneapolis Police Department as to what has happened. Enough is enough. Release the tapes.”
The mayor has said she cannot order the tapes released because there is an ongoing investigation and the Data Privacy Act rules that all evidence in an ongoing investigation should be non-public.
However, the Minnesota Data Privacy Act also has this important qualification: If it is in the public interest to release data, if there is “widespread rumor and unrest,” if it would “promote public safety,” if it would “aid with the law enforcement process,” then the mayor and chief of police can choose to release the data.
People may disagree about a lot of things with regard to the homicide of Jamar Clark, but few would disagree that withholding the tapes has caused “widespread rumor and unrest.” Releasing the tapes would “promote public safety” because that is the demand that drives the protest, and the mayor and a number of elected officials, ministers and Northside authority figures have said that continuing the demonstrations is a danger to public safety. Finally, releasing the tapes would “aid with the law enforcement process” because it would restore confidence in the police.
On Nov. 19 an Illinois judge ruled that Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago must release tapes of the police homicide of a young black man that happened in October of 2014. The mayor had argued that he shouldn’t release the tapes because of an ongoing federal investigation. Cynics observed that release of the tapes last fall might have been seen by him as a serious threat to his re-election. On the same day the tapes were released, the white officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Laquan McDonald.
Two years ago when Terrance Franklin was murdered by the MPD, none of the evidence was made public until after County Attorney Mike Freeman had taken the case to a grand jury and the grand jury had declined to indict the police officers. That seems to be the accepted method of denying justice to the black community in Hennepin County: stall the investigation for as long as possible, then (once everybody has their story straight) bring it to a grand jury and shape the presentation in such a way that the jurors will come to believe the police actions were reasonable and restrained.
In addition to demanding that the mayor release the tapes, Black Lives Matter is demanding that County Attorney Mike Freeman not hide behind a grand jury when determining whether to indict police officers in the killing of Jamar Clark.
Black Lives Matter would also like to see civilian oversight of the police with full disciplinary powers and residency requirements for police officers.
At an NAACP meeting Dec. 1, Nekemia Levy-Pounds said the nonviolent protest at the 4th Precinct is probably the best insurance that the building won’t be burned down. There is a lot of anger on the Northside, and the protest is trying to channel that anger into something positive and constructive.
Many people in South Minneapolis are quite sympathetic to the protests at the 4th Precinct. Joan Vanhala wrote on the Minneapolis Issues List: “What I don’t understand is, why did the mayor call a press conference at City Hall after organizing substantial support from North Minneapolis leaders to send a message to the Black Lives Matter encampment at the 4th Precinct?
“They all should have gone over to the encampment and taken as much time as needed to sit around the fire and talk it out with BLM. That would have been the respectful approach. Instead they chose to grandstand in front of the press at City Hall, making it look as if the leadership standing behind the mayor did not support the efforts of BLM and were patronizingly chastising their immense effort.
“I think it is overdue for City Hall and the North Minneapolis leaders to give appreciations to BLM for taking on the structural entrenched racism in our city that has led to poverty, violence and death.
“I want to say thank you Black Lives Matter for standing up to the evil of racism in our city and reclaiming our humanity and our conscience!”
This article was written with the help of Kristina Gronquist, Peter Brown, Jordan Kushner, Bruce Nestor, David Tilsen and Debra Keefer Ramage.
