U.S. Minneapolis officers found to engage in racist policing: report

NEW YORK, April 28 (Xinhua) -- The Minneapolis Police Department, in the U.S. state of Minnesota, routinely engages in several forms of racially discriminatory policing, fails to hold officers accountable for misconduct and has used fake social media accounts to target Black people and organizations, The New York Times has reported, citing an investigation released on Wednesday by the state's Department of Human Rights.

The Minneapolis Police Department has a "culture that is averse to oversight and accountability," and city and department leaders have failed to act with "the necessary urgency, coordination and intentionality required" to correct its extensive problems, the investigation concluded.

The Minneapolis police have been under intense scrutiny since cellphone cameras captured the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a police officer during an arrest on May 25, 2020. The state's human rights investigation began about a week later. The department is also under a similar investigation by the federal Justice Department, according to the report.

"Both investigations could result in consent decrees, agreements that are overseen by monitors and enforced by the courts," said the report. Such agreements generally include a long list of required changes, benchmarks and timelines. The state human rights department is seeking public comment on what such a consent decree should include.

At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the report "repugnant" and "at times horrific." He said a host of previous reports and investigations had too often not been followed by action. "This time it needs to be different," he was quoted as saying.