Contents:

• Occupy the CRA: No Impunity for Chief Dolan!

OCCUPY THE CIVILIAN REVIEW AUTHORITY
No Impunity for Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan!

Wednesday, January 4 at 3:00 p.m.
City Hall, Rm 239
350 S. 5th Street, Minneapolis

During its last two quarterly reports (at least), the Civilian Review Authority (CRA) has reported that MPD Chief Tim Dolan has been violating a city ordinance. However, city council members, the mayor and even the CRA itself are all turning a blind eye to this misconduct.

The issue is spelled out on pages 9-10 of the CRA’s third quarter report of 2011 (see it here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/groups/public/@communications/@cra/documents/webcontent/wcms1p-081533.pdf). Once the CRA sustains a complaint, it is forwarded to the chief for possible discipline. We’ve written many times about the chief’s failure to discipline sustained CRA complaints, which renders the CRA toothless. However, the law gives him a lot of latitude in that regard. The issue now is WHY he isn’t disciplining the complaints.

The ordinance governing the CRA spells out the process the chief is to use (and this is explained on p. 9 of the report). The ordinance also spells out that Dolan must make his decision “based on the adjudicated facts as determined by the civilian review authority board.” In other words, he has to accept the CRA’s findings of fact and decide accordingly.

The CRA’s third quarter report reveals three reasons were given by Dolan for failing to discipline complaints. One of those is “disagreement with the facts as determined by the CRA.” THIS REASON FOR FAILING TO DISCIPLINE IS A BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE LAW.

Local activist Chuck Turchick filed a complaint with the CRA over this issue. CRA staff members assured him he had standing to file the complaint, accepted it, and then violated their own procedures by refusing to process it. He filed a second complaint, with the same result. All he got was “the complaint is closed.”

The community has had a lot of issues with the CRA even sustaining complaints in the first place and with them taking way too long to do their work. Now, apparently, the chief is hands off. We say, hell no!

Join us for a mass complaint filing session at the CRA office on Wednesday, January 4th at 3 p.m. Attached is the complaint we are planning to file. After filing our complaints, we’ll stay downtown for the CRA board meeting at 5:30 p.m. as it was recently revealed that the CRA director has been having secret meetings with the head of Internal Affairs about how to “redesign” the CRA to be more to the liking of the cops. CRA board members weren’t even aware of those meetings. The board meeting that night should be plenty spicy.