Brooklyn Center puts pause on police reform policy

[MELLOW MUSIC] CATHY WURZER: Here's one of our lead stories. Brooklyn Center's city council has tabled a resolution that would have made changes to police stops and searches. The city formed the committee that drafted the policy in response to the police killing of Daunte Wright, which began with a traffic stop in 2021 for an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror and an expired registration tab.

Under the resolution, police would not pull over drivers for these or other minor infractions, and they would not be able to ask drivers to consent to a search. But committee members were surprised when Police Chief Carlos McDaniel voiced concerns over the changes in a council meeting last night.

CARLOS MCDANIEL: I will go on with this presentation, but I will honestly feel that I do not feel comfortable implementing or saying these to my officers.

CATHY WURZER: Hearing this, some of the council members wanted to delay a vote until police were on board. Council member Kris Lawrence-Anderson was among them.

KRIS LAWRENCE-ANDERSON: I want the community, as well as the city council and the police department, to all be in agreement and to be able to get the buy-in from the officers that are going to be doing this work.

CATHY WURZER: After some discussion, the council voted to table the policy. John Solomon has been working on the recommendations as a member of the committee's policy working group, and he is on the line. John, thanks for making time.

JOHN SOLOMON: Oh, you're quite welcome.

CATHY WURZER: What was your reaction to the decision to delay this vote last night?

JOHN SOLOMON: Well, I was very disappointed. And it did-- well, you know, I want to say it didn't surprise me, in reference to the city council.

But the chief's response really was disappointing, and it did surprise me, considering just during the presentation where he shared with our city staff presentations back in June this year, he was in favor of this thing, and especially the watered-down version that we came about just to satisfy them here. We put a couple of things to the side just to kind of make this work for our community.

CATHY WURZER: Why do you think the chief was uncomfortable with these changes?

CATHY WURZER: Well, I just think that it's-- the bottom line is that he's blue more than anything. And don't get me wrong, I really like this chief. I was on the hiring committee, in hiring him. And I know that he meant well.

But after being in this environment and dealing with his officers here, I just think that it comes down to him being more blue than being more community here. And that might be one reason why he suddenly decided to retire-- announced his retirement in September.

CATHY WURZER: Right, and he's going to retire in January. Do you think that there's a bit of a deadline here to get this done before he leaves?

JOHN SOLOMON: No. No, no. I think they want to drag it out until they get a next chief because there's a possibility that chief might come from within there. And it's several community members, as well as one, in particular, city council member that's just from the beginning has been against this stuff and does not want to look anti-police.

CATHY WURZER: Say, we should tell folks, what are the minor traffic stops you're looking to eliminate with this policy?

CARLOS MCDANIEL: Well, and they're simple ones. And they're generally the ones that when we looked at data across the country, especially the data from the Stanford Institute and the Vera Institute, that they're the ones that led to more profiling and profiling accusations and that led to a number of incidents afterwards.

I mean, these minor incidents are usually what ends up in some particular type of incident between police and a person here, and what we've seen in recent years, shootings here and killings of Black and Brown men and women.

The stops that we presented were no stops or detaining for not having an up-to-date registration here, license plate lights improperly showing or out, defective mufflers-- not in a dangerous way, but that it might be making a loud noise.

Other vehicle noise, excessive window tint, improper license plate display, broken, improper use of headlights or tail lights, cracked windshields, and being stopped for having air fresheners and dice hanging from your rear view mirror here.

CATHY WURZER: And we should say, other cities in Minnesota have similar policies that have been enacted. Ramsey County, I also believe, has a similar policy.

JOHN SOLOMON: And the majority of the cities in Ramsey County have taken it on, everybody from Roseville to some of the other ones there. And St. Paul has been doing very well with this. And you know what? That's the real frustrating part is because we actually took the lead on this.

Right after the killing of Daunte Wright, we jumped right on this. And we had cities from all across the country contacting us once they heard because they wanted to know how we were going to go about this and if this was going to get through because they wanted to follow suit. And we gave them a lot of data and a lot of information.

And here we stand, the last one out the box here, there when everyone around us has already enacted these things. And including Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park, who our city police do a lot of interaction with.

CATHY WURZER: So I'm wondering, in terms of the chief's reticence here, part of this policy also states that officers would not be able to ask drivers to consent to a search. Do you think he's thinking that ties officer's hands?

JOHN SOLOMON: Well, I don't really know where his head is at on that particular type case because like I say, he was for this before. And that right there, within itself, is they can ask that. But the point was that we don't have to agree to that.

And that was what the message was going to get out to the community is you don't have to agree to that, unless they have some type of probable cause or reason of suspicion that this vehicle was in the commission of a crime.

CATHY WURZER: How hopeful--

JOHN SOLOMON: And that's the Constitution.

CATHY WURZER: Right. People do have the right to refuse a search, unless, as you say, the officer's got probable cause.

JOHN SOLOMON: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: Say, how hopeful are you that everybody can come to an agreement here?

JOHN SOLOMON: I am not-- I'm at the point right now is that I'm not very hopeful because I just think there's a whole lot of underlying things that are holding this up. And it's a lot of community factors. And there's a lot of factors involving that pro- and anti-police mentality about things.

And there's a lot since that whole Kim Potter, Daunte Wright thing that has caused a huge split in the community. I mean, if you're white, you looked at Kim Potter as a nice person and ran around because that's who she was to them.

But if you're not, then you're in the frame of being stopped out here a lot here and that she represents part of the force that was a big part of that whole type of thing. And so within that, Daunte Wright looks like-- he doesn't look like a mother's son that was killed.

He looks like a criminal that-- we've heard everything from people that oh, well, he was in the wrong. And so he just got killed in the midst of it. And she-- it was accidental, in their minds. To a lot of us, you know, we don't know.

CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm. I appreciate your time, Mr. Solomon. This clearly is something that the council is going to work on, and we'll see what happens. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

JOHN SOLOMON: I asked him to meet with us several times before. They keep saying they don't have enough information, they don't have enough information, and that they've been left out of the process. But yet we presented. We reached out to them.

We've had, at their request, more town halls, which they were a part of. And they have the data. They understand. But I think they're just putting us off into a point to where they want to feel strongly that they can get this thing not passed here.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Mr. Solomon, thank you. We've been talking to John Solomon. John Solomon is a member of the Brooklyn Center Community Safety and Violence Prevention Implementation Committee.

Now, we reached out to the police chief. He was not available for an interview today. Mayor April Graves, another member of the committee, told us this morning that she hoped to revisit the policy in December, after meetings with staff and community members.