Pattern-or-Practice Investigations and Police Reform
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo talks with protesters at the scene of George Floyd s death in May 2020. (Chad Davis, https://flic.kr/p/2j7CLYT; CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)
On April 21, the morning after a Minneapolis jury convicted former officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department had opened a civil investigation “to determine whether the Minneapolis Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing.” Garland conceded that Chauvin’s conviction “does not address potentially systemic policing issues in Minneapolis.” But he noted that the Justice Department’s probe a “pattern-or-practice” investigation will offer a chance to “look beyond individual incidents to assess systemic failures.” Less than a week later, Garland announced that the Justice