Reports reveal Minneapolis police surveilled activists covertly and with racial bias

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In March 2022, the MIT Technology Review found that a Minneapolis police surveillance program, intended to maintain public order amid the 2021 trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, expanded beyond its publicly announced scope. An investigation showed that in monitoring protests, the Minneapolis Police Department used social media-scouring software, cell phone tracking, and widespread facial recognition to target protesters and journalists. The next month, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (DHR) published a report that revealed members of the department had posed as Black activists on social media in order to infiltrate the local activist community.

Key Players

Derek Chauvin, while a Minneapolis police officer, murdered George Floyd in May 2020, a killing that sparked a summer of protests and unrest across the United States. His highly publicized trial in March and April 2021 renewed demonstrations and resulted in a murder conviction.

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) has been involved in multiple high-profile police killings, including the fatal shootings of Jamar Clark in 2015, George Floyd in 2020 by Chauvin, and Amir Locke in 2022. 

Amelia Huffman serves as MPD’s interim police chief. From 2017 to 2022, Medaria Arradondo served as the city’s first Black police chief. In May 2020, Arradono fired all four officers involved in the Floyd incident, saying they were “complicit” in his death.  

Black Lives Matter (BLM), a social justice and protest movement that seeks to combat racism, was founded in 2013 after George Zimmerman, a man who fatally shot Black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012, was acquitted of second-degree murder. BLM had a large resurgence after the police murder of Floyd. As unrest and violence had broken out at some demonstrations, critics have accused BLM of instigating property damage, looting, and physical violence. Others maintain that police behaved unlawfully, attacking protesters and journalists at such events. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that maps and measures crisis-related incidents, an analysis of more than 7,750 BLM demonstrations in the United States revealed that more than 93% of protests between May 26, and Aug. 22, 2020, were peaceful.

Further Details

In the lead up to Chauvin’s trial, MPD was concerned that protests could turn violent, especially if the jury exonerated Chauvin. In February 2021, the department launched a new initiative, called Operation Safety Net (OSN). Arradondo said local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies would work together to monitor threats and extremism, the Review reported. Politicians and protesters criticized OSN, calling the surveillance program unjust and an infringement on rights. 

On April 15, 2021, in a statement signed by several community organizations, TakeAction Minnesota, a progressive nonprofit, called for the program’s immediate end. Two days later, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) likened OSN to “military occupation” in a tweet. “‘Operation safety net’ can’t be an operation to violate people’s 1st amendment rights and their civil liberties,” Omar wrote. “Stop terrorizing people who are protesting the brutality of state sanctioned violence.

The Supreme Court has held that anonymity is a part of the First Amendment right to protest when exercised in a public space. While no court examined OSN at the time, the program made anonymity virtually impossible for BLM protesters and journalists. 

MPD described OSN as a temporary operation, intended only for the duration and immediate aftermath of Chauvin’s trial. When the trial ended with a guilty verdict on April 20, 2021, and demonstrations turned jubilant rather than angry, OSN’s routine press conferences stopped. 

“OSN was a planned response to the Chauvin trial,” MPD said in an email to the Review. “When that trial ended, the operation specific to OSN ended.”

But OSN did not stop, according to an investigation published by the outlet. While MPD stated publicly that OSN had come to an end, internal emails obtained by the Review revealed that the program continued with a new title: OSN 2.0.

Throughout 2021, the Review found, MPD continued to work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Minnesota State Patrol, the Minnesota National Guard, county sheriffs, and other agencies. MPD used the same headquarters and the same facial recognition technology, and even obtained helicopters from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to monitor demonstrations.

Additionally, an independent report from the DHR, published a year after Chauvin’s trial on April 27, 2022, found that MPD used similar surveillance tactics to infiltrate Black activist communities on social media, “without a public safety objective.”

“In one case, an MPD officer used an MPD covert account to pose as a Black community member to send a message to a local branch of the NAACP criticizing the group,” the report said. 

In another instance, an MPD officer contacted a local representative, posed as a Black activist, and misconstrued the Black community’s political views, according to the report. That activity, DHR noted, could “undermine the democratic process,” leading officials to think constituents want one thing when they want the opposite.

DHR noted that while MPD frequently impersonated Black activists, the department never posed as white activists, or activists of any other race. According to the report, this “demonstrates a pattern or practice of discriminatory, race-based policing.” DHR called the department’s oversight and accountability mechanisms around the use of covert accounts “insufficient and ineffective.”

“Covert accounts must be reviewed to ensure they are not being used unlawfully to surveil and engage with Black leaders, Black organizations, or to criticize elected officials,” DHR wrote.

Munira Mohamed, a policy associate at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, told Review that collaboration between law enforcement agencies makes it easier to hide the details of surveillance programs from the public. The “porous nature” of such practices presents “opportunities for loopholes and to evade public scrutiny and public oversight,” she said. 

As of June 18, 2022, MPD had not publicly responded to the Review’s findings, and it was unclear whether OSN remains active. Mohamed said it is often the case that “once the infrastructure for something is set up, it kind of goes on unabated, it continues, and it becomes a permanent infrastructure.”

Outcome 

City leaders react to DHR report

On April 27, 2022, Minneapolis public officials responded to the DHR’s findings.

“The issues in this report are unacceptable,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said. “This report reinforces our need to double-down even further to shift the culture in our police department, to hold up and hire community-oriented officers, and hold those accountable who fall short of our Minneapolis values.”

Huffman said MPD has “been moving forward with reforms to ensure we have an effective, constitutional police service that people in our community need and want.”

“We will review this report to make sure we have a clear understanding of each issue raised,” Huffman said. “We are committed to promoting public trust and officer safety through ongoing investments in our people, training, policies, and processes.”

A separate review, launched by the U.S. Departent of Justice on April 21, 2021, is currently investigating whether the city of Minneapolis and MPD had engaged in discriminatory policing and used excessive force “against individuals engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment.”

As of Aug. 17, 2022, there were no further updates.