The Minneapolis Police Department is on track to finalize most of the policies that require revision under a court-enforced agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, according to the independent monitor group supervising the process. 

As the first yearlong review period of the agreement comes to an end this month, members of the monitoring group, Effective Law Enforcement for All, held a community meeting Wednesday in northeast Minneapolis to update residents on that progress. 

 "A lot of the infrastructure either did not exist and had to be built from scratch, or it had to be rebuilt,” said David Douglass, who leads ELEFA. “It was like saying, okay, MPD, we want you to drive a car, but the road was not built."

The policy changes were required after a state human rights investigation initiated after the police killing of George Floyd found a pattern of discriminatory policing and excessive force. 

ELEFA says several policies will be final or near final by the end of the month, including 14 use-of-force policies and policies related to de-escalation. According to ELEFA’s first six-month progress report released in February, year one is considered a foundational phase. The next phase will focus on evaluation. 

Deputy Chief Bill Murphy said one major focus is finalizing field training officer policy and trainings and ensuring supervisors get adequate training.

"They had a period of time on MPD that they didn't have a new supervisor school, which is bad,” said Murphy. “When you get promoted, you got to go to a school. You got to learn how to do it. That's a work in progress."

The cop convicted of murdering Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was a field training officer. Two of Chauvin’s trainees, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng held Floyd down as Chauvin kneeled on his back and neck for more than nine minutes.

ELEFA leaders say residents can expect a report detailing work from the past six months to be available by the end of May. 

The next community meeting will be held in July. 

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.