Minneapolis — More than 1,200 people died during interactions with police in the United States last year; It’s the deadliest case in a decade, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit that tracks data from law enforcement agencies across the country.

And never before had a civilian death brought a city’s police department under such intense scrutiny at that time. 2020 George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. Since then, the Minneapolis Police Department has spent at least $2.5 million on training and hiring, but some community members say that hasn’t translated into trust.

“I don’t know that it will get better, and I don’t think it will get better in my lifetime,” Sayge Carroll said. It operates a pottery workshop, using funds diverted from the city’s police budget to expand artist-led community healing, among other services and programs.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara says fixing what’s broken requires a paradigm shift.

“I naively thought this was a place ripe for change, but it wasn’t,” O’Hara said. he said. “…Slowly, we began to gradually make changes to align the agency’s culture with the values ​​of the community.”

He made a point of taking to the streets, performing, traveling together, and meeting community leaders where they were.

“It’s not possible for law enforcement to reduce and keep crime low if we’re not also trying to build trust,” O’Hara said. “…So the most important thing to me is not to change the policy here. It’s to change what cops actually do on the street.”

months later O’Hara takes office in 2022, and Minneapolis police Ministry of Justice Addressing a pattern and practice of exploitation. Before that in June 2020, the city is banned Choking and restraint techniques similar to those used on Floyd.

At a training facility, O’Hara literally manipulates posters showing an officer being held hostage.

Asked if such images reinforce fear, O’Hara said: “Of course. It’s sort of an ‘us against them’, this very, very militaristic approach to policing.” he said.

Michelle Phelps, author and professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, says Minneapolis represents “both the promise of liberal police reform and its enduring failures.” Yet he also saw positive steps.

“There’s been some innovation in how we think about reducing contact between police and community members. You’re also seeing other types of responders who can come into these types of situations who are unarmed and non-intrusive. “I’m not trained in how to use violence,” Phelps said.

Muhammad Abdul-Ahad, managing director of Touch Outreach, is one of these interveners.

“Our job is more preventive. (The police) are more responsive,” Abdul-Ahad said.

Six nights a week, Abdul-Ahad leads a team of volunteers who de-escalate conflicts before the police are called. He said trust between his organization and police has been “much better” since O’Hara became chief.

Four years after Floyd’s death“We’ll figure out if the systems start working for us,” Caroll says.

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