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Minnesota Police Admit They Can't Be Trusted to Not Murder You

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The Minnesota Department of Public Safety is the state agency that oversees statewide law enforcement, such as the State Patrol and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

And as we know, both in Minnesota and nationwide, traffic stops can turn deadly very quickly — for the motorist. For police, traffic stops turning deadly are exceptionally rare events.

In Minnesota, George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Derek Chauvin and the willing complicity of three other officers has garnered the most national attention, but traffic stop murders by the police have earned much local attention and outrage Daunte Wright was murdered April 11th of this year by Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter, ironically less than a week before Derek Chauvin was found guilty of Floyd’s murder. Potter claims she was reaching for her stun gun and drew her service weapon by mistake.

Another traffic stop-turned-fatal was on July 6, 2016, when Philando Castile was murdered by St. Anthony officer Jeronimo Yanez, after complying with Yanez’s order to retrieve his driver’s license. Yanez was charged with the appallingly light charge of second-degree manslaughter and was acquitted a little less than a year later.

It's this second incident that comes to mind with yesterday's announcement by the MnDPS.

On both Twitter and Facebook, MnDPS announced its solution to cops shooting and murdering motorists in traffic stops was… to offer these bags, in which they expect motorists to put their documents, so that when complying with a police officer’s order to produce them, that the police will not see the motorist reaching into their pocket and murder them on the chance the motorist will pull a weapon out.

Needless to say, the blowback was immediate and fierce, and they got “ratioed”, as the young folk like to say. I know some diarists love to present a list of “best-of” replies, but I’ll let you click through to the posts if you want to see them. There’s a lovely mix of righteous outrage and wry humor.

But this is what the state organization in charge of the police has to offer in response to the very real danger of an obviously poorly-trained (or worse, deliberately trained) police force to be fearful of the literally one-in-a-million chance they’ll be killed by the driver they just pulled over: a thinly veiled admission that yes, the police might shoot you if you reach for your wallet in your pocket and that they are putting the responsibility on you to not have to reach for your wallet by, presumably, taking your license out of it and putting it in this “I’m not reaching for a gun, sir” bag.

No retraining. No acknowledgment that their offering of this “Look, my hand is nowhere near my pocket, no need to point that gun at me, kind sir” bag is clear evidence of a systemic problem that they need to address. Just another expectation placed on motorists to go to extraordinary lengths to not be murdered by the officer pulling them over.

Just a fucking bag.

A Twitter post from the MN Department of Public Safety showing Valerie Castile touting a "license and insurance" bag to prevent police shootings
Wow.

Oh, and then? They doubled down by trotting out the mother of the man they murdered to tout the “please don’t murder me, Officer Krupke” bag. As if they couldn’t be any more tone-deaf.

I’m sitting here gobsmacked at the thought that these “I want to live, I’m begging you” bags were proposed, workshopped, discussed in committee, approved, manufactured, and announced and nowhere did anyone say “This is a colossally bad idea.” But here we are. 

Fuck the police.

PS: In Minnesota you are not required to carry a copy of your vehicle registration in the car. License and proof of insurance is all you need. So the stupid messaging isn’t even right.


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