MINNEAPOLIS– At least 11 Minneapolis police officers were disciplined for alleged policy violations amid the unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd, with punishments ranging from firing to reprimands, newly released documents show.
Police officials have been slow to release disciplinary reports as a result of the department’s response to the sometimes violent protests that erupted after Floyd was killed in May by Derek Chauvin, a white former officer who spent nearly 9 1/2 minutes on the officer’s neck. black man knelt. August 25, 2020. Bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries: “I can’t breathe.” His death forced a reckoning with police brutality and racism.
The recent releases were first reported by the Star Tribune on Friday. The department generally does not announce the outcome of disciplinary cases until they have gone through the entire review and appeals process. It took more than a year before an officer was even issued a written reprimand for speaking without permission to a reporter from GQ magazine about the department’s “toxic culture” after Floyd’s death.
The unsealed, sometimes heavily redacted reports are posted on a department dashboard detailing disciplinary decisions following a series of incidents. Some of the most serious sanctions imposed in cases related to the unrest stemmed from a May 30, 2020 police attack on Jaleel Stallings.
Officials from the officers’ union, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday.
Many details in the Stallings case emerged in previous court filings, but the reports detail some of the reasons former interim police chief Amelia Huffman gave for firing Officer Justin Stetson and suspending others. In the redacted report on Stetson, Huffman wrote that he used “unreasonable force” that could have led to “even more serious” injuries.
Stallings, an Army veteran with a permit to carry a firearm, had fired three shots at an unmarked police van after Stetson shot him with a 40mm “less lethal” bullet, the report said. The officers imposed a curfew that evening. When Stallings realized it was police, he dropped his gun, lay down on the ground and did not resist. But Stetson kicked him in the face and head, punched him several times and hit his head on the sidewalk, Huffman noted.
Stallings — who suffered a fractured eye socket, plus cuts and bruises — argued in the resulting lawsuits that he believed civilians had attacked him and that he shot in self-defense. Stetson pleaded guilty to assault last year and was given probation. The city agreed to pay Stallings a $1.5 million settlement in 2022 after Stallings was acquitted of attempted murder.
Other discipline resulting from that incident included a 120-hour suspension for Officer Tyler Klund for kicking Stallings and hitting a man who was with Stallings that night in the head and not activating his body camera. Huffman also imposed 80-hour suspensions on officers Michael Pfaff and Michael Osbeck for their actions against the other man. Pfaff used his Taser nine times in less than a minute, she said.
Officer Kristopher Dauble received a 40-hour suspension for firing 40mm rounds at pedestrians about a block away from where police confronted Stallings. Huffman said it was fortunate no one was injured as a result.
Sergeant Kevin Angerhofer, who oversaw SWAT teams in the area that evening, was given a 60-hour suspension for failing to conduct a proper troop check.
An earlier report signed by Medaria Arradondo, police chief when Floyd was killed, detailed the attempted firing of Sgt. Ronald Stenerson, who sprayed a chemical in the face of Vice News journalist Michael Anthony Adams while he was already on his stomach, holding his press credentials for officers to see. Stenerson did not document his actions or activate his body camera, the report said. The Star Tribune previously reported that Stenerson contested his firing and stayed on his job before later resigning.
Arradondo said Stenerson’s actions were all the more egregious because he was a supervisor, so his behavior “cannot be tolerated or accepted.”
The reports also show that current Police Chief Brian O’Hara last May imposed 10- to 40-hour suspensions on three officers who confronted protesters blocking the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis on May 31, 2020 .