Mariani: World is watching Minnesota Capitol

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House Public Safety Chair Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul, says he feels the eyes of the world are upon the Minnesota Capitol in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

As a likely special session approaches Friday, Mariani said he does not intend to disappoint those waiting to see how Minnesota leaders react.

“Literally the entire world—at least the Western world—is going to be looking at what the lawmakers in the state of Minnesota are proposing,” Mariani said. “The reason for that, of course, is because there is a worldwide movement and spirit about ending racism and addressing the abuses of government and police units, however they may exist.”

On June 2, House DFLers issued a package of proposals to reform the state’s policing and criminal justice systems, which they intend to inject into the special session debates. Initially a 22-item package, some issues have been dropped over the past week during extensive conversations with community members, prosecutors and law enforcement, Mariani said.

But the broad strokes of the plan are unchanged. Mariani says its divides into three rough categories.

• Police killings. “Strongly investigating and prosecuting police killings” is the first item, Mariani said. “Of course, we’re talking here about police killings of black men,” he said. This plan would move primary investigation of police-involved deaths to the Attorney General’s Office. It also would strengthen the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s independence and change civil liability statutes of limitations for families of people killed by police.
• Policing and accountability. There are numerous proposals in this vein, ranging from increased police transparency—producing real-time data on deadly-force encounters, for example—to prohibiting “bullet-proof warrior”-style police training. It would also expand the membership of the Peace Officers Standards and Training Board to include more public and racially diverse membership.
• Use of force. Mariani wants to rewrite Minn. Stat. Sec. 609.066, the police deadly force doctrine. Currently, it allows use of deadly force during an arrest “if the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or great bodily harm if the person’s apprehension is delayed,” among other provisions. Mariani’s rewrite would impose what he calls “reasonableness” into the statute’s language, including a clause that “sanctity of life and respecting human rights” would be the guiding factors in decisions by police to use deadly force.

Among items dropped from the agenda was a plan to require all Minnesota police to wear body cameras. Not only is the issue complex and costly, Mariani said, but it remains an open question whether body cams actually change police behavior.

“It’s interesting that as we interacted with the community repeatedly, particularly communities of color, that this was not like the top thing for them,” Mariani said. “No one can argue against it, but there are questions about the efficacy of the use of body cams.”

Mariani spoke by phone with Minnesota Lawyer on Monday, just as the DFL’s People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus and Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, issued separate written statement blasting GOP Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, for failing to offer a justice-reform agenda for the special session following the Floyd killing and subsequent civil disorder.

On June 5, Gazelka spoke to reporters touting reforms that Senate Judiciary Chair Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, has been working on for the past four years. Gazelka said that the special session will be short, to be followed by small legislative group sessions that deal directly with complicated issues like criminal justice and education reform.

Issues as big as the ones the DFL House wants to tackle require extensive committee hearings and other discussions, Gazelka said.

“To actually expect that to be done in the next week is not how the legislative bodies work,” Gazelka said. “We meet in committees and we fully vet issues to make sure we get it right, because it is not just for now. This is for a generation to come.”

The issues that arose in Minneapolis after Floyd’s death are not new, Gazelka said. “The Minneapolis issue has been there for more than a generation,” he said. “It’s been controlled by one part of more than a generation and it is not going to change in a week. But we are committed to help making that change.”

In his written statement, Latz said that he was “disheartened and angry” at Gazelka’s comments, which he took to mean that Senate Judiciary would take no action in the lead up to the special session. Latz called on Limmer to convene his committee this week.

Speaking as a group, the POCI Caucus mirrored Latz’s comments in a written statement, adding: “We believe Minnesotans want us to act boldly and with urgency.”

Limmer could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. As of this writing, no hearings of his committee were scheduled. That doesn’t put much distance between Limmer’s committee and Mariani’s, however.

The House Public Safety committee had scheduled a three-hour, pre-special session hearing to tackle criminal justice reform on June 10. But that was scrubbed and it was not clear at deadline when it would be rescheduled.

However, Mariani said via text message just before this story went to press, he wants his committee to start addressing policing issues as soon as possible, after the special session is called.