Minneapolis Police Department uses 'unreasonable force,' is a recession coming? 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen breaks down a DOJ investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department in the years since George Floyd's death. Then, are we safer one year after the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act? And USA TODAY Money and Personal Finance Reporter Medora Lee looks at whether we should expect a recession this year. Searchers used ayahuasca to help find missing Colombian children in the jungle. And finally, Vietnam-era whistleblowerDaniel Ellsberg has died.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to Know Saturday, the 17th of June 2023. Today, what a Justice Department investigation found about the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of George Floyd's death. Plus one year after the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, are we any safer? And a new report says recession is coming.
Minneapolis and its Police Department have engaged in a pattern of violating people's rights through the unnecessary and unjustified use of deadly force and discrimination. That's according to Attorney General, Merrick Garland after a two-year investigation following the killing of George Floyd. I spoke with USA Today Justice Department correspondent, Bart Jansen to learn more. Hello, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Hello. How are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, thanks. Welcome back to 5 Things. What did the Justice Department report reveal?
Bart Jansen:
Well, there were four main points. One was that they found the Department Officers often used excessive force, sometimes unjustified deadly force when they didn't need to. They unlawfully discriminated against black and Native American suspects in their law enforcement activities. They violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech. So if you're thinking about those protests after Floyd's death, both protesters and even reporters were assaulted by police, and they discriminated against people with behavioral disabilities when responding to them in crisis. So four fairly damning conclusions about the Department that some experts say has been going on for years, if not decades.
Taylor Wilson:
And what changes does the DOJ recommend for Minneapolis?
Bart Jansen:
Well, the key point is that they're going to negotiate a consent decree from the federal government with the Department, which means that they're going to install an independent monitor to oversee changes that the city and the Department make to try to improve their policing. So they're going to spend several months negotiating the consent decree. Then that puts it basically under the authority of a federal court to enforce that the changes are actually done, and those changes the city officials warn could take years to implement overall. What they're talking about is having better training for officers and supervisors so that everybody understands that they should be policing constitutionally, not violating the suspect's rights in how they are handled, how they are treated, whether they are dealt with violently, the nature of searches and stops, whether there's too heavily influenced toward minority suspects. So there's a raft of recommendations, 28 recommendations in the report, and the independent monitor that they'll be negotiating will be the one overseeing it to make sure that it all gets carried out.
Taylor Wilson:
The killing of George Floyd was the catalyst for this investigation, but what other incidents did the report note?
Bart Jansen:
Well, one of the ones Attorney General Merrick Garland brought up was an incident where a woman reported a suspected sexual assault in an alley. The police show up, she approaches one of the cars and the Police Officer shoots her dead because she spooked him. So it's the kind of, again, unnecessary violence. Another case was that Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clark, who oversees civil rights issues, noted that at one point an Officer pulled up behind a car, the car had six people in it, the officer started shooting his gun within three seconds of exiting his car. So just saying things were happening quickly, perhaps without assessment, without taking a step back and thinking about it.
And it's those kinds of just sounds like shoot first and ask questions later incidents is what got highlighted in the report, but there were also numerous less than deadly incidents where they would say that routinely officers would taser or pepper spray people, children, protestors during those basically First Amendment protests in the summer after Floyd's death. One case that was described was a reporter holding up his press credential and filming a protest. Police came over to him, knocked him to the ground, and then a Sergeant pepper sprayed him and walked away.
So those were criticized by the Federal Justice authorities. They say those can't happen. That's a violation of the First Amendment. And in some cases, there were abuses of people with physical handicaps. And so that's a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So the Justice Department is going to be looking at all sorts of federal angles, federal violations in how the police conducted their activities in Minneapolis.
Taylor Wilson:
And Bart, how are Minneapolis Police responding to this report?
Bart Jansen:
Well, one of the steps that the city officials said they've taken, they say they've not been sitting on their hands, and so they've already prohibited neck restraints such as you saw that killed George Floyd. And they have stopped no-knock warrant execution because in 2022 they had a suspect shot to death as police entered his apartment abruptly. In addition, they've hired a new Police Chief and a new City Attorney, the Chief of Police, the new Chief of Police, Brian O'Hara said he's worked under a consent decree in Newark, New Jersey. But he says that he acknowledges the pain, anger, frustration, fear, and sense of vulnerability that many people in the community have endured. So he's pledged that they're going to try to do better and try to make it an example for the rest of the country when they've fully accomplished the goals to make the policing lawful and constitutional.
Taylor Wilson:
Bart Jansen, thanks as always.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
It's been one year since President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of mass killings in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere. The bill incentivizes states to create so-called red flag laws, which aim to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people among other measures. Since then, the legislation has led to dozens of federal charges and blocked the purchase of firearms more than a 100 times because of enhanced background checks. The US does not have reliable federal data on crime but according to recent research from Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, murder has declined about 12% this year from the previous year, but the murder rate remains the highest it's been since the 90s otherwise, and mass shootings in a public place appear to be accelerating in the US. In a given year, the country typically sees six mass shootings in a public place, according to James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University, who studied mass killing for 40 years. The massacre at a Texas outlet mall last month that left eight people dead was already the sixth public mass killing of the year.
Indigenous volunteers who helped find the four missing Columbian children in the Amazon jungle 40 days after they went missing in a plane crash turned to an ancient ritual, Ayahuasca. Volunteers had kept up the search after finding a baby bottle and dirty diapers, but on day 39, were losing hope. That's when they turned to one of the most sacred rituals of indigenous groups in the Amazon, Yage, a bitter tea made of plants native to the rainforest and better known as ayahuasca. The hallucinogenic cocktail has been used as a cure for all ailments by people in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil.
In the search for the missing kids, some initially said they didn't feel any effects from the tea, but the next morning an elder reached for what was left of the Yage and drank it. After dreaming and vomiting, he said it had finally worked. He saw the children in his visions. The four kids, Leslie, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin grew up around a small Amazon village that can be reached only by boat or small plane. They survived for weeks in the jungle by using their knowledge of the terrain, collecting water in a soda bottle and eating cassava flour, fruit and seeds. They were found with two small bags holding clothes, a towel, a flashlight, two phones and a music box. They range in age from 13 years to 11 months old.
Will there be a recession later this year? Deutsche Bank says the answer is yes. I spoke with USA Today Money and Personal Finance Reporter, Medora Lee for more. Thanks for hoping on the podcast, Medora.
Medora Lee:
Oh, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
What's the bank predicting specifically here?
Medora Lee:
So they expect that there's no way we're going to avoid a recession later this year. They feel so confident. They're saying the probability is 100%. Yeah, so they basically think that inflation is... It's coming down, but it's still way too high for comfort and the Fed is going to have to raise rates again and they're forecasting at least another quarter percentage point increase in the Fed funds rate in July, so next month.
And so along with that, they're saying that they think that by October, most of this excess savings that everybody had built up during the pandemic when nobody had anywhere to go or spend their money should probably be mostly spent by October. So consumer spending is also going to slow down then with the higher interest rates, economic growth is going to moderate and probably contract later this year.
Taylor Wilson:
And what other predictions are they making about the economy?
Medora Lee:
So they also expect that as we see the economy slow down this year, that we're going to see the jobless rate creep up to just above 4% by the end of the year and then four-and-a-half percent in the first quarter of next year. And so just to give you a reference point, the jobless rate was 3.7% in May. So that's quite a bit of a jump.
Taylor Wilson:
So this is a glass half empty perspective you're giving us here, Medora. Are there any bright spots in this economic outlook?
Medora Lee:
So there are a couple of bright spots. Like I said, they expect that by March next year, we could start seeing rate cuts again and just as aggressively as the Fed raised rates to quell inflation, they think that the Fed will drop rates just as aggressively. So they're thinking that come March, we might start seeing rate cuts as big as 50 to 75 basis points at a time until the Fed funds rate reaches 2.625% is what they are looking for. Some of this is also predicated on some of the other risks that lurk too, that are maybe less in our control. Things like the Russia-Ukraine conflict could intensify or the strategic competition between US and China.
Relations between US and China aren't so great right now, so that could intensify as well. And then El Nino. I'm not sure if you know know, but everybody's saying that we're going to see El Nino this year and if the weather is bad, we could see high food prices again or higher food prices. I guess food prices are still high, so that could create a little more inflation. So there's some risks out there, but that's their base case is that the Fed will start lowering rates aggressively March 2024. And then further along, later in this decade, they think that AI is going to prove a source of economic growth.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Medora Lee, thanks as always.
Medora Lee:
Okay, thanks a lot. Have a great day, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
Daniel Ellsberg has died. The whistleblower leaked the Pentagon Papers, revealing longtime government doubt and deceit about the Vietnam War. That inspired acts of retaliation from President Richard Nixon, ultimately leading to his resignation. Ellsberg was a Harvard graduate who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s. He risked his life on the battlefield and received the highest security clearances, but like millions of Americans, he turned against the years long war in Vietnam.
The Pentagon Papers were commissioned in 1967 by then Defense Secretary, Robert S. McNamara, a leading public advocate of the war who wanted to leave behind a history of the US and Vietnam. The papers covered more than 20 years from France's failed effort at colonization in the 1940s and 50s to the growing involvement of the US, including bombing raids and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops under Lyndon Johnson's administration. The papers, once leaked, came to be seen as an indictment of an entire generation of American leadership. Daniel Ellsberg was 92.
And before we go, did you know 5 Things is now on YouTube? A limited number of our specials and Sunday episodes will now be available as vodcasts on YouTube. We have a link in today's show notes. Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. The Sunday edition is tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of 5 Things from USA Today.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DOJ report says Minneapolis police uses 'unreasonable force,' is a recession coming: 5 Things podcast
