Support Your Local Police

Once again, we return to that Mecca of police misconduct, Minneapolis, Minnesota, where regulatory authorities and police are colluding to shakedown local small business owners for unneeded payouts to officers for "Security."

This is literally the definition of a protection racket:

When Maya Santamaria was opening a Minneapolis club in 2003, a city worker handed her a card for a Minneapolis police officer and said, “You’re going to work with this guy.”

………

Then, MPD “socked it to me,” she said. She started out paying the officers $40 to $45 an hour, always more than one officer per night. And they didn’t just work one or two hours; they charged a minimum of four hours no matter how many they actually worked, she said. The pay gradually increased to nearly $60 an hour.

“I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said. “There were many years I wasn’t making it, and they didn’t give a damn.”

Santamaria was later required to come up with security plans outlining the number of officers needed per night. The officers insisted on getting paid cash, she said. She feared if she didn’t oblige, she’d lose her license.

Eventually, another officer helped schedule off-duty work: Derek Chauvin. He worked security at her club for 17 years.

………

Santamaria’s allegations about MPD off-duty work are echoed by the experiences of other business owners, documented in government reports and even remarked upon by the city’s new police chief, Brian O’Hara. He said the system is “ripe for corruption,” citing a federal investigation in Jersey City, where a dozen cops were arrested due to widespread corruption of off-duty work.

The timing is favorable for more rigorous oversight: MPD is soon to be operating under both state and federal supervision following damning investigative reports about racist policing, and O’Hara is a newish outsider who speaks the rhetoric of reform.

Changes to off-duty policy face a key obstacle, however: A 1997 court injunction restricts how much the city can manage officers’ side gigs. Given the injunction, the city can only seek major reforms via the collective bargaining process, which means if the city wants to change off-duty policies, it would likely have to give up something in return.

Here’s how the off-duty work program works: Some businesses — like large nightclubs — are required by the city to have security, which until 2020, sometimes had to be off-duty Minneapolis police officers.

The city can also require that organizers of large events and businesses plagued with a lot of 911 calls also hire off-duty MPD officers. Businesses may also voluntarily hire off-duty officers for security and traffic control, and negotiate pay and hours directly with officers.

The city doesn’t keep track of how much officers are working or how much they’re paid, or even have access to the contracts. Off-duty work often pays a lot more — up to hundreds of dollars per hour — than working overtime for MPD.

This was how the New Orleans PD operated before the Feds cracked down.

Minneapolis police are little more than a protection racket.