MINNEAPOLIS — A former senior Minneapolis police official who was stripped of his rank after publicly questioning the Police Department's hiring practices has sued the city, alleging that the move was part of a pattern of discrimination he endured as an outspoken Black officer pushing for change within the mostly white department.
Art Knight, who dropped from the rank of deputy chief to lieutenant, contends in the lawsuit that he was demoted as retaliation after he "continued to tell the truth about hiring and recruitment policies that have a disparate impact on minorities who want to become police officers."
"For nearly three decades on the inside, Mr. Knight has reported and resisted race-biased actions and policies perpetrated by the likes of leaders and fellow police officers. Some actively fought Mr. Knight; many looked away; others just didn't seem to understand," according tot he lawsuit. "Until May 25, 2020 (the day of George Floyd's murder) when excuses vanished at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue South — and countless other intersections around the world — where voices echoed the words and sentiments of Mr. Knight."
The lawsuit argues that the rank change would cost Knight tens of thousands of dollars in annual salary and retirement pension benefits, as well his reputation and his role in the police administration "where he stood a chance at making changes within the department that murdered George Floyd and so desperately needs to better reflect the community's it's sworn to protect."
"Mr. Knight has watched real racism — the indisputable, not-perceived-kind-of-stuff — go materially unpunished, and therefore inculcated into the culture of the MPD," the lawsuit says.
The suit was served on the city in late May, but wasn't released publicly until the Minneapolis Star Tribune requested a copy last week. When reached for comment Tuesday, a spokesperson for Haller Kwan LLC, a local firm that specializes in whistleblower complaints which filed the suit on Knight's behalf, said that it would let the suit speak for itself.
Department spokesman John Elder disputed the claim that Knight was "demoted," saying that under department rules, appointed staff can be unappointed at any time without cause. He declined further comment, as did a spokesman for the city.
In its response to the lawsuit, the city denied most of Knight's allegations, including that initiatives like the cadet program were "the only mechanism to recruit diverse candidates."
The lawsuit comes as the embattled Police Department faces separate state and federal investigations, which are looking into whether it engaged in racially biased and unconstitutional policing practices, and which could drastically reshape its future. Voters this fall will also get a chance to weigh in on one of several proposed charter amendments, including a community-led initiative that would replace the MPD with a new department of public safety that could include an allotment of officers "if necessary."
Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, who is also Black, removed Knight from his position last December, the same day as an article appeared in the Star Tribune, in which Knight was quoted as saying that unless the MPD changed its tactics to recruit, train and promote, it would continue to "get the same old white boys."
The comments, included in a larger story about law enforcement efforts to attract and retain recruits of color, rankled some within the department, who insisted that his use of the term "white boys" was discriminatory. The police union, which represents the city's rank-and-file officers, encouraged its members in a memo to file a complaint with the city if they have been "impacted, offended or harmed" by Knight's comments. The same union, Knight's lawsuit points out, whose then-president, retired Lt. Bob Kroll previously called Black Lives Matter a "terrorist organization."
"And now, the same police union that would succeed once again in sowing division at a moment that called for solidarity," the suit reads. "When the police union ultimately won and turned Mr. Knight's half-sentence observation to the Star Tribune into an artificial controversy and false allegation of racism, its members showed their true colors."
A union spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Knight said that by that evening, Arradondo, whom he describes as a "good friend," had called him to inform him that he would no longer be a deputy chief, saying that he had no choice in the matter because he was "getting a lot of calls and pressure" to act against Knight. Knight argued the move was the result of his publicly questioning the department's commitment to recruiting and hiring people of color and women, which encountered "long-running, race-biased headwinds inside the MPD."
In his lawsuit, which names the city of Minneapolis as the sole defendant, Knight said the chief was pressured by "forces internally who seek to police Minneapolis as it has in the past — brutally and without self-reflection or improvement."
"As a Black Chief of Police in a system riddled with race-bias, Chief Arradondo was moved by the system he leads to demote and retaliate against Mr. Knight because he is Black and dared to speak up," the suit says.
Knight says that he had dedicated his nearly three-decade career to advancing Black officers, but had consistently come up against the "blue wall of silence," an unwritten code among many officers that critics say has long thwarted accountability for police wrongdoing.
Knight contends that since then, the city "may have put cracks in the Blue Wall of Silence," including when Arradondo testified in the murder trial of now-former city Officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, but added that Minneapolis needs also to confront "its own internal wall of resistance."
"Leaders say the conviction of Derek Chauvin is a beginning," the suit says. "But, so long as Black voices like Art Knight's remain silenced, the City will not move forward and will remain stuck at 38th and Chicago."
He argued that Black officers had always been held to a different standard than their white colleagues, who faced comparatively light punishment for more serious offenses, saying one officer with leadership aspirations was known to openly use the N-word, another used a derogatory term to refer to an Asian American passenger during a traffic stop, while a sergeant on the city's ethnically diverse North Side is known to use an alias on social media to post racist memes "without consequence — despite everyone knowing who it is."
The lawsuit claims the union tried to draw a false equivalence with his use of the term "same old white boys — "a group not historically subject to racist oppression or discrimination, a nuance inherent and implied in Mr. Knight's choice of words."
Knight, the lawsuit says, had long pushed for recruiting more officers of color by expanding the department's cadet program — which targets people who come from non-law enforcement backgrounds and have at least a four-year college degree — but was constantly challenged by white colleagues, "under the banner of expediency — a pretext for shunning diversity by some white leaders."
He said that even after Arradondo promoted him to deputy chief, "the winds of resistance continue to keep MPD off the course its greater community is demanding."
Knight maintained that he also "rankled" top department brass with his candor after telling City Council members that he believed that "3 to 6%" of the force shouldn't remain employed, The remarks sparked internal backlash, he said, prompting Elder, the department's spokesman, to later tell reporters that Knight misspoke and meant to say the department deals with 3 to 6% of the population." But Knight said that he always stood by his words, and that Elder, whom he called another influential member of the Chief's inner circle, hadn't checked with him first before speaking to the media.
Elder declined to comment about the allegations made against him.
At the same time, he argued, city leaders are saying publicly that they want change, while allowing "the continued harassment and retaliation to continue."
"(W)here opportunity for good often presents itself, the status quo rears its head to obstruct. Indeed, some white officers acted to silence Mr. Knight. They lobbied the city's Black Chief of Police to do away with the Black man who wouldn't walk their line; and the Chief complied," the lawsuit reads. "Rather than start a conversation, the predominantly white MPD has once again, shut it down, and retaliated against Mr. Knight because he is Black and spoke up."
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