Activists have said Jamar Clark was unarmed and handcuffed when he was shot in the head on Sunday, but police said he was not handcuffed.
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“Please contact the BCA”, Police Chief Janeé Harteau said during a midday City Hall news conference with Mayor Betsy Hodges and BCA Superintendent Drew Evans at her side.
Raeisha Williams with the Minneapolis NAACP told the Associated Press that protesters plan to stay at the precinct until the names of the officers involved are released.
A federal civil rights investigation would not preempt the ongoing investigation by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
A DoJ spokesperson could not immediately confirm a Minnesota public radio report that the department had received the request and was reviewing it. Hodges said the letter was also sent to Andrew Luger, the U.S. attorney for the district of Minnesota, and that Minnesota governor Mark Dayton agreed with her decision to make the request. Police say Flowers instigated their aggression.
Black Lives Matters were on the streets of the city and blocked interstate 94 and besieged the local police station.
Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds said they are demanding involvement by federal investigators, as well “grief counselors in the form of African-American psychologists to be supplied to people in north Minneapolis who witnessed the event”.
Protesters on Monday applauded the request for a federal investigation but said they would continue the precinct sit-in until authorities release any video they have of the incident as well as the officer’s identity.
Harteau, the police chief, said she welcomed a national investigation. Witnesses said Clark was handcuffed at the time he was shot, but police have said otherwise.
Betty Smith, a neighbor whose 24-year-old son was shot by the police in 2008, expressed her sympathy for Clark’s family.
The incident happened at 12:45 a.m. Sunday on the 1600 block of Plymouth Avenue North.
The protesters are calling for the release of video footage of the shooting, including dash cam footage and video obtained from the Elks Lodge. Family members gathered at the seventh floor intensive care unit where they were informed by a physician that Clark was “brain-dead”. I was dropping him off every day.
“Mass media and police want us to believe that Jamar was at fault for this shooting”, Montgomery said in a statement earlier Monday, “but we know that’s not true because of the several matching eyewitness accounts that he was executed (as part of) the continued killings of unarmed black people across the country”.
The hard relationships have led to the development of task forces made to quell problems and discussions between authorities and minorities. The BCA said Sunday the preliminary investigation showed he was not.
Minneapolis is participating in a federal Justice Department programme for increasing trust between police and their communities. “We are just waiting to pull the plug”.
The details of the incident had demonstrators comparing it to the death of 17-year-old Tycel Nelson, a police-involved shooting that prompted outrage in north Minneapolis in 1990.
An investigation has been turned over to a state agency.
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Mica Grimm, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, was among about 10 college students and activists occupying an entryway at the station.
