Critics of policing can take several approaches to addressing policing problems:

• Reforming the police, e.g. by introducing new processes (such as implicit bias training) and/or technology (such as body cams) to decrease racial bias against black Americans and improve community trust in policing
• Diminishing the role of the police (such as having other organizations respond to mental health 911 calls instead of the police) and/or potentially abolishing the police. To learn more about this viewpoint, see What are alternatives to policing? / What does it mean to 'abolish the police'?

This page discusses efforts made to reform the police and their limitations.

Minneapolis tried to implement significant reforms before George Floyd's death

Impetus for initial reforms

Even prior to George Floyd's death, the Minneapolis police department had a history of police violence. In 2015, a black man, Jamar Clark, was shot and killed by two Minneapolis police officers. Black Lives Matter organized 18 days of protests, involving hundreds of people, but the officers were not charged. (Wikipedia)

Minneapolis City Council member Steve Fletcher, wrote an op-ed in Time on June 5, 2020 that describes Minneapolis's history of police violence and why he believed in the necessity for reform:

• (Click to open) "I knew that the Police Department had a decades-long history of violence and discrimination. I ran on a platform of police reform…In my first two years on the Council, several factors have reinforced the context for reform. Minneapolis Police officers shot and killed four more people—Thurman Blevins, Travis Jordan, Mario Benjamin, and Chiasher Fong Vue—and were caught in a bodycam audit asking EMTs to sedate suspects and others with ketamine."

Additional details of Minneapolis's issues with police violence, before George Floyd:

• (Click to open) Statistics of 'substantial racial disparity' in Minneapolis police activity, from a statewide racial profiling report and the ACLU (Urban Institute)
• (Click to open) More details about the deaths of Justine Ruszczyk (a white man), Thurman Blevins (a black man), and Chiasher Fong Vue (a Hmong man) from The New York Times
• (Click to open) Additional details about the Minneapolis Police Department's issues with Hmong and Somali communities, from Urban Institute

Following Jamar Clark's death in 2015, "the [police] department’s leaders undertook a series of reforms proposed by the Obama administration’s justice department and procedural reform advocates in academia". (The Guardian)

Reforms implemented included:

• In July 2016, requiring officers to intervene in incidents in which other officers use excessive force (Urban Institute)
• In July 2016, amending a use-of-force policy to prioritize sanctity of life for both officers and civilians (Urban Institute)
• Trainings on "how to respond to mental health crisis calls, how to de-escalate confrontations with the public, how to be 'mindful' in dangerous circumstances, and how to be more self-aware of their implicit racial bias" (The Guardian)
• In July 2017, requiring officers turn on body cameras as soon as they respond to a 911 call (Urban Institute)