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A talent show came to an end in the winter of 2007. Hundreds of children and their parents gushed out of a high school in Minneapolis, but were greeted by the harsh gunfire. 

North High School students and their parents rushed back indoors, and the police quickly investigated the riot. But the gun and bullet casings were nowhere to be found. They quickly learned that a campus security guard who helped with the search had hidden them in his pocket and later in his wife's wallet. 

That night, the weapon appeared outside the gas station a few blocks away from the school, and the security guard Kelly Woods had a heated argument with his ex-girlfriend. The police saw the witness screaming "they have a gun" and arrested Woods by pointing the gun at Woods.

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For Woods, this arrest added to his long criminal record, including drug trafficking, car theft, armed robbery and federal firearm convictions, which did not prevent him from becoming a security guard responsible for protecting students. For police officer Charles Adams III, who was a colleague of North High School security, this ordeal became part of his internal disciplinary record. According to police records obtained by The 74, when officials filed new criminal charges against Woods, Adams urged them to "relax" someone he described as a "good guy." The move angered the chief prosecutor of the case. Records show that Assistant County Attorney Diane Krenz (Diane Krenz) said that this was the first time in her decades of career that a police officer had pressured her to treat the suspect with leniency. She said the last thing the community needs is "more guns in the north". 

Incidents related to Adams are included in dozens of allegations and disciplinary findings of the campus police stationed recently in Minneapolis Public Schools, including allegations of police brutality and racial discrimination. Discrimination and domestic violence. 

In one incident, the police were accused of assaulting and arresting a man carrying a pistol, even though he had a hidden carrying permit. In another case, the police were accused of beating a man in the face because he soiled the crust on a slice of pizza. Both incidents ended in a court settlement, which was a common result of police brutality lawsuits against police officers in Minneapolis, and taxpayers paid millions of dollars for this. In 2010, the city paid $235,000 in 2010 to settle the lawsuit after a man said that at least six police officers punched and electrocuted him during a traffic stop. One of the accused police officers became a school police officer, a position he held until last year.

After George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, the city school board quickly terminated its long-term campus police contract with the police department. Some critics described the move as politically motivated. Freud's death brought national attention to police brutality and excessive use of force. These 74 people obtained misconduct records and court files of public officials to explore whether similar interactions between police and students occurred in the Minneapolis classrooms—and whether such incidents might lead to the school board’s decision to cut off Contact with the department. In the end, few records involve school incidents or teenagers, but the lengthy list of allegations and disciplinary investigations—many allegations of police violence—has raised different questions about how the police ended up in the school in the first place. They also provide a new context for the ongoing national debate on the role of the police in schools and whether they are best able to ensure the safety of students. 

After the death of George Floyd on May 29, 2020, police used tear gas to disperse protesters during a demonstration in Minneapolis. (Chandan Cana/Getty Images)

Ben Fisher, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Florida State University, whose research focuses on the effectiveness of the on-campus police, stated that the discipline and court records of police officers in Niapolis "seems to be very problematic."

"There are some of the most vulnerable people in our society in the school," Fisher said. "If we put officials there who abused their power in some way outside the school, it would be a terrible proposal to imagine their records after entering the school."

Garrett Parten, a spokesman for the Minneapolis Police Department, said that police officers would consider their disciplinary records before entering the school, but he declined to comment on the specific allegations against the police officers or the results of the investigation. He said in an email that the job of the school resource officer is to build trust between the youth and the police, to play an active role model, and to ensure that children can learn in a safe environment. He said the impact of the school board’s decision to terminate the school resource officer program "will become apparent over time."

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After Freud was murdered, dozens of school districts across the country severed contact with the police, but so far, broader police reform efforts have faltered. In Washington, because of the breakdown of bipartisan negotiations, legislation aimed at increasing the transparency of official misconduct and making it easier to prosecute bad police has failed. 

Locally, Minneapolis voters will consider a voting issue next week, which may remove from the city charter a police station that has long been accused of improper conduct of cleaning officials under the carpet. With no full-time police in the classroom in the first year of the school district, the unprecedented voting measures will create a municipal public safety department that will use a “comprehensive public health approach” and will only hire police “when necessary.” "

National industry “best practices” recommend cooperation between police and education leaders when police are deployed in schools, but researchers who study the effectiveness of school resource officers say there is little evidence of how this selection process actually works. Fisher said that it is interesting that this work is highly valued in some areas, and officials are competing for this position. In other places, stationing in a school is "a punishment. If they can't cut down on the street, send the police there."

Jera Sheffield, a member of the Claremont Student Rights Alliance, used a loudspeaker to guide chants during a protest in June, calling on education leaders in Claremont, California to end the school resource officer program. (Terry Pearson/Getty Images)

These 74 persons obtained misconduct records of 24 police officers assigned to public schools by the Minneapolis Police Department in the five years before Freud's murder. Among them, 21 police officers faced 105 internal complaints, 11 of which resulted in varying degrees of disciplinary action. These records cover the time the officials have served in the department. In addition, based on an analysis of court records, police officers on campus have been named in federal lawsuits at least twice. 

The severity of police discipline problems varies. A police officer working at a school was summoned in 2019 for unintentionally firing a gun while answering a call from a man with a gun. Another police officer received a letter of reprimand after being arrested for driving under the influence. Of the 11 cases that led to official action, two were subject to disciplinary action for excessive use of force. 

According to a department spokesperson, approximately half of the Minneapolis police officers who have been indicted or disciplinary actions remain in the police force. 

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These included Mukhtar Abdulkadir, who faced 11 internal complaints — two of which resulted in disciplinary actions — and two federal lawsuits. Regional records show that he recently served as a school resource officer in 2017. Records indicate that the police officer has a tendency to react violently under pressure. 

In 2010, a young Ethiopian immigrant accused Abdul Kadir of suffocating and punching him, and called him racial slander because he was stopped and quoted for riding a bicycle at night because he had no lights. The man called him As "stupid". The federal lawsuit after the incident was finally resolved. Abdul Kadir and his lawyer could not be reached for comment. 

In 2011, Abdulkadir was arrested on charges of assault and terrorist threats when his wife accused him of hitting her on the ribs, covering her face with a pillow, and hitting her in the face with the butt of his pistol. Abdul Kadir was fired because of the incident, but was re-employed and paid arrears after his ex-wife withdrew the charges. However, according to his disciplinary file, internal investigators believe that her decision to give up is obvious: “Only when he reinstates can she receive child support at the time of divorce.” In addition, internal records indicate that victims of domestic abuse often “ Take responsibility" because their abuser maintains control over them. 

Mukhtar Abdulkadir, second from left, was recognized at a publicity ceremony for the Minneapolis Police Department in 2018. Abdulkadir became the third Somali police sergeant in the department. (Glen Stubb/Getty Images)

Abdul Kadir was also accused of repeatedly beating a man outside a car wash in 2013. According to a complaint in the federal lawsuit, the man honked the police officer because he was waiting in line at the automatic car wash but did not move forward. In response, Abdul Kadir was accused of repeatedly beating the man before accusing him of misconduct. According to the lawsuit, it also ended in an undisclosed financial settlement. 

Then, in 2014, Abdul Kadir became angry and condemned for failing in gun training. The police officer who witnessed the explosion reported feeling scared because he was "completely out of control" and could easily get a gun. 

A police officer told internal investigators: "That night, I really believed that he could pick up a weapon, load a bullet, and use it against the police." In a less controlled environment, the sergeant said he could watch In the case of Abdul Kadir "completely lose control of everything and hurt himself, other officers or the public". 

School district records show that Abdul Kadir was assigned to the Minneapolis campus a year later, including Andersen Union High School and Seward Montessori School. 

Minneapolis North High School football coach Charles Adams III caught up with a former player in a training session in 2019. (Mark Vancleave/Getty Images)

The disciplinary action against Adams put the legendary coach and the second-generation Minneapolis police in a defensive position, which is a position he is not used to. After the school board voted to break with the police department, some students at North High School, a major black school where Adams was a school resource officer, rallied to support him. The same is true for school principals. 

After Freud’s murder revived the "black man’s life" movement, the New York Times twice investigated how his role as a football coach and a black police officer placed him on the American police. Both ends of the business debate. As Adams said to a local newspaper, "I wear blue, but I am black."

Records show that Adams left the police station last year and is now the head of team security for the Minnesota Twins. He is willing to do his best for a colleague accused of serious crimes. This is a reality he admitted in an interview. 74. Woods could not be reached, the North High School security and his lawyer commented. 

"I stood up for him," Adams said. "I never said that everything he did was OK."

In 2019, North High School principal Mauri Friestleben has been in support of the police on campus. She talked with a colleague on campus. (Photo courtesy of Mark Brown/University of St. Thomas)

Mauri Friestleben, the principal of North High School, has always bluntly opposed the decision of the school board to sever relations with the police, and he also supports Adams. She said that when there were police officers in the school, she witnessed “health discussions about what is true protection and service”, including situations where campus police helped students avoid arrest. She wrote in an e-mail, "I have no reservations about the public's support for Adams," and called the police officer a "protector." He "has multiple dimensions, and this may be just one of them." 

Adams tried to downplay his disciplinary record, believing that police leaders and prosecutors had overreacted to his intervention in Woods' criminal case. Before becoming a school security guard, Woods was convicted of armed robbery in 1992 and was not eligible to own a firearm. Six years later, the police arrested Woods with a gun outside the Greyhound bus stop in Minneapolis. According to court records, Woods is black. When they stopped him while investigating drug and gun smuggling, he accused the police of racial discrimination, but failed. 

Adams said that Woods is a positive force in the community and should not be defined by the number of years he spent in prison. Adams insisted that after the shooting outside North High School, Woods did not try to keep guns for himself. On the contrary, Woods knew the students involved in the shooting and did not want them to be arrested. According to court documents, Woods admitted that they were members of the gang.

"I saw it as he was taking care of the two children," Adams said, adding that he did not personally observe the shooting. "He took [the gun] from them and said'get out of here.' This is one of the deals, because he is such a person." 

Adams sneered at Prosecutor Krenz’s suggestion, thinking that his defense of Woods conflicted with his role in maintaining community safety. Krenz declined to comment for this article. Adams said that if it "slapped her in the face," she would not know where North High School was. 

"I don't want to hear that," Adams said. "I hear a lot of people talking about what should be good for our community. They have never stepped into it." 

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The internal police records obtained by The 74 may seriously underestimate the misconduct of the police officers. According to a recent survey by the non-profit news media Minnesota Reformers, between 2013 and 2019, only 2.7% of complaints resulted in disciplinary action. After prolonged investigations, disciplined personnel often receive letters of reprimand or temporary suspension. 

The investigation found that a police officer model that protects peers allows abuse to go unnoticed until it goes to court. For example, three years before the murder of Freud, Derek Chauvin hit a 14-year-old boy with a flashlight and held him on the ground for 17 minutes. This incident can be seen as a precursor to Shavin kneeling on Freud's neck and was excluded from his public record. 

People gathered at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis and were sentenced to the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd Respond to guilty news. Shavin was convicted of murder in April. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Getty Images)

The 74 people sought advice from the Minneapolis police officers who were previously stationed at the school, members of the school board, the city and state police unions, lawyers who represented many police officers in misconduct proceedings, and the city and county attorney's offices. Everyone declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests. 

In the lawsuit against school officials, civil rights lawyer Zorislav Leyderman represented six plaintiffs. He said that incidents of police misconduct outside the school should affect whether the relevant personnel are designated as school resource officers. Lederman cited these allegations as a contribution to the city’s larger culture, and many Minneapolis residents are afraid of the police. 

"They don't want to interact with law enforcement because they worry that if they do, they will get hurt," he said. The allegations against school officials “should be investigated, including lawsuits and these internal complaints.” 

He said that under normal circumstances, police misconduct is still not in the public eye because the police are “instructed” after the incident. The department has insisted that this practice is not an official discipline. The department was prosecuted and accused of illegally withholding records of misconduct, including in cases of serious misconduct. In a 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, investigators found that Minneapolis police resolved more than a quarter of complaints through counselling within six years.

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Khulia Pringle, a local parent advocate who helped the school district hire security guards to replace sworn police last year, said that putting police officers’ disciplinary records in schools should be a major factor. However, this history only strengthens her belief that the police have no sidewalks. 

"In any other situation, when we need the police, we will call them," said Pringle, the representative of the National League of Parents in Minnesota. She said that if they were to go there, "there should be more agreements about which officials are in the school." 

Adams said he was surprised to see the allegations against other police officers working in the school. Although there was a negative interaction between the police and the youth, he did not remember any recent decisions that might have prompted the school board to terminate its police contract. However, Adams said he can now "talk freely" because he is no longer a policeman and he portrayed his previous department as a department where official misconduct is commonplace. 

"This is a good old boy network," he said. "Some people are deliberately detrimental to others in the police department, you can see." 

Protesters expressed support for the police during the “45-year-old cyclist” rally in St. Paul, Minnesota in June 2020. The crowd encountered anti-protesters and they called for measures to cancel funding for the police. (Stephen Matuen/Getty Images)

As communities across the country struggle to cope with the role of the police in schools, new research highlights the complexity of the problem. Studies have shown that, on the one hand, the police have reduced certain forms of violent crimes such as fighting. At the same time, their presence prompted a sharp increase in the number of suspensions and arrests—especially for black students. Few academic studies have explored the types of officials who are more effective in schools than others.

But Kenneth Trump, president of Cleveland National School Safety and Security Services and school safety adviser, said that being nominated in a federal lawsuit should not be automatically disqualified. He said that civil rights lawsuits against arrested officials are "part of the game." Police misconduct lawsuits usually end in a settlement, but Trump said that when assigning school resource officers, the final result should be part of the equation.

"If you are a police officer and you work on the streets, then you are very likely to be prosecuted somewhere in your career," said Trump, a supporter of school policing. "However, before showing these officers to your school personnel in the next step, your police administration should establish some kind of baseline standards and screening."

Minneapolis police spokesman Patten said that all police officers are eligible to apply for the school resource officer program and have been interviewed by a panel of police and school district officials. The chief of police has the final say on the recruitment decision. Patten said he worked with education officials when writing a statement for this article, but Minneapolis school district spokesperson Julie Schultz Brown did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

“Scenario-based questions were posed to candidates to assess the critical thinking skills required in the school environment and to further examine everyone’s understanding of the challenges and rewards associated with the position,” he said. 

JaNaé Bates, Minister of Yes 4 Minneapolis, discussed a voting issue at a July 30 press conference that will replace the police station with a new agency. (Rennie Jones Schneider/Getty Images)

Police in Minneapolis are still controversial in the larger community, and voters will soon decide whether to move in a whole new direction. Before next week’s election, a recent poll of potential voters indicated that the question of whether to disband the traditional police department will come to an end. Black voters are less likely to support this idea than white voters. 

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Adams insisted that a similar curriculum change—removing police officers from Minneapolis schools and replacing them with district security personnel—was ultimately harmful. He said the North High School’s “criminal behavior was heinous” and the security team hired to replace the oath officer was “stretched.” 

Although he defended a security guard, saying that the guard was trying to keep the child away from the criminal justice system, the former policeman said that stationing police at the school was an effective strategy for arresting suspects.

"A lot of children will obviously show up in front of the school and investigators, and many police officers know that the children will be there," Adams said. "This is a good way to deal with bad guys." 

Main image: Former police officer Charles Adams III intervened on behalf of a school security guard who was arrested for gun charges, which involved dozens of campus police officers stationed in Minneapolis Public Schools recently One of the disciplinary findings and allegations of misconduct. (Andrea Ellen Reed/The New York Times/Redux)