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Behind Keith Ellison’s Tough-on-crime Turn…

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Electing Blacks to posi­tions of pow­er does not guar­an­tee change. Hiring more Blacks and Hispanics to be cops does not improve the bro­ken cul­ture of what pass­es for pol­i­tics and polic­ing in America.
A sig­nif­i­cant amount of data bears that out, cor­rupt cops and repreg=hensible politi­cians come in all col­ors, and so do judges and every­one else. Hello Clarence Tom-Azz. (mb)

The sto­ry
By Akela Lacy of the Intercept.

The Minnesota attor­ney gen­er­al took over a mur­der case from Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a fel­low reformer. She accused him of play­ing politics.

PROGRESSIVES REJOICED LAST year when Democrat Keith Ellison won a tight reelec­tion race for Minnesota attor­ney gen­er­al against a police-backed oppo­nent who attacked him as being “soft on crime.”

In the same elec­tion cycle, Ellison’s ally Mary Moriarty won elec­tion as Hennepin County attor­ney, installing a reform-mind­ed pros­e­cu­tor in Minneapolis about three years after the city’s police mur­dered George Floyd. Moriarty, pre­vi­ous­ly the chief pub­lic defend­er for Hennepin County, took office in January and imple­ment­ed reforms with a focus on cor­rect­ing fail­ures in the juve­nile jus­tice system.

Now, three months into their terms, Ellison and Moriarty are no longer on the same side of the reform plat­form they once shared.

Late last month, Moriarty’s office issued new guid­ance on pros­e­cut­ing chil­dren, which was designed to keep as many kids as pos­si­ble out of the adult crim­i­nal sys­tem. Before issu­ing the guid­ance, Moriarty’s office chose not to charge two teenage broth­ers accused of mur­der as adults.

Last week, Ellison’s office inter­vened in the juve­nile mur­der case. His office described the juve­nile charges as “inap­pro­pri­ate” and request­ed that the gov­er­nor take the case away from Moriarty’s office and assign it to him. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who was reelect­ed along with Ellison and Moriarty last November, assigned the case to Ellison on Thursday — pit­ting the two would-be reform­ers against each other.

The affair has become a tense point in what was once a round­ly promis­ing tra­jec­to­ry for reforms in Minnesota. In 2022, Ellison endorsed Moriarty, who, like him, faced a police-backed oppo­nent. And Ellison’s pop­u­lar­i­ty was pro­pelled in part by his han­dling of the pros­e­cu­tion of the cops who killed Floyd, and his cam­paign for reelec­tion cel­e­brat­ed his record on reform.

A source involved in the juris­dic­tion­al dis­pute, who request­ed anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive pri­vate delib­er­a­tions, said Ellison told Moriarty he need­ed to appear tough on crime for his next reelec­tion cam­paign. “The Attorney General denies hav­ing said that or any­thing like it,” said Ellison spokesper­son John Stiles.

Ellison also has a tour planned for this spring to pro­mote his upcom­ing book on end­ing the cycle of police vio­lence. Some Minnesota polit­i­cal oper­a­tives sus­pect he’s mulling a run for governor.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​4​/​1​3​/​m​i​n​n​e​s​o​t​a​-​k​e​i​t​h​-​e​l​l​i​s​o​n​-​j​u​v​e​n​i​l​e​-​m​u​r​d​er/