Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is five things you need to know Saturday the 17th of June, 2023.

Today, what a Justice Department investigation found about the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of George Floyd's death.

Plus, one year after the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, are we any safer?

And a new report says recession is coming.

Minneapolis and its police department have engaged in a pattern of violating people's rights through the unnecessary and unjustified use of deadly force and discrimination.

That's according to Attorney General Merrick Garland after a two-year investigation following the killing of George Floyd.

I spoke with USA Today Justice Department correspondent Bart Chanson to learn more.

Hello, Bart.

Hello, how are you?

Good, thanks. Welcome back to five things.

What did the Justice Department report reveal?

Well, there were four main points. One was that they found the Department officers often used excessive force, sometimes unjustified, deadly force when they didn't need to.

They unlawfully discriminated against black and Native American suspects in their law enforcement activities.

They violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech.

So if you're thinking about those protests after Floyd's death, both protesters and even reporters were assaulted by police.

And they discriminated against people with behavioral disabilities when responding to them in crisis.

So for fairly damning conclusions about the department that some experts say has been going on for years, if not decades.

And what changes does the DOJ recommend for Minneapolis?

Well, the key point is that they're going to negotiate a consent decree from the federal government with the department, which means that they're going to install an independent monitor to oversee changes that the city and the department make to try to improve their policing.

So they're going to spend several months negotiating the consent decree, then that puts it basically under the authority of a federal court to enforce that the changes are actually done.

And those changes the city officials warned could take years to implement overall.

What they're talking about is having better training for officers and supervisors so that everybody understands that they should be policing constitutionally, not violating the suspect's rights in how they are handled, how they are treated, whether they are dealt with violently.

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