Insuring Colonization: Disparities of Police Search Rates of Native Americans in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

This study examines disparities in police stops and personal searches of those identified by Minneapolis city police as American Indian or Alaska Native within the city of Minneapolis, a major metropolitan area with the thirteenth-highest Native American city population proportion of all major U.S. metropolitan areas. Although they are the original people of Minneapolis, today, Native Americans only account for 1.5 (~5,800 residents) percent of the city population. Simultaneously accounting for 2.59 percent of all police stops within the city from October 2016 to December 2018, a rate over double that of their representative population. Following the initial interaction, 32.6% of Native Americans stopped were subsequently searched, nearly double that of any other race. The difference suggests that Native Americans during the study period are interacting with police at disproportional rates given their population. These factors contribute to Native Americans experiencing significant increases in the frequencies of police-initiated stops, searches, and arrests by police in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, when compared to both their majority and minority peers. Contextualized within the broader history of U.S. settler colonialism, urban migration of Native Americans, and collateral consequences of Tribal sovereignty.

Author

• Anthony Cergnul, University of Maryland