Several community groups are banding together to form a public safety coalition with the aim of pushing for reforms within Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office.
The coalition, made up of the groups Color of Change, the Minneapolis NAACP, TONE UP and Minnesota Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform, hopes to connect the community with the office of the county’s top prosecutor as a way to improve transparency and initiate reforms the community desires.
“We have supported prosecutors who are willing to use their power to reshape the justice system and right wrongs in terms of racial bias and racial inequities,” said Michael Collins, Color of Change’s senior director of governmental relations. “We knew that with Moriarty coming into office, she was somebody who had expressed an interest in things like criminal justice reform and police accountability.”
Shruti Lakshmanan, policy and government affairs manager with Color Of Change, echoed Collins during a Thursday news conference, calling the coalition a “unique opportunity to work with the county attorney’s office to advance reforms and to create a relationship between the office and the community that reflects transparency, accountability and collaboration.”
She added: “We look forward to walking alongside our community partners here to make that happen.”
It remains to be seen what level of cooperation there will be between the county attorney’s office and the coalition, though the coalition will meet regularly and produce recommendations while both sides hope to remain in dialogue due to their similar goals.
Jennifer White, director of the Community Affairs Division within Moriarty’s office, said she’s excited about what the coalition can accomplish.
“I think that it’s really helpful when community can organize themselves to really hold us as systems accountable, to work collaboratively with them but also to work independently, to hold us accountable to some of the changes that they want to see,” White said. “They can offer us feedback and advice and things, but also be a bridge, I think, between community and systems.”
Moriarty during her election campaign in 2022 ran on a platform that prominently featured holding police officers accountable for their misconduct. But another campaign priority was making the criminal justice system less punitive for youth by prioritizing restorative options when a minor commits a crime.
Over the past 18 months, Moriarty’s efforts with the latter have been met with criticism, namely from the families of victims who say the plea deals are too lenient and jail time offered by Moriarty’s office are inadequate. The most high-profile of these cases was the murder of 23-year-old Zaria McKeever, in which Moriarty’s office offered plea deals to the two alleged killers who were both under 18.
After pushback from McKeever’s family, Gov. Tim Walz used his powers to step in and took the case from Moriarty’s office, reassigning it to Attorney General Keith Ellison.
White said because the system has been focused on punishment as a form of justice for so long, it’s difficult for the public to imagine it any other way.
“I think as a community also challenge ourselves,” she said. “It wasn’t good for us, like for example in the ‘90s, when this ‘super predator’ narrative was out there, and we were just focused on locking up kids and throwing away the key and sending them away.”
Though it is still in its beginning planning phases and details are as of now unclear, White said Moriarty’s office is working on some restorative practices to be implemented at some point in the future.
“That work will focus also on bringing more healing and understanding to victims versus just punitive,” she said. “We’ll ask what is accountability, but also then how do we help folks heal after they’ve been harmed, and help perpetrators who caused harm who wish to make amends for the harm that they have caused?”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from Thursday’s news conference.
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
