Minnesota Report
It’s time for a discussion on police surveillance technology. For years, I chaired the MN House Civil Law and Judiciary Committees, where we had bipartisan agreement on the limits of police technology and surveillance. We had these fights on all of the looming surveillance technology issues of the day, including: cell phone snooping, Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology, drone camera use, facial recognition software, and police worn body cameras, among others.
Every couple of sessions there was a new fight over the appropriate use and limits of these technologies. So, I was chagrined when I discovered in 2024 that a DFL trifecta passed enabling legislation for a photo cop camera pilot project in the City of Minneapolis. This action undid a decades-long agreement of both major parties that surveilling people in this manner was a clear violation of their constitutional right to privacy.
This was not my first time being disappointed in DFL regression on protection of individual constitutional rights. For years we held off on designating seat belt use as a primary offense (read: cop can stop you for probable cause) because it served as yet another pretextual stop for drivers in neighborhoods where cops predominantly patrol (neighborhoods of color). Then in 2009 the DFL reversed this constitutional safeguard under the guise of the “Toward Zero Deaths” safety campaign. It is apparent to me how a state can make it a crime for a person to not buckle up their own kids in a car, but making it a crime for a driver to make a decision for themself not to use a seat belt is (in my opinion) patently absurd.
So, I voted no on that, along with 22 other DFLers and 38 Republicans, but it still passed by a narrow margin. After the DFL legislature’s 2024 action expanding police surveillance, we find ourselves in a state where citizen activists are rebuking these expanded policies by taking matters into their own hands and 86ing Flock cameras.
The photo cop cameras now in use are, ironically, placed in a city that has a higher percentage of people of color than almost any other jurisdiction in Minnesota. What will happen in 2027? Will the legislature read the room? And if they don’t, will citizen activists continue to solve the problem on their own?