Community members demand answers following Brooklyn Center police recruitment video

At Brooklyn Center’s first city council meeting of the year, community members demanded answers from city leaders following backlash about a video created to recruit more police officers.

The video, that according to the City of Brooklyn Center has been taken down from its websites and social media pages, includes moments where an officer can be seen holstering his gun and packing a rifle into his squad.

Monday night, community members voiced their concerns over the recruitment video, making it clear they do not feel this is how the city should be enticing people to police their community.

“This video, the reasons we have concerns for it, is that it was hyper militarized, it was filmed at night, [and] very specifically, it was filmed in a way to grab the attention to what I would call adrenaline junkies,” Michelle Gross with Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) said to council members and Mayor April Graves.

While the original video has been taken down by the city, CUAPB posted the video “Brooklyn Center Recruitment Video” on their YouTube page.

The video wasn’t on the council’s posted agenda, but Mayor Graves addressed it before the meeting began, telling people neither she nor the city manager knew about the video until it was posted. She added it was the police department that did so.

“We want to work with our police department to understand, so they can understand why that video was wrong and why it was disturbing and harmful to our community,” Mayor Graves said Monday.

In a statement from the city, police chief for the Brooklyn Center Police Department said the following:

“The video in question does not represent the full breadth of community policing by the City of Brooklyn Center officers, nor our community engagement efforts. We must have a recruitment resource that demonstrates police collaborating with city leaders and the community to protect and promote the safety and well-being of residents and visitors across the city. We determined to immediately remove the video from all social media platforms. 

Over the past two years, the City of Brooklyn Center has worked diligently to rebuild the relationship between the community and all city departments including the police. We understand that releasing the video in question would damage those efforts and the established trust with Brooklyn Center residents and surrounding communities.

Our next step is to move forward and work with the Brooklyn Center police department and other city administrative departments to develop a video that reflects the quality of who we are as a city.”

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Kellace McDaniel

Brooklyn Center is a community still healing from the shooting death of Daunte Wright by former Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter.

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