A record number of people have applied for a spot on a new oversight panel for the Minneapolis police department.
City staff received more than 160 applications for the new Community Commission on Police Oversight, created last fall by the City Council. It was the most for any city committee or commission since at least 2010, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The 15-member board will be tasked with reviewing investigations of allegations of police misconduct.
"One hundred sixty seems unbelievable," Michael Friedman, chair of the Minneapolis Police Civilian Review Authority, a previous police oversight body from 2003 through 2005, said, the Star Tribune reported. "I can't remember even more than 15 applying."
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"There is still intense interest in police reform and police oversight here in Minneapolis," Dave Bicking, a board member of Communities United Against Police Brutality, an activist group that monitors and protests police misconduct, told Fox News Digital. "And I think that is getting stronger, if anything, because we've gone almost three years without any significant positive changes and people are grasping at anything that might be possible to finally get some movement on that."
Bicking, who described the relationship between the community and the police department as "bad," was one of the applicants to try for a spot on the panel. He said he didn't expect to be picked because he would "rock the boat."
The Minneapolis Police Department attracted national outrage in the summer of 2020, when former police officer Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, for nine minutes, before he went still. Three other officers on the scene failed to intervene.
The police-involved killing sparked protests in major cities across the country and a federal bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which stalled in Congress. The legislation would address the use of force, racial profiling, and more. After the bill failed, President Biden signed an executive order that banned choke holds and limited the use of no-knock warrants for federal officers. It also required reports to a database of misconduct from federal officers, and encouraged, but did not require, similar reports from local law enforcement agencies.
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Chauvin was convicted of murder and another former officer pleaded guilty to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.
Floyd's death and the subsequent protests appeared to have an impact on the city's law enforcement recruitment. Police spokesman Garrett Parten said last October that only 57 people applied to the Minneapolis police force in 2022, down from 292 applicants in 2019.
Bicking observed that community frustrations with the city's law enforcement are only "growing."
"The Minneapolis Police Department is just not making a lot of friends, including with folks who you would have thought would be maybe more happy with the police department," he said.
Fox News Digital's Patrick Hauf contributed to this report.
