Spike Moss to MPD chief: 'I'm going to be bold'
Civil rights leader Spike Moss during an August news conference at the Minneapolis NAACP headquarters. Photo by David Pierini
By David Pierini, Editor
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, hired to reform the department after the police murder of George Floyd, made a round of apologies in August after civil rights leader Spike Moss made what he deemed “deeply offensive and inappropriate” remarks at a police training.
Moss talked about a time when the lockers of some police officers hung Nazi-type uniforms and said how some unarmed Black people were killed by cops, shooting them in the back. This did not sit well with the police union, which called some of Moss’s accounts of history inaccurate. So O’Hara, as reported by The Minnesota Star Tribune, worked to ease hurt feelings.
Talk to Spike Moss once, and you will understand his words and observations are unvarnished and full of pain. When he expresses rage about police force and cover-up, he compares Minneapolis to Mississippi or South Africa.
If you want smiles and other pleasantries, don’t invite him to an event where police reform is the topic.
But reform evolves from knowing “uncomfortable truths,” said local civil rights leaders, who stood with Moss during a news conference on Aug. 8 at the Minneapolis NAACP office on West Broadway Avenue.
They said O’Hara’s apology landed as an insult to Moss, who has worked to document and expose police brutality since the mid-1960s. Moss did not go easy on O’Hara.
“How can you just now get to Minnesota and know the cases I fought since 1966. You weren’t here,” Moss said. “But if you expect me, after a lifetime of risk to my life, to not tell the truth, there’s no way if you ask me to come, I’m going to do it your way. I’m going to speak for my people, I’m going to do it with pride, and I’m going to be bold because it has to stop,”
Civil rights attorney Nekima Levy-Armstrong called for O’Hara to resign or be fired. She said O’Hara instead needs to apologize for the police shooting of Amir Locke in 2022 and for later reassigning the officer who fired the fatal round to run use-of-force training.
O’Hara did not return a request to North News for comment.
“I was dismayed at the attempt to disparage Spike Moss and the comments he made before new cadets,” Levy Armstrong said. “The reality is that the Minneapolis Police Department’s history of violence and abuse, the unjustified use of deadly force, and the lies and manipulation go back many decades; it was an open secret in the city. Now, as a result of the unjustified and brutal police killing of George Floyd in 2020, it’s an open secret across the world.”
NAACP President Cynthia Wilson stressed her organization’s willingness to work with the city and police brass to help develop ethical practices for police.
She said a constructive relationship involves both positive and difficult feedback. Understanding this provides building blocks for change, she said.
Wilson said O’Hara and union leaders should have first contacted the NAACP to discuss Moss’s remarks before airing frustrations publicly.
“It’s unfortunate that history has to be revealed and that it does cause some discomfort,” she said. “But at the end of the day, it is necessary to know where we’ve been for us to move forward.”
Moss said he is not anti-police. He said part of his push for reform was getting more African-Americans in police and into leadership positions.
Moss, who recently turned 80, evangelized to his colleagues while the news crews packed up. Some were in tears as if he were passing on a torch.
“A little girl with a cellphone took a picture of beating, and you didn’t know Minnesota was like this until Floyd died?” Moss said. “No, you’ve been like this before I got here in 1966.”