Brooklyn Center Mayor Says ‘It’s Time for a Reckoning’ on Policing: ‘It’s Not Safe to Drive in Minnesota While You’re Black’

Brooklyn Center mayor Mike Elliott called for a reckoning on policing in Minnesota, saying “It’s not safe to drive in Minnesota while you’re Black.”

“I mean, the fact of the matter is there’s so many of us who drive, you know, and if we see police behind us, we’re afraid, you know, we’re trembling. That is a kind of terror that no citizen of the United States should ever have to face. It’s constant, it’s ever-present.”

Elliott was responding to Wolf Blitzer’s question on whether or not he agrees with the lieutenant governor of Minnesota’s comments that “Minnesota is a place where it is not safe to be Black.”

He agreed with the comment, saying she’s “absolutely right.”

Elliott also recounted his own experiences of racial profiling:

Myself and another friend of mine were the only two Black kids who were at the park that day playing, and out of nowhere we had police officers come and pick the two of us up out of the group of our friends and put us in the back of a squad, take us. We were shown to someone in a window to be identified as perhaps potentially criminals.

He also recalled one incident where he was suspected a crime he had not committed:

I’ve had officers almost throw me off my bike just coming back from biking down the parkway, you know, saying that someone called and said they saw their neighbor’s back door open and saw me riding down the sidewalk, down the street and thought maybe for some reason I had burglarized their neighbor’s home, which of course was not possible because I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Elliott referred to these experiences as traumatic and urged for action, “It’s time for a reckoning. It’s time for us as a country to come together and once and for all resolve this problem.”

You can watch above, via CNN.