DPD Timeline of Events

2020

August

Standard

2020 Summer Incident Digest

By Duluth (In)Action • On July 25, 2020 • In DIA Digest • 6 min read

The Duluth Inaction Digest highlights and reflects on the variety of local actions and impacts on the Duluth community related to policing and the carceral state. The goal of this blog is to ensure our community is aware of ongoing injustices carried out by police and city administration and is informed about ways systems of policing are impacting us everyday.

To kick off this project, this post will feature major incidents from the summer of 2020. We recognize this is not an exhaustive list of occurrences, but we hope this attempt at providing details and insight will aid our community in envisioning a world without policing one day at a time.

We will be doing an overview of protest activity throughout the summer and another featuring highlights from September as future posts so keep checking back for new installations and share any feedback, news items, or personal stories with Duluth InAction here.

Cartoon showing police carrying most community needs in one panel, with second panel illustrating how those needs should be carried by others.

Standard

July 23, 2020

Chief Tusken offers an interview to the press to talk about how an audit shows they should hire an additional 8 officers to deal with increased workload. But there is no discussion from the police or the city about how to reduce the number of calls to police overall by decriminalizing certain behaviors or offering better proactive resources.

Screen capture of part of Mike Tusken's Facebook post.

Standard

July 16, 2020

By Duluth (In)Action • On July 16, 2020 • In City Administration Decision, Public Statement • 1 min read

The Chief of Police, Mike Tusken, posts a Facebook update stating the common talking points of his department.

Standard

July 13, 2020

By Duluth (In)Action • On July 13, 2020 • In City Council Decision, Protests • 1 min read

Twenty-three residents of Duluth speak at the City Council meeting for over an hour and a half, calling for action on the petition items circulated during the Juneteenth rally. The petition about the DPD, in particular, has over 3,000 signatures. This was not an agenda topic, and councilors are clearly thrown off by the surge of vocal support for everything from defunding, to racial bias audits, to redistribution of work that falls outside of police expertise.

Impact: The city sees that residents are not sitting back: there are clear asks, and Duluthians would like to see forward movement on them.