NEWS REPORT:
Activists are demanding justice for George Floyd. He is the black man who died after being arrested by police.
LIBOR JANY:
Those visceral images of him taking his last breath on that video. That certainly brought people out to the streets.
NEWS REPORT:
Smoke billowing out of the police station.
NEWS REPORT:
this visual of a burning police station We'll go around the world.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH, HOST:
It's been two years since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a wave of mass protests and a national reckoning over race and policing.
PROTESTER:
We have a yes or no question for you. Will you commit to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department?
ALONDRA CANO:
We should and can abolish our current Minneapolis police system.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Reporters from FRONTLINE's local journalism partner, the Star Tribune, have been covering the story since day one. Their work was honored with a Pulitzer Prize last year.
LIZ SAWYER:
Another one killed by a local police department. It's just a combustible situation.
PROTESTERS:
Daunte Wright! Daunte Wright!
JEFF HARGARTEN:
This just keeps happening. It keeps happening.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
FRONTLINE's latest documentary Police On Trial made in collaboration with the Star Tribune documents the aftermath of this pivotal event in the city where it started as well as the ongoing struggles for police accountability and reform. I'm joined today by Suki Dardarian, the editor of the Star Tribune.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Our reporting has shown that these incidents happen more often than we thought
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
I'm Raney, Aronson Roth, Executive Producer of FRONTLINE, and this is the
FRONTLINE Dispatch.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Suki. Thanks so much for joining me on the Dispatch today.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
I'm very pleased to be here with you, Raney.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
What a journey we've had. I mean, honestly it took us two years. Did you ever think we'd get here?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
I was not sure, but we always make our deadlines and yeah, there were a lot of other things keeping us busy during the interim, but yeah, two years boiled down to 90 minutes.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
What was it like to have a film team with you all the last couple of years?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
The biggest thing for me and I think eventually for everyone here was the sort of public service component of this and that this, this is a story that needs to be told in many different ways, and the story you were working to tell on that scale was one that needs to be told. And so I felt like we would be good partners in that, and that was essentially a public service. So, um, while some of the journalists here initially were shy and, and this isn't about me, this is about change in our community. I think once they were able to see that that's what the story was about, um, that they, that they felt the same way I did.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Suki, let's talk about the film team, Marcia Robiou and Mike Shum. Mike was located in Minneapolis. So we, we know he's a terrific filmmaker. So pairing him up with your team, it was actually a miracle, right?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, he had just moved to St. Paul and, you know, the journalists tended to bond with each other out on the streets and, and that's, that's, I think where it all began.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right. It was almost like kismet. You know, we were hearing about the reporters and the local journalism initiative was like our way to come and say like, we want to chronicle all that you're doing, but we actually want to support one of your reporters. I'm just curious, like, what were those internal conversations like for you as, as the boss and the editor?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Uh, mostly around cajoling, um, and helping people see that there was a bigger value here, for the story, for the institution. Um, and that I felt they represented us and the institution well. And, I've, I've watched the film many times now and I think they do. And looking back, I get teary-eyed. I'm really proud of the work they not only did for us and our readers here, but proud of the work they did as part of this effort, both the people who were on camera and the people who were behind the camera.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
I mean, it's such an incredible effort and something we talked a lot about it at Frontline — what was the best way to tell this story? And, you know, for us, like we kept coming back to the reporters because the gravitational pull was, was so obvious in film terms, you know, they're the ones doing the reporting. Something I've really grown incredibly respectful of is just the, the, the day after day work, that happens in relationships that are built over time. And obviously that leads to really authentic journalism. Right. Their work is so — it's so visceral in its locality, but it's also in the relationships that they build over time.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, I think that's so funny because I think it, it took this film for our people to really fully appreciate and understand that, you know, I'm just going out on a story. I'm walking down the street, I'm, I'm taking a phone call in the courthouse. It's like, this is not glamorous. And, and, um, it's not glamorous and it's, but it's public service. And what I really appreciate about the work that y'all did is being able to accurately capture sort of, both the extreme and the mundane of what local journalism is about.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right, because I think it's a really hard thing, articulating why journalism matters. The very beginning of the film. Star Tribune reporter Libor Jany, he's talking about covering George Floyd's murder. He's seeing the video in that moment.
LIBOR JANY:
It took me a second to sort of process what I was watching.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
He doesn't realize yet the magnitude of the event. Right. And he doesn't even realize what actually happens, but he knows to pay attention to the discrepancies. He knows to keep his eyes wide open on this.
LIBOR JANY:
You realize that there's far more to this case than they initially led on
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Talk to me about that scene, but also just that moment for you all as reporters and editors there.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, it is, uh, it is a perfect moment to describe Libor. But also to describe this newsroom, which took such great care with every fact, every question, every interview to try and get the story right every day. And so they were covering the breaking story. They were covering all of those questions that Libor and others had. You know, I think he filed that story. I forget what it is — A hundred, 200 times, uh, digitally in the first cycle. And we had video and photos. We had other stories as well about the officers and about George Floyd, himself and about discipline and many of the bigger questions that we would continue to investigate for the next two years, we were asking on that first day and you don't do that without humans out there on the streets, asking the questions and pursuing the answers.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
When did it become clear to you that what happened that day was going to become such a defining event?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, I think it took less than 24 hours. It took into the middle of the next day to say this is huge. We'd had huge. Um, but then over the next day or two, it got huger and we'd not seen that. And then we just saw the reaction spread. Well beyond here and around the country and around the world. And you know, we were stunned by what was happening here and, and working to cover it. And then you'd look up and see, you know, there are protests in some city on the other side of the planet. And so we were, we were pretty heads down on all the fronts of the story here. Um, but the world was captive, right? We were all, many of us looking at that video from home. I think you guys have a — you have a scene where he's watching — Libor. Libor was working Memorial Day. Like, he was the guy working the holiday shift and he'd finished his shift. You know, it was kind of off the clock when the story happened and he's watching the video, like on his phone by himself, like most of us did. And it, you process that, you process that whole moment and it's such a different way. And then you see people coming together on the streets, in the middle of COVID. Um, and, and you see that we haven't seen people gather like that. And so it, it, it really. It really was an immediate catalyst, I think.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Because of how this happens, right, and being part of the national press, I've definitely been one of these people who shows up at the scene from New York and my case, right. As a reporter and producer and my career. How is that for you locally? When the whole national press shows up, I've always been, I've always wanted to ask an editor like yourself, that question.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, I think two things happen. The first thing is what do — and this happened so phenomenally in this case — what do our readers need? What do my neighbors need? What do people who live in this community need to know, like, that is the most important thing. And yeah, the national media may be here pursuing the same question, but I have to pursue it for my people, for our people. And, so that was front and center, our first responsibility, you know, there's also kind of a layer of, um, I don't want to say frustration, but you can see that other reporters could come in and pick and choose which stories they were going to do, and that they would take more time on that story. We were hard charging on all fronts and we had to, and even though we were undergoing investigations from day one, we had to tell people in this community everything we knew, uh, as quickly as we could and as accurately as we could, you know, as our city was on fire. Um, that was really important to people to know what was happening — where are the fires? Where is the national guard? Where are the police? And then later when the fires were out, you know, what was damaged, what is being rebuilt? What is happening at city hall? What is happening at the police department? And that was our most important job. So that's where we were focused, but it, and we did have a lot of company here. Um, in some cases our journalists were able to travel in the protests along with other media, kind of as a little protective pod.
And so there was some value there. And as we approached the trial of Derek Chauvin and we, we fought in the courtroom to get legal access, For cameras, which are a rarity in our courtrooms, we had the support of dozens of media from locally and from around the country who joined together in, in making those, legal claims, and then also in working on the logistics with the courthouse.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right. That was a really big deal and I'm curious what you thought about the Chauvin trial being broadcast all around the world like that. What was your, what was your impression of the journalism that came out of it, when it was that available to the world?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well as a former courts reporter, and as someone who has fought for getting cameras in the courtroom for decades, it was, it was amazing. And it was amazing for me to see people in coffee shops, uh, restaurants, barbershops on their phone, in a park watching the trial. And to me that is transparency. And there was so little trust in, in government, particularly around the criminal justice system. We argued that it was really important to this community that people could witness the trial, that they could watch it and that they could experience it, maybe not exactly the way a juror would, but as, but as any observer would. So for me, that was I think, a wonderful moment, um, for people to be able to witness that and, uh, and, uh, and a great moment for the court system to open their doors.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right. Right. The more transparency the better. I am a big believer in that too.
[midroll]
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Okay. So moving us forward a little, you know, this didn't come out of nowhere, right? You all had done a lot of reporting on the institutional problems at the Minneapolis police department, and even on Chauvin's own past uses of force. So I was hoping you could put this in a little context of what you, what you already had found out about this police department in his use of force.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
We learned pretty quickly that this wasn't the first complaint against him, for his behavior. And we also learned that most of the complaints were not available to us because they did not result in discipline. We had also done a number of stories before this, on police performance and behavior and on the oversight or lack of oversight for police, not just in Minneapolis, but across the state of Minnesota. We had also written stories about numerous police shootings of people, predominantly black men. But we also had a database of all of the killings that police were involved in, uh, in the state of Minnesota. And we created a database of that long before George Floyd was murdered. So, we did a big series on rape investigations that really weren't investigated because there was a culture of not investigating a lot of them because they were, he said, she said, or for whatever reasons. So we were very experienced at covering police and assessing their work and assessing their oversight. I could go on there, a number of other projects and stories that we've done over the years. So, that's part of what informed Libor's, um, skepticism. And led us down a path of asking more questions.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
What was, what was the kind of response you were getting at first from the police around this and how did their story change and how, and how's the relationship with the police? I guess that's three big questions.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
The relationship with the police is not good. They do their best not to talk to us, to give us prepared statements, to give us prepared statements that may or may not be accurate. Um, when we. There, there were moments where we asked for data or made a public records request. And the representative, uh, from the police department said, who's it for who who's it for? What reporter is it for? And that's, that's not how you process public records requests. You just provide the, the data. Um, the head of the union decided not to speak to us ever again, after we revealed a publicly known fact that his wife was a TV journalist in the community at the time. If you reveal that I'll never speak to you again and neither will my successor in this job. So, um, while we have some good sources in the police department and, you know, administration, uh, generally speaking, it was, it was pretty icy cold with the police department.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
How did you navigate creating a sense of like their point of view at all in these stories, because I see it there all the time and the way that you all, um, you know, basically look for, how can we be fair to them at the same time? So how do you do that as an editor?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
‘Well, right. I think we have to prosecute our own stories, right? So if, if the police aren't specifically saying something, what did we ask the data? And are we giving the police the benefit of the doubt or any subject, the benefit of the doubt? Is there a reason the data might show X as opposed to Y. We also do have sources, um, in law enforcement who can help us process that and say, no, that's probably not the right number to look at or the right data to assess, or we changed the way we did data. So, um, or talking to cops and saying, what do you think about this? And, and, and hearing their perspectives.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
So moving ahead to, you know, obviously the story keeps emerging and just today we co-published a story about a past victim, um, John Pope who's suing the city. Can you tell me about that? And how many stories like that? Did you start to hear, like, how many of these stories of, um, alleged victims did you all hear about?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, they, they sort of come out of the woodwork. You know, we, we found some immediately after we found some more, that were, the documents had been submitted along with some other trial documents or somebody gives us a call, or you find you see a claim that's been filed. Um, so, and we've been seeing the settlements start to happen. A number of settlements with, with, um, victims of police settlements, with officers who worked in the system and felt like they were discriminated against, um, uh, lawsuits from people who were involved in the demonstrations and weren’t treated appropriately by the police. There've been settlements there.
So, you know, it's been two years, you're starting to see. Some of those come forward now, or many of them come forward now, even just in the past couple of weeks.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right. That is — so now we're talking about two years later, what, what do you make of that — these stories that keep popping up?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
I think as our reporting has shown these, these incidents happen more often than we thought. Right. And they happen to people who may not even complain about them or if they do the complaint, doesn't go anywhere as our reporting has also shown, but then they're watching the video and they see the person that they complained about, or the person who they feel mistreated them with his knee on George Floyd's neck.
And they think, man, like if something, if somebody had done something after my incident, would we be here today? And oh my gosh, I'm here today. It could have been me. Right. So I think, I think those folks stepping forward and telling their story is important to the bigger story, which is not just about one cop who behaved badly, but, but the system that surrounded that.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
I was thinking, as you were speaking about Libor, as you know, he, he asked a rhetorical question about what really has changed at the police department. And he's speaking about not just the police department, but of course society. And I'm just from your, from where you sit, like, what is your perspective on that?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Well, my perspective is that. It has to change. I don't know how it can't. Um, but I don't think, I don't think the, the hardest work is done by any means. And I think there's a lot, I think, I think Libor said this too. There is no quick fix and it, this is, this is, this is a story that we have to keep reporting on. Uh, here and across the country and we have more work to do. And our police departments have more work to do.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Mmhmm. One thing that struck me in this film was that you got a sense of a lot of people trying for changes and sort of fits and starts for change. So the longitudinal look over those two years, you get a sense of actually the challenges too, right? The reforming a police department and all the players at the table — very complex. Right? That was one of the things that I was really hoping that film could even do more of is the minutiae of how one might reform a police department.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
It boiled down to charter questions. I mean, this community was all wound up around charter questions and, and, um, you know, trust in this community in a state that has the highest voter turnout to, to not be intimidated by that. But it is, it is the devil is in the details here, right?
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
The devil is in the details. I was thinking back about one of the earlier scenes where you just see people out in the streets and you're so sure something quickly could happen. And then as it unfolds, and that was another reason we decided to stay, right. It was because we wanted to see what, what could happen. We kept asking you these questions in prior documentaries, like could change happen? But not staying for long enough to see what, what, what, what really could happen. So that, that was part of the reason we stayed.
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Exactly. I remember you talking about the arc of the story and us trying to figure out, like, where, how do you end this story? Like when, when do you leave and, and, and how do you end it? And, um, I guess, I guess it didn't really end yet.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Right. It hasn't ended, but you know, every good documentary that we make any way. And really at the end of the day, you have to admit that you, at some point you have to stop and start again. RIght? But Where is the story heading now? I heard that there might be a consent decree coming, like where, where are you seeing the story? What's the next iteration?
SUKI DARDARIAN:
Yeah, well, I don't — it it's boy, it doesn't end there. There are stories every week and every day. Um, and yeah, consent decree could happen. We still have criminal cases pending. We don't know who our next police chief is. Uh, you know, we changed, we changed some of the folks on the city council. Uh, we. We gave the mayor more authority over, um, over the city. This is really just at the beginning, um, for the city. How is this going to play out? So this is, this is, this is a story that, that has kept a number of us busy for, uh, for the last two years. And it's not going to let up. We'll be staffing up, both on our city and, and public safety teams and our efforts to try and get our arms around everything and help people understand where we're going.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Suki. Thanks for joining me on the dispatch. I really appreciate it.
SUKI DARDARIAN: Take care, Raney. Thank you.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
Thank you so much to Suki Dardarian for joining us on the Dispatch. To watch Police on Trial, head to frontline.org, where you can read, watch and listen to all of our original reporting in collaboration with the Star Tribune, along with many other stories.
This podcast was produced by Emily Pisacreta. Maria Diokno is our Director of Audience Development. Katherine Griwert is our Editorial Coordinating Producer. Frank Koughan is our Senior Producer. Lauren Ezell is our Senior Editor. Andrew Metz is our Managing Editor. I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, executive producer of FRONTLINE. Music in this episode is by Stellwagen Symphonette. The FRONTLINE Dispatch is produced at GBH and powered by PRX.
Music in this episode is by Stellwagon Symphonette. The Frontline Dispatch is produced at GBH and powered by PRX.
