Prosecute a Cop? You’ll Face Removal From Office

Two unions representing police and state troopers in Minnesota wrote a letter to Gov. Tim Walz last friday. An elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, was prosecuting one of their own, and they wanted her removed from the case — immediately. 

On Wednesday, four Republican members of U.S. Congress from Minnesota followed up in another letter to Walz expressing “outrage” in the same case. “It is time for us as a nation to stop demonizing law enforcement,” the Republican representatives wrote. They called for an investigation into Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. At least one of the four, Rep. Michelle Fischbach, has called on Moriarty to resign. 

Only a few days earlier, Minnesota Republican state lawmakers called on Moriarty to resign and drop charges against the state trooper in the case. Lawmakers accused her of coddling criminals and targeting police in “politically-motivated prosecution.” 

The controversy erupted around the prosecution of a state trooper who shot and killed 33-year-old Ricky Cobb II, a Black man, during a traffic stop in July. Moriarty’s office said the trooper’s use of deadly force against Cobb was not justified.

The pressure campaign against the prosecution seems, so far, to be working. Asked about the case during a press conference on Monday, Walz, a Democrat, questioned Moriarty’s handling of the charges and criticized her assessment of the use of force. The governor’s office, however, has not yet said whether Moriarty will be removed from the case. (Moriarty’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but in a previous statement she said the unions wanted Walz to “give special treatment to this case.” Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) 

The attacks like those on Moriarty are not unique to Minnesota. Moriarty was among a clutch of reform-minded prosecutors who started winning elections in greater numbers in recent years. Constituents were increasingly casting their ballots for criminal justice reformers who ran on prosecuting police for misconduct and killing of civilians, ending cash bail, and curtailing the prosecution of nonviolent offenses. 

In response, opponents of the reform push have been more and more explicit about why they want to remove elected attorneys like Moriarty: They’re prosecuting the police.

“It’s clear this is not about safety,” said Jessica Brand, who founded the Wren Collective, a progressive consulting firm, and works with several reform prosecutors. “It’s about power — they don’t want prosecutors in office who will hold them accountable when they abuse their power. That’s the theme that is running through the backlash in every state.”

“It’s clear this is not about safety. It’s about power — they don’t want prosecutors in office who will hold them accountable.”

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has unilaterally removed two prosecutors who implemented policies he didn’t like, including one who indicted a deputy sheriff for shooting a civilian in 2020. The attorney DeSantis appointed to replace former State’s Attorney Monique Worrell, Federalist Society member Andrew Bain, dropped the charges against the deputy sheriff last week.

In Texas, where top Republican state officials and police have blamed reform prosecutors for police attrition and crime, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is now demanding case files on the prosecution of police in any county with more than 250,000 residents. The population threshold targets larger cities where reformers have won office or found substantial support. 

“When certain crimes went up post-Covid, police unions moved quickly to attack progressive prosecutors and their policies, no matter how modest those policies were,” Brand said. “Now, crime is down, and these attacks have not only continued, but have also intensified.”

Removals From SF to Philadelphia

The opposition to district attorneys who ran on prosecuting police misconduct, which often lead to formal recall and removal efforts, has come in large part from the police. 

In their letter to Walz last week, unions for Minnesota police and state troopers blamed Moriarty for a “state of crisis” among law enforcement officers in the state. They cited, in particular, Minneapolis, where the ranks of police have shrunk since an officer killed George Floyd in May 2020. 

The unions wrote, “There is a crisis of confidence in the elected leadership who are supposed to be partners in making our communities safer, but instead seek to score political points through charging every police officer whom circumstances compel to use deadly force, regardless of the evidence.” (In her statement responding to the letter, Moriarty said, “[T]here is a crisis in confidence, but it is not because of attempts at accountability. It is because of well-documented and horrific instances where some officers abused their power and used unauthorized force.”)

Similar sagas have played out from San Francisco to Philadelphia. Police and their unions led attacks against reform prosecutors and poured money into efforts to remove them from office. In Worrell’s case in Florida, DeSantis reportedly worked with law enforcement targeted by Worrell for prosecution to tarnish her reputation before he removed her from office. 

In Moriarty’s case, the attacks have also come from one-time allies. 

Cobb’s killing is not the first case in which Moriarty was threatened with removal for adhering to the reforms she ran on in 2020. Last year, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over another case from Moriarty in which she had declined to charge two teens accused of murder as adults. 

Ellison had built his reputation as a reformer and fought off attacks from Republicans claiming he was soft on crime to win election as attorney general in 2022. The juvenile case put Ellison and Moriarty on opposite ends of a fight for reform they had once shared.