Before the Law

The Harper’s Forum on American policing [“Crime and Punishment,” April] opened with the searing image of George Floyd’s murder, inviting readers to consider how we got to that fatal encounter at 38th and Chicago, and what, if anything, has changed since May 2020. Minneapolis has rightfully become a flash point in such discussions, and it is important that we learn from the city’s experiences. But Minneapolis’s chief of police, Brian O’Hara, risks getting these lessons wrong.

O’Hara claims that the people of North Minneapolis, who face the highest rates of lethal violence in the…