The Death of Terrance Franklin

Minneapolis residents are right to be grieved and outraged about the death of 22 year-old Terrance Franklin, who was fatally shot by Minneapolis Police in a Minneapolis home on May 10. Terrance was one of our own. He grew up in Minneapolis and attended our public schools. My thoughts and prayers go out to the grieving family members and friends and I add my voice to those who are calling for a complete, fair and open investigation into his death.


The investigation is now in the hands of the Hennepin County Attorney’s office and evidence is being gathered to be presented to a grand jury. As the investigation unfolds, it will be essential that the family as well the public have faith and confidence in it. To ensure that, I encourage the County Attorney to use all the resources at his disposal and consider calling on our state and federal partners to make sure that in appearances, as well as in reality, the investigation is impartial, complete and fair. The grand jury must hear all the evidence before determining if charges will be brought. If charges are brought, I expect those charged to be fully prosecuted as part of a fair trial.

I also call for a complete review of the incidents and decisions that led up to this tragedy. We must learn from this so that future tragedies like it can be prevented. Following the county-led investigation, I call for a full City led review of the incident, using outside, independent experts as needed, to determine what the police could have done differently to prevent this death. It would be extremely helpful, for this incident and others like it, if Minneapolis still had a civilian-led process for holding police officers accountable. If policies or best practices were not followed, the public should know this and police discipline and training should follow. If policies were followed, they should be reviewed and improved.

As someone who has been deeply committed to preventing youth violence in Minneapolis, it is especially concerning whenever one of our youth is seriously injured or killed in a violent act. In each case I believe that we should conduct a full review to identify the causes and preventative steps we could have taken. It is especially tragic when a youth is killed by a public employee, and we need to take extraordinary measures to understand how and why this happened and to do everything in our power to prevent it from ever happening again.