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The state of Minnesota (USA) announced Tuesday that it will investigate the practices of the last decade in the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if it has committed discrimination against blacks or Latinos, after the outrage generated by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of one of his agents.

Minnesota Governor Democrat Tim Walz explained in a tweet that the state Human Rights Department "has filed a civil rights charge against the MPD (short for the Minneapolis Police Department)."

As a consequence, the state "will investigate the policies, procedures, and practices of the (Minneapolis police) department over the past 10 years to determine if they committed systematic discriminatory practices," Walz added.

It is unclear what consequences that investigation could have if it was found that there was systematic discrimination against blacks and Latinos, although the person in charge of leading the investigation, Rebecca Lucero, hinted that no criminal charges are expected.

"This is not about seeking personal responsibility through the criminal route. It is about changing the system, " Lucero, who heads the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, said in statements to the press, according to local daily The Minnesota Star Tribune.

The investigation is announced days after the arrest and filing of charges against Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes before he died, an incident that was videotaped and prompted protests across the country.

Three other officers involved in the event have been fired from the MPD, but have not been detained so far, a fact that has become one of the main cries of the protests in Minneapolis and across the country, and which have sometimes led in the greatest racial unrest of the century in the United States.

State prosecutor Keith Ellison is still investigating whether Floyd's autopsy reports, released Monday and that in both cases conclude that his death was a homicide, are enough to order the capture of the other three officers.

For many in Minneapolis, the Floyd case was just a sample of police bias against African Americans, a point on which the newly announced investigation will focus.

Although only 40% of the city's residents are black or Latino, they are involved in 74% of all instances of use of force by the local police, according to data from the MPD cited by the Star Tribune .

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