Since 2022, Honors students have had the opportunity to gain a rare, inside look at the American criminal justice system through the Honors Seminar “Understanding Police Use of Force” taught by Amy Sweasy, a former prosecutor in the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.
Drawing on her 28 years of experience in the courtroom and working alongside law enforcement agencies, Sweasy offers students a nuanced perspective on a challenging subject.
Sweasy’s Honors Seminar examines the legal and cultural issues related to the use of force by police in the United States both from a historical perspective and by examining present-day cases. She invites guest speakers from local agencies to share a variety of expert opinions with the class.
“I love to watch the students grill these high ranking people,” she said. “They don’t have any fear about doing it, they ask great questions.”
Sweasy is an Honors graduate from the College of Liberal Arts (prior to the inception of UHP) and a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. She has taught Trial Practice at local law schools for over 15 years and began teaching at the U of M law school in 2020.
“When someone asks you if you want to teach at the U of M law school, you jump on that,” she said.
She heard about the opportunity to create an Honors Seminar soon after starting in the law school and was intrigued by the prospect of teaching undergraduate students. She submitted her application to teach the course in 2021 and it officially launched in fall 2022.
“There is value to high achieving students digging into some of these issues,” she said. “It’s great to get to explore this topic in an environment where you have the University’s brightest academic students coming at it from totally different places.”
The students use their varying perspectives - whether they’re devout police abolitionists or they’re interested in becoming police officers themselves - to examine this fraught subject.
“One student did their midterm project on police use of force in the Phillippines, another student connected Kpop song lyrics to a police use,” she said. “This kind of exploration is so much fun.”
The course is popular among students across a wide range of majors, not just those interested in pre-law. Nearly half of the students who take the course are freshmen. Sweasy has taught the course four times now and she says each class has its "own personality."
“These have been very high impact years for [police use of force] incidents here,” she said. “The further we get away from 2020, I have found students less likely to come in class with very concrete opinions.”
Sweasy hopes her students leave with a deeper understanding of the nuance involved in approaching this topic.
“I learned from my own experience that what gets reported in the media is very different from how it plays out in the court room,” she said. “It’s better if it’s backed up with some actual knowledge about how these things work.”
HSEM 3807H: Understanding Police Use of Force will be offered again in Fall 2026.