Nina Moini on the work history of Brian O'Hara, Minneapolis police chief nominee
Moini traveled to Newark, New Jersey — where O'Hara spent the last 20 years — to gain some insight into his time there.
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Audio transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: A little over an hour from now, the Minneapolis City Council chambers will be the site for a hearing about Brian O'Hara. He is Mayor Jacob Frey's nominee to be the city's new police chief. MPR reporter Nina Moini is there right now. Hey, Nina. It's kind of early, but what's happening?
NINA MOINI: Hey, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Hi.
NINA MOINI: It is a little bit early. Hey, always great to be on with you. I'm just sitting outside of council chambers. I haven't seen any people, residents coming in for the meeting yet, but I've seen some different council members and staff members sort of milling around.
But today, you mentioned, really is about the public and the residents of Minneapolis to show up here for this public hearing. And it'll be interesting to hear from them. People that I've talked with-- even some of the staunchest supporters of having replaced MPD with the Public Safety Department, which, of course, that measure failed, even some of those people who were in favor of that say that they're looking forward to learning more about Brian O'Hara.
They're encouraged by his reputation as a change maker or reformer, as everyone will hear about in the piece that we're about to play from Newark. But people feel positive about it, but also understanding that one person alone can't make a lot happen. It's going to take everybody coming on board.
So expecting to hear some questions about that. How will you get that buy-in from the rank and file? How will you work with Mayor Jacob Frey and with the new community safety commissioner? So there are some different structural things going on within the department and public safety in the city, and it'll be interesting to hear what questions people have for him, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Is this the last hearing before the council vote?
NINA MOINI: So the council is expected to vote to confirm in about a week, early next month. So this announcement was made back in September on the 29th, so it has been a little while. O'Hara's been making the rounds, saying really that everything in his life, he feels like, has prepared him for this moment.
But, again, he's one person. And we have had, in the past, chiefs that were likeable in the city of Minneapolis. So it is going to take a lot more. So expecting to hear some tough questions here from the public today. And we'll keep everybody posted on what we do here.
CATHY WURZER: Say, before you go, I understand that Newark, New Jersey, refused to release records about Brian O'Hara, so you went to talk with people in Newark. We're going to hear that piece shortly. But was it difficult to find out information about him?
NINA MOINI: No, it really wasn't. Another thing you'll hear in the piece is that they've been undergoing a lot of changes that were really mandated through an agreement in the courts with the Justice Department. So it got to a point where changes had to happen, and that's when Brian O'Hara came into a leadership role having to do with that. So everybody that we talked with there said that he was easy to work with. But, again, it just takes more than one person to create lasting change.
CATHY WURZER: All right, Nina. Of course, we'll hear your report about today's hearing during, All Things Considered. Thanks a lot.
NINA MOINI: Thank you.
CATHY WURZER: All right, now we're going to go to that piece that Nina was talking about. Brian O'Hara has spent the last 20 years on the police force in Newark. She went to Newark to talk to people about him. And she starts her report outside the Newark City Hall, where there's a statue of George Floyd.
RICK ROBINSON: It was really amazing. You had people lined up taking pictures and people who were actually engaged.
NINA MOINI: More than two years after George Floyd's murder, Rick Robinson says you can still find people taking pictures with the 700-pound bronze statue of Floyd sitting on a bench on the steps of Newark City Hall.
RICK ROBINSON: One day, there is going to be change where everybody can be treated fairly regarding law enforcement.
NINA MOINI: Through his work over the years with the New Jersey State Conference, NAACP, and as the Chairman of the Newark Civilian Complaint Review Board, Robinson got to know then Captain Brian O'Hara of Newark's Police Department. O'Hara oversaw the implementation of a consent decree between Newark and the Department of Justice that took effect in 2016.
RICK ROBINSON: And we're very, very thankful that we had him for the time that we had him.
NINA MOINI: The consent decree is a legally binding agreement that requires police departments to negotiate and then enact specific policy reforms. US Justice Department launched an investigation into possible patterns of discrimination and excessive force among the Minneapolis Police Department following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Minneapolis is still waiting to learn of the DOJ's findings and possibly negotiate its own consent decree. That experience is part of the reason Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey picked O'Hara as his nominee to become the next Minneapolis Police Chief. O'Hara says his life's work has prepared him for this moment.
BRIAN O'HARA: I do believe that things happen for a reason.
NINA MOINI: From his home in New Jersey, the 43-year-old explained his role in the consent decree for the last five years, communicating with a variety of stakeholders in Newark's Public Safety. And his job was to make the policy changes in the consent decree a reality.
BRIAN O'HARA: We have a culture of a police department that is sort of antithetical to the values that community wants and what may actually be written down in policy, the culturable Trump policy that's written any day of the week.
NINA MOINI: Larry Hamm has also been working on social justice in Newark since he founded People's Organization for Progress in 1982. He's led hundreds of protests against police brutality in Newark. And in a hotel lobby near Newark City Hall on a recent weeknight, Hamm recounted stories and shared names of Black people mistreated by police throughout the decades.
LARRY HAMM: Newark police beat a cab driver, John Smith, and that was the beginning of probably one of the most cataclysmic of the rebellions that took place in 1967.
NINA MOINI: Hamm says it wasn't until almost a half century later the Justice Department began investigating Newark police and found a pattern of unconstitutional policing. Newark signed the consent decree in May 2016. It required the department to undergo a series of 16 reforms and train officers on new policies across many areas, including use of force, body-worn cameras, and community policing. Hamm says O'Hara was a consistent presence at community meetings around the consent decree.
LARRY HAMM: He wasn't one of these hardliners, been with the department for 40 years, don't want to change anything. He seemed to be like-- he seemed to see the need for change.
NINA MOINI: Hamm says O'Hara's demeanor wasn't always reflected in the public's day-to-day encounters with Newark police officers.
LARRY HAMM: It's really the rank and file officers that create the perception in people's minds about the police.
NINA MOINI: O'Hara says there's no question that the Newark Police Department is dramatically different today from five years ago.
BRIAN O'HARA: Change has been made, it's just how much? I think that's the only thing that's open for debate.
NINA MOINI: Violent crimes and homicides fell in recent years since 2013, but some crimes ticked up slightly again in 2021. An independent monitoring team, including the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, works on auditing the implementation of consent decree changes within the police department and conducting community surveys. The goal is to ensure the agreed-upon changes are actually happening. Yannick Wood is director of the institute's Criminal Justice Reform program. He compares the consent decree process to medicine.
YANNICK WOOD: And they got a little bit of the medication, and they feel a little bit better, and then they want to stop doing the medication. I think that's kind of where we are in the consent decree.
NINA MOINI: The consent decree has been extended for at least another year, partly because the police department hasn't passed some audits and the pandemic delayed some of the work.
YANNICK WOOD: We're not there yet. And we need to remain vigilant, and we need to continue the process.
NINA MOINI: Wood says the public opinion surveys from the institute showed that in 2018, 83% of responding Newark residents reported never having a positive interaction with Newark police officers. And that fell nearly 50% to 37% by the 2020 survey. In 2020, half the respondents still felt Newark police treated Black individuals worse than others.
Newark's a city of around 300,000, with a majority of residents and officers of color. Minneapolis is a bigger city, with majority white residents and officers. O'Hara says that most people just want to be heard and that would be his focus.
BRIAN O'HARA: In general, I think the concerns of community are universal. Just my experience is this is a very diverse city.
NINA MOINI: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was O'Hara's boss. Baraka took office at the early stages of the consent decree process. He says it's been an expensive process at $2 to $3 million per year that falls on taxpayers. He says it's also been helpful.
RAS BARAKA: If you really want to reform the police department, it gives you the context to do it.
NINA MOINI: Baraka was so pleased with O'Hara's work overseeing the consent decree, he made O'Hara director of public safety in 2021.
RAS BARAKA: He knows exactly what constitutional policing looks like, what's needed, what the US government is looking for, what we think is right and good. That kind of knowledge, a lot of police officers just don't have that.
NINA MOINI: This summer, Baraka made O'Hara deputy mayor of Strategic Initiatives for Police Services, an appointment that caught some people by surprise.
RAS BARAKA: I wanted to create a position that answered only to me and not to everybody else who was getting in the way of him doing what he needed to do.
NINA MOINI: Baraka says that while reform made some members of the police brass at all levels uncomfortable, O'Hara was able to balance reducing violent crime with implementing the practice of constitutional policing throughout his 20 years with the department. O'Hara says the fact that he's never served with the Minneapolis Police Department is actually a strength because the Minneapolis police officers he's spoken to welcome change.
BRIAN O'HARA: This is a game about human intelligence and about learning who's who on the street, who's most at risk of either becoming a victim of gun violence or pulling the trigger themselves.
NINA MOINI: In 2020, Newark police didn't fire a single shot. And after George Floyd's murder, the protests against police brutality in Newark were among the largest in the city's history. And they were peaceful, an encouraging show of unity to many in Newark after some difficult decades. And the bronze statue of George Floyd eventually made its way to Newark City Hall after Mayor Baraka heard the artist was looking for a place to put it.
RAS BARAKA: I said, yeah, you can put it right here.
NINA MOINI: To the NAACP's Rick Robinson--
CREW: Watch your step.
NINA MOINI: --the statue serves as a reminder of the past and a beacon of hope for the future of policing across the country.
RICK ROBINSON: You're going to actually measure that change, and it's going to become greater and greater and greater.
NINA MOINI: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has said he hopes to have the full city council vote on O'Hara's nomination early next month. Nina Moini, MPR News, Newark, New Jersey.
CATHY WURZER: And tomorrow here on Minnesota Now, we'll have Brian O'Hara on the air with us. We'll talk with him about his approach to public safety, the questions raised by his work in Newark, and the questions that come in during today's hearing at city hall. Hope you'll join us for that tomorrow right at noon. And if you have something you want to make sure we ask, send us an email-- minnesotanow@mpr.org.
NINA MOINI: Hey, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Hi.
NINA MOINI: It is a little bit early. Hey, always great to be on with you. I'm just sitting outside of council chambers. I haven't seen any people, residents coming in for the meeting yet, but I've seen some different council members and staff members sort of milling around.
But today, you mentioned, really is about the public and the residents of Minneapolis to show up here for this public hearing. And it'll be interesting to hear from them. People that I've talked with-- even some of the staunchest supporters of having replaced MPD with the Public Safety Department, which, of course, that measure failed, even some of those people who were in favor of that say that they're looking forward to learning more about Brian O'Hara.
They're encouraged by his reputation as a change maker or reformer, as everyone will hear about in the piece that we're about to play from Newark. But people feel positive about it, but also understanding that one person alone can't make a lot happen. It's going to take everybody coming on board.
So expecting to hear some questions about that. How will you get that buy-in from the rank and file? How will you work with Mayor Jacob Frey and with the new community safety commissioner? So there are some different structural things going on within the department and public safety in the city, and it'll be interesting to hear what questions people have for him, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Is this the last hearing before the council vote?
NINA MOINI: So the council is expected to vote to confirm in about a week, early next month. So this announcement was made back in September on the 29th, so it has been a little while. O'Hara's been making the rounds, saying really that everything in his life, he feels like, has prepared him for this moment.
But, again, he's one person. And we have had, in the past, chiefs that were likeable in the city of Minneapolis. So it is going to take a lot more. So expecting to hear some tough questions here from the public today. And we'll keep everybody posted on what we do here.
CATHY WURZER: Say, before you go, I understand that Newark, New Jersey, refused to release records about Brian O'Hara, so you went to talk with people in Newark. We're going to hear that piece shortly. But was it difficult to find out information about him?
NINA MOINI: No, it really wasn't. Another thing you'll hear in the piece is that they've been undergoing a lot of changes that were really mandated through an agreement in the courts with the Justice Department. So it got to a point where changes had to happen, and that's when Brian O'Hara came into a leadership role having to do with that. So everybody that we talked with there said that he was easy to work with. But, again, it just takes more than one person to create lasting change.
CATHY WURZER: All right, Nina. Of course, we'll hear your report about today's hearing during, All Things Considered. Thanks a lot.
NINA MOINI: Thank you.
CATHY WURZER: All right, now we're going to go to that piece that Nina was talking about. Brian O'Hara has spent the last 20 years on the police force in Newark. She went to Newark to talk to people about him. And she starts her report outside the Newark City Hall, where there's a statue of George Floyd.
RICK ROBINSON: It was really amazing. You had people lined up taking pictures and people who were actually engaged.
NINA MOINI: More than two years after George Floyd's murder, Rick Robinson says you can still find people taking pictures with the 700-pound bronze statue of Floyd sitting on a bench on the steps of Newark City Hall.
RICK ROBINSON: One day, there is going to be change where everybody can be treated fairly regarding law enforcement.
NINA MOINI: Through his work over the years with the New Jersey State Conference, NAACP, and as the Chairman of the Newark Civilian Complaint Review Board, Robinson got to know then Captain Brian O'Hara of Newark's Police Department. O'Hara oversaw the implementation of a consent decree between Newark and the Department of Justice that took effect in 2016.
RICK ROBINSON: And we're very, very thankful that we had him for the time that we had him.
NINA MOINI: The consent decree is a legally binding agreement that requires police departments to negotiate and then enact specific policy reforms. US Justice Department launched an investigation into possible patterns of discrimination and excessive force among the Minneapolis Police Department following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Minneapolis is still waiting to learn of the DOJ's findings and possibly negotiate its own consent decree. That experience is part of the reason Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey picked O'Hara as his nominee to become the next Minneapolis Police Chief. O'Hara says his life's work has prepared him for this moment.
BRIAN O'HARA: I do believe that things happen for a reason.
NINA MOINI: From his home in New Jersey, the 43-year-old explained his role in the consent decree for the last five years, communicating with a variety of stakeholders in Newark's Public Safety. And his job was to make the policy changes in the consent decree a reality.
BRIAN O'HARA: We have a culture of a police department that is sort of antithetical to the values that community wants and what may actually be written down in policy, the culturable Trump policy that's written any day of the week.
NINA MOINI: Larry Hamm has also been working on social justice in Newark since he founded People's Organization for Progress in 1982. He's led hundreds of protests against police brutality in Newark. And in a hotel lobby near Newark City Hall on a recent weeknight, Hamm recounted stories and shared names of Black people mistreated by police throughout the decades.
LARRY HAMM: Newark police beat a cab driver, John Smith, and that was the beginning of probably one of the most cataclysmic of the rebellions that took place in 1967.
NINA MOINI: Hamm says it wasn't until almost a half century later the Justice Department began investigating Newark police and found a pattern of unconstitutional policing. Newark signed the consent decree in May 2016. It required the department to undergo a series of 16 reforms and train officers on new policies across many areas, including use of force, body-worn cameras, and community policing. Hamm says O'Hara was a consistent presence at community meetings around the consent decree.
LARRY HAMM: He wasn't one of these hardliners, been with the department for 40 years, don't want to change anything. He seemed to be like-- he seemed to see the need for change.
NINA MOINI: Hamm says O'Hara's demeanor wasn't always reflected in the public's day-to-day encounters with Newark police officers.
LARRY HAMM: It's really the rank and file officers that create the perception in people's minds about the police.
NINA MOINI: O'Hara says there's no question that the Newark Police Department is dramatically different today from five years ago.
BRIAN O'HARA: Change has been made, it's just how much? I think that's the only thing that's open for debate.
NINA MOINI: Violent crimes and homicides fell in recent years since 2013, but some crimes ticked up slightly again in 2021. An independent monitoring team, including the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, works on auditing the implementation of consent decree changes within the police department and conducting community surveys. The goal is to ensure the agreed-upon changes are actually happening. Yannick Wood is director of the institute's Criminal Justice Reform program. He compares the consent decree process to medicine.
YANNICK WOOD: And they got a little bit of the medication, and they feel a little bit better, and then they want to stop doing the medication. I think that's kind of where we are in the consent decree.
NINA MOINI: The consent decree has been extended for at least another year, partly because the police department hasn't passed some audits and the pandemic delayed some of the work.
YANNICK WOOD: We're not there yet. And we need to remain vigilant, and we need to continue the process.
NINA MOINI: Wood says the public opinion surveys from the institute showed that in 2018, 83% of responding Newark residents reported never having a positive interaction with Newark police officers. And that fell nearly 50% to 37% by the 2020 survey. In 2020, half the respondents still felt Newark police treated Black individuals worse than others.
Newark's a city of around 300,000, with a majority of residents and officers of color. Minneapolis is a bigger city, with majority white residents and officers. O'Hara says that most people just want to be heard and that would be his focus.
BRIAN O'HARA: In general, I think the concerns of community are universal. Just my experience is this is a very diverse city.
NINA MOINI: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was O'Hara's boss. Baraka took office at the early stages of the consent decree process. He says it's been an expensive process at $2 to $3 million per year that falls on taxpayers. He says it's also been helpful.
RAS BARAKA: If you really want to reform the police department, it gives you the context to do it.
NINA MOINI: Baraka was so pleased with O'Hara's work overseeing the consent decree, he made O'Hara director of public safety in 2021.
RAS BARAKA: He knows exactly what constitutional policing looks like, what's needed, what the US government is looking for, what we think is right and good. That kind of knowledge, a lot of police officers just don't have that.
NINA MOINI: This summer, Baraka made O'Hara deputy mayor of Strategic Initiatives for Police Services, an appointment that caught some people by surprise.
RAS BARAKA: I wanted to create a position that answered only to me and not to everybody else who was getting in the way of him doing what he needed to do.
NINA MOINI: Baraka says that while reform made some members of the police brass at all levels uncomfortable, O'Hara was able to balance reducing violent crime with implementing the practice of constitutional policing throughout his 20 years with the department. O'Hara says the fact that he's never served with the Minneapolis Police Department is actually a strength because the Minneapolis police officers he's spoken to welcome change.
BRIAN O'HARA: This is a game about human intelligence and about learning who's who on the street, who's most at risk of either becoming a victim of gun violence or pulling the trigger themselves.
NINA MOINI: In 2020, Newark police didn't fire a single shot. And after George Floyd's murder, the protests against police brutality in Newark were among the largest in the city's history. And they were peaceful, an encouraging show of unity to many in Newark after some difficult decades. And the bronze statue of George Floyd eventually made its way to Newark City Hall after Mayor Baraka heard the artist was looking for a place to put it.
RAS BARAKA: I said, yeah, you can put it right here.
NINA MOINI: To the NAACP's Rick Robinson--
CREW: Watch your step.
NINA MOINI: --the statue serves as a reminder of the past and a beacon of hope for the future of policing across the country.
RICK ROBINSON: You're going to actually measure that change, and it's going to become greater and greater and greater.
NINA MOINI: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has said he hopes to have the full city council vote on O'Hara's nomination early next month. Nina Moini, MPR News, Newark, New Jersey.
CATHY WURZER: And tomorrow here on Minnesota Now, we'll have Brian O'Hara on the air with us. We'll talk with him about his approach to public safety, the questions raised by his work in Newark, and the questions that come in during today's hearing at city hall. Hope you'll join us for that tomorrow right at noon. And if you have something you want to make sure we ask, send us an email-- minnesotanow@mpr.org.
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