Mayor Frey: Even without federal support, Minneapolis plans to move forward with police reforms
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he plans to move forward with reforms to the city’s police department as laid out in a federal consent decree agreement — despite the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the case.
That agreement stemmed from the police murder of George Floyd five years ago and laid out sweeping reforms.
The city is also in the process of implementing a state court-enforceable agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. A report out Tuesday by an independent monitor, Effective Law Enforcement for All, was largely positive in its assessment of the city’s progress although Minneapolis did not reach all of its goals for the first year.
Frey said work is being done to address the staffing and capacity issues noted by the report.
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“We have hired out staff, we’ve spent tens of millions of dollars, we have made very clear to every police officer in this department and all of the recruits coming on that they need to be part of this change.”
Click the audio player above to hear the conversation with Frey. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
A judge still has to decide whether the DOJ motion will be dismissed, but you say you’ll move forward anyway with the agreed upon reforms. How will that work?
The bottom line is we are committed to carrying out every sentence of every paragraph of that 169-page report. We negotiated the document. We signed it. People in our city have advocated for the necessary change for years, and we’re going to get it done.
We already have an independent evaluator because we already have a settlement agreement set up with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. We’re going to make sure that we aren’t just getting this work done, but we’re held to a standard and everybody will be able to see transparently whether we hit the mark or if we fell short. We have an obligation to see this change through.
And as of yesterday, we got a report from the independent evaluator saying that we have set an excellent foundation for change and have moved forward with reforms at a pace and with progress that is better than virtually any city in the entire country under a consent decree.
That report noted the city hasn’t met all the goals set for year one — citing issues with staffing and capacity. What is your plan for ensuring the city will be able to stay on track?
What the report said is that we are making more progress than virtually any city in the entire country that is under a consent decree, and that’s because we’ve been doing the work.
We have hired out staff, we’ve spent tens of millions of dollars, we have made very clear to every police officer in this department and all of the recruits coming on that they need to be part of this change.
So yes, we have had a massive staffing shortage in terms of police officers over the last several years, but we’re also seeing increases in those numbers. We’ve seen a 135 percent increase in applications and, right now, our police department is more diverse per capita than it has ever been before.
So, for those that have demanded reform, for the protesters that have come out and protested, for those who have said we need great change — our answer is, thank you because that change is afoot.
Communities United Against Police Brutality released a statement today saying, ‘The progress being claimed by the city is not being felt in the streets.’ What’s your response to that?
I think everybody’s got a role to play and as activists, their role is to push us as quickly and as far as we can possibly go. The independent evaluator’s role is to make a determination in a neutral way and they did that — saying we’ve made more progress than anywhere else. Our role here is to keep our nose to the grindstone and get the job done, not just quickly but effectively.
You’ve said that city has spent millions on making reforms. What do you say to residents who don’t see this as money well spent or who are not on board?
Doing the necessary culture shift, it both takes time and money to carry out compliance, to gather the necessary data, to deploy the necessary technology and, yes, to make sure that officers are trained correctly so that they’re engaging with residents in the way that we want them to engage.
It takes effort. There is no magic-wand fix here. So, if we are truly committed to doing this work — and I am as well as our administration and these officers are — then this is the route that we’ve got to go. So, of course, there will be people that disagree with me and say that we shouldn’t be spending this money on police reform. I disagree. It’s necessary.
