In a first, new Minneapolis Fire Chief Reginald Freeman comes from outside department
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Minneapolis swore in its 19th fire chief, and the department's first ever outside fire chief hire, last week. Chief Reginald Freeman has a pretty unusual resume for a Minneapolis fire chief — he has led fire departments in Oakland, Calif., and Hartford, Conn., served as a civilian fire chief for the Department of Defense in Iraq and ran fire and EMS operations in Saudi Arabia.
He's taking over a department facing questions about staffing and firefighters who have responded to unprecedented emergencies since 2020. Freeman discussed those topics and more in a conversation with MPR News host Nina Moini.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full interview.
You’ve worked as a firefighter all over the world in multiple capacities. What made you want to lead the Minneapolis Fire Department?
It's a wonderful city with the equally great fire department. The members of the Minneapolis Fire Department are some of the most dedicated professionals in the fire service. We have world-class firefighters here in Minneapolis, and my job as a chief is to make sure that we have a world-class fire department. So it's truly an honor and privilege to serve the members of Minneapolis as well as the community.
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What is your sense for the staffing of the department right now?
Our minimum staffing is 105 members per day in order for us to provide the services that our community needs here in Minneapolis. And just like many fire departments across the country, we are having to utilize overtime to meet our minimum staffing requirements. However, the mayor, commissioner and all the members of MFD have been working hand in hand to ensure that we are recruiting and staffing requisite classes. Not only to ensure that we have bodies in the seats, but the appropriate number of apparatus on the roads at any given time to respond to emergencies.
So, my administration will be conducting a comprehensive analysis to ensure that not only are the 19 fire stations that we have currently strategically located throughout the city, but then also, our minimum staffing of 105 is also the adequate number for us to provide services here in the city. That analysis will be started here within the next few weeks, and it's going to take several months for us to to do that properly to ensure that we are having the appropriate number of resources out on the street at any given time.
Tell us about your response times right now, and what the department's goals in that area are.
We utilize the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) standards as our benchmark in regards to expectations for total response time. We do not quite hit that benchmark for all of our companies 90 percent of the time, as the standard says, and that's something that we're going to be looking at in greater detail in the near future. Part of that standard also is not only the dispatch time, but the travel time, for the firefighters to get on scene and get water on fire if there is a specific structure fire that we're responding to. It's important for us to meet these response times, whether it be for an EMS call or for any other emergency here in the city.
Minneapolis emergency responders have been through some extraordinary things in in recent years, from the unrest following George Floyd's murder to the Annunciation mass shooting. What are you hearing from firefighters about what they need from you right now?
I've had an opportunity to do several station visits. The theme is, ‘chief, we just want to be able to have the resources that we need to do our job.’ And firefighters, especially here in Minneapolis, but all across the country, they see the worst that humanity has to offer. We respond. So if you could think about motor vehicle accidents, or EMS calls, or falls, or just what we typically would call accidents in our day-to-day lives, our firefighters respond to all of these emergencies.
It's not one single incident that could be problematic for our first responders. It's that cumulative effect of responding to call after call and tragedy after tragedy, and how that may impact people differently. So, the mayor, the commissioner, my office — we are committed to ensuring that our members have all the resources they need to do their job, and if they need help, we are here to help them without compromise.
What do you want people to understand about what a Minneapolis firefighter does?
First and foremost, that they're human, right? When you look at the the the highest paid public servants in the city, some people may have sticker shock. ‘Wow, how is it that a firefighter could work X amount of hours and earn, let's just say, $200,000 a year for being a firefighter?’ Well, that money is not given to them. They've earned every single penny. They've missed birthday parties. They've missed recitals. They've missed games. Sometimes they lose their family members. There's a high number of firefighters that are unfortunately on the receiving end or have to go through divorces because there is no work-life balance. There is poor quality of life because they dedicate and give everything to the city. We are committed to ensuring that our firefighters are supported, that we share with them the different programs and different avenues that they can take to ensure that they do have a proper balance, because they give everything to the city and don't ask for anything in return.
In a year from now, what are the concrete things that you want to be able to point to and say, this is what changed in the first year under my leadership?
Structure, organization, and discipline. We are humble public servants, but at the same time, there is no fire department without firefighters, and this is the first time in modern history where there's five different generations in the workplace. Recruitment and retention is a lot different today in the fire service than what it was just 10, 15 years ago. Before, in Minneapolis, you would have hundreds if not thousands of candidates lined up around the block to apply. Now we'd be lucky if we have a few hundred, and that is the story that most major cities have as it pertains to fire department recruitment. So, in the future, when we have this talk, we could talk about the progress that we've made on recruitment and retention and the different programs that we have to ensure that your firefighters here in Minneapolis are adequately prepared to respond if you need them to respond.
