One day after the Minneapolis City Council approved a controversial union contract with the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey reaffirmed his commitment to signing off on the deal, despite saying it had clear imperfections.
The contract, which provides Minneapolis police officers raises, bonuses, and additional mental health screenings for officers returning to duty following a critical incident, was approved on an 8-5 vote that saw nearly an hour of heated discussion among several Minneapolis City Council members.
"We are in the position now where we need to incentivize officers to be officers," Mayor Frey told WCCO Radio's Vineeta Sawkar during the Morning News on Friday. "There is a metro-wide and nationwide shortage of police officers and we needed to have a contract that accounted for the realities of the market."
Council members who did not support the contract said that it lacked the accountability and disciplinary changes needed in the wake of George Floyd's May 2020 murder.
Frey said that putting disciplinary changes into the contract would not have made sense for the city to do, since they do not actually have to negotiate those changes with the police union.
"They wanted a disciplinary matrix within the contract," Frey said. "I'll be blunt, that doesn't make any sense and it would be the opposite of helpful for accountability. We have the authority to set up a disciplinary matrix unilaterally. We can do it without having to negotiate with the union."
Negotiating a disciplinary matrix, according to Frey, would be counterproductive.
"In 2018 we changed the disciplinary matrix to make it more strict and we did it without talking to the union about it or negotiating," he said. "We want to do that again. Why would we voluntarily hand over authority?"
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Approving the contract costs the City of Minneapolis roughly $9 million and the contract covers 2020-2022, meaning any new contract items would be decided next year.
Prior to approving the contract council member LaTrisha Vetaw, who was one of the eight "yes" votes, said that approving the contract did not mean the city wasn't committed to further reforms.
"Whomever our next chief is will play a huge role in how we discipline our officers," Vetaw said. "I personally want to focus on doing the real work that is needed. Delaying or voting this contract down does not allow for that."
The contract's approval comes at a time where Minneapolis continues to face questions about public safety. Frey said there's no one step to simply address the rise in violent crime.
"We are working with all of our partners including a number of jurisdictions, judges, prosecutors, police officers, violence interrupters, or even housing advocates," he said. "It needs to be a wholesale and comprehensive approach which we are putting into play right now. It's not enough. We need to do more."