When asked what he thinks should be done with the Minneapolis Police Department Frey shared the following.
“If you are talking about sweeping dramatic structural reform I'm in,” Mayor Frey said.“If you're talking about abolishing the police department, no I do not think that’s the right decision.”
Frey says that he has had some conversations with members of the Minneapolis City Council and has heard the term end, disband, defund and abolish. While nine members have announced the intentions to defund the MPD, Frey does not know their exact plans for the police department collectively or individually.
When it comes to Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo Frey continues to support and praise him. However, Frey says that the elephant in the room is the police union, who is historically known for making it difficult to create change in the department.
“I think their needs to be a full structural reform,” Frey said. For him the way to have this happen is by going after the police union.
As for his power when it comes to stopping the actions of the city council if they plan on abolishing the police, Frey had this to say.
“Obviously the mayor has veto power and obviously there are restrictions that are built into our chart itself,” Frey said. “But I don't think there's really clarity on what form of proposal would even come forward and so I really can't comment. I don't know is the honest answer. “
Frey shared his thoughts on President of the Police Union Bob Kroll. His opinions seem to be the same as former Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau and Former Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak.
“For a person that consistently complains about lack of support for the police department or for the police officers he's one of the main reasons for that lack of support,” Frey said.
Frey also spoke about his decision to abandon the third precinct and what the plan was to protect the city during riots that took place days after the death of George Floyd. He said that they had to decide between having police officers protect firefighters while they were fighting fires, protect the third precinct from protestors or stop looting that was happening throughout the city.
“It was very clear that there was no way that we were gonna be able to do all three and in some cases we weren't even able to do two”
Chief Arradondo had called Frey and told him that there was no way they could handle this themselves with the number of officers that they had. Frey said that he immediately called Governor Tim Walz and requested the Minnesota National Guard for help.
For Frey, the decision on whether or not to abandon the third precinct was difficult but calculated.
“If we attempted to continue to hold on and people were coming into the third precinct there was a very strong likelihood of significant injury, maybe death to either our police officers or those who were protesting,” Frey said. “That is simply not a decision I was willing to make.”