Minneapolis City Council Member surprised to see report Police Chief O'Hara "lacks Council support"

Noticeably absent? The chief of police who has yet to be renominated. A recent KSTP-TV report said sources in the City Council didn't think that Chief Brian O'Hara had enough votes to be reconfirmed.

WCCO's Susie Jones spoke with Council member Michael Rainville about that report and O'Hara.

"I know he's done a good job, of my experience of him bringing back the morale of the department, and the recruiting," Rainville said. "He has done a really good job on recruiting."

Minneapolis has struggled to fill their ranks since the COVID-19 pandemic and after the fallout from George Floyd's killing by a former Minneapolis police officer. Currently, there are around 630 sworn police officers in the city, and they are on track to have 700 by next year.

Those numbers are still around 100 officers short of what the city charter calls for despite the progress made, and has led to the Upper Midwest Law Center filing a lawsuit against the city.

Even with the support O'Hara has in some circles, a recent KSTP-TV report claimed O'Hara didn't have enough votes on the City Council to be reconfirmed at this time. Rainville said he's very surprised by that news, and the chief's lack on support. He added that no one called him for his opinion on the matter. Rainville is one of the more moderate voices on a council that is notably controlled by a faction of Democratic Socialists however.

"I don't know what Channel 5 knows that I don't know, but I saw that news story too, and that was news to me. I'm in the minority, you know. So I'm not in the majority voting block," Rainville notes. "So they probably called up the majority who are the Democratic Socialists and they don't like the chief."

While Rainville said while he thinks the chief has done a good job, he wouldn't go on record saying he would approve of the nomination.

Mayor Jacob Frey has until August to reappoint the chief to his position.

For his part, O'Hara says he's confident that he'll be nominated for another term, despite published reports that have recently come to light showing thirty complaints have been filed against him.

"I learned from reading the Star Tribune article that apparently since the surge, the number of complaints have doubled, which I think that says something about it right there," O'Hara told WCCO-TV.

While details of those complaints aren't public, O'Hara said the fact that so many came during the federal government's immigration crackdown is not a coincidence, saying "that's the time period."

Details of the complaints aren't public, and Frey says they take every one of them seriously. In a statement, Frey says O'Hara has led the MPD through a number of difficult situations and he says O'Hara has helped to rebuild the department.