Minneapolis Council President Lisa Bender has filed an ethics complaint against Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo over their comments surrounding the upcoming ballot in a press conference on Wednesday.
In his press conference yesterday, Arradondo blasted question 2 on the upcoming election ballot that would create a Department of Public Safety instead of the police department.
“To vote on a measure of reimagining public safety without a solid plan and an implementation or direction of work, this is too critical of a time to wish and hope for that help that we need so desperately right now,” Arradondo said in his press conference. “And again, I was not expecting some sort of robust, detailed word for word plan. But at this point, quite frankly, I would take a drawing on a napkin.”
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Bender said in her statement that the chief did not correctly represent what has been years of work in developing a plan to restructure the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I cannot understand why Chief Arradondo would say that no planning has been done for a Department of Public Safety when he is fully aware that extensive work has already been done over several years, before and after the murder of George Floyd,” Bender said.
Bender said that in Arradondo’s press conference, the chief used city resources, staff, logos, and the MPD uniform while taking a position on a city ballot question.
She said that the actions from Arradondo violate the city’s ethics code and an internal MPD rule about campaigning in uniform.
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Bender said that she named Mayor Frey in the complaint because the police chief reports directly to the mayor, and he should be held accountable for any city resources used for campaigning.
In the statement the city council president said that the work has been put in for years and even said the Arradondo has been involved the entire time.
“Senior staff at the City, who are largely staff of color, have been working for years to analyze our existing public safety system and make detailed, serious recommendations informed by data and community engagement,” Bender said in the statement. “Chief Arradondo knows this because MPD has been fully involved the whole time.”
