A report released Monday by Effective Law Enforcement for ALL (ELEFA) shows the City of Minneapolis is making significant progress towards police reform efforts as required in a settlement agreement reached two years ago with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
ELEFA’s first report covers the period from March 18, 2024 through September 30, 2024 and highlights progress in policy revisions, training, misconduct complaint backlogs, plans for equipment, technology, facilities, and data systems. City leaders on Monday pointed out the first report shows the city is in a foundational phase when it comes to the agreement.
“We're looking at policy revisions, training, officer wellness, and technology,” said City Attorney Kristyn Anderson. “These things have to happen before we can move on to the evaluation phase. We're really building the building blocks of the entire system so that we have the ability to grow on that and proceed to the evaluation phase.”
The court-enforceable agreement was approved in March 2023 by the Minneapolis City Council after MDHR released a scathing report showing the Minneapolis Police Department had engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination for at least a decade.
MPD chief Brian O’Hara told reporters on Monday that work into the agreement started well before ELEFA’s monitoring began. O’Hara praised the “hundreds of pages of policies” that have gone through rigorous examination at multiple levels including community meetings, police officer input sessions, and internal back and forth.
“There’s been phenomenal work done to revise the field training officer program. I'm really happy with where that has gone, that is both policy, SOP, as well as training. All of those three things are being developed at the same time.”
One area the department continues to struggle in is clearing a backlog of use-of-force investigations. As of September 30th, 2024 the department had over 1,100 use of force cases in the backlog.
O’Hara said additional training, personnel, and even overtime hours have been made available in order to address backlog.
“The city has contracted with an independent law to help get those reviews through. I can't say with certainty that the backlog will be cleared by the deadline, which is March 17th.”
According to ELEFA, their next review period will cover work completed from October 1, 2024 through March 31, 2025.
“This is the beginning of a long journey that will take time,” Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette said. “But the city is fully on board and working diligently towards sustainable reform.”
Barnette added a federal consent decree was signed and filed in January and awaits approval by a federal judge.
"Regardless of what happens at the federal level, we have a state consent decree and we're moving forward with our plans and goals for a sustainable police department with reform."